El Santuario

El Santuario is one of the traditional barrios of Tixtla, the valley town where independence hero Vicente Guerrero was born, about 18 km east of Chilpancingo. It takes its name from the shrine of the Virgen de la Natividad, the town's best-loved church, about 800 metres south of the San Martín de Tours parish church in the centre. In June 2023 Mexico's federal tourism ministry named it a Barrio Mágico, the first in Guerrero; the award was announced as the organising committee for the 2024 Tianguis Turístico in Acapulco was sworn in.

The Virgen de la Natividad is Tixtla's great devotion and has two feast days: 31 May and 8 September, the date of her birth. Celebrations start nine days earlier with the encuentros, parades of dance troupes that wind through town to the shrine, with brass bands, floats built by local families and onlookers who join the dancing on the way. The church itself is plain, painted white and mint green, and beside its atrium grows an ancient tree with a massive trunk that gets dressed up for the fiestas.

The barrio also takes part in Tixtla's Day of the Dead: from the night of 31 October each barrio raises handmade arches over the main street leading to the cemetery, made of maize, beans, velvet flower, marigolds and pieces by the town's potters, and tlacololero, Moor, chinelo, devil and manuel dancers pass beneath them to sones de tarima. For food, the barrio has long-running pozole restaurants, and Tixtla is the place to try fiambre and huacaxtoro, a clear beef broth served with tololocho tamales.

The designation was not without criticism: in 2023 residents pointed out that the barrio lacked working street lighting and drainage, and that the area has security problems.