Concatedral de Chilapa

The Co-Cathedral of the Assumption is the main church of Chilapa de Álvarez, a city of about 34,000 people at 1,400 metres in east-central Guerrero, on the road into the Montaña region. It is dedicated to the Virgin of the Assumption and is now the second church of the Diocese of Chilpancingo-Chilapa, whose main cathedral is in the state capital.

Its standing comes from history. The Diocese of Chilapa was created on 16 March 1863, with Ambrosio María Serrano as its first bishop, and kept that name until 1989, when it became the Diocese of Chilpancingo-Chilapa. For those 126 years, Chilapa's great church was the diocese's cathedral.

The present building took nearly eighty years. Monsignor Ramón Ibarra y González ordered a large church, and work began in 1891; in 1930 a fire destroyed it. The bishop of the day put architect Federico Mariscal in charge of rebuilding, and he took up the work again and saw the church through to completion in 1967. In the 2025 Holy Year it was one of the diocese's designated jubilee churches.

A curious detail: a mechanical figure of Juan Diego appears at a window in the tower and drops rose petals onto the square below.

The town around it keeps its own calendar. Augustinian friars founded Chilapa in this valley in 1533, and their arrival on 5 October is still marked as the city's anniversary. On 15 August, the feast of the Assumption, the Tigrada takes over the streets, a festival with Mesoamerican roots that invokes the god Tepeyollotl for rain and fertile land. The Sunday tianguis has been famous since colonial times: in 2007 its association counted about 5,000 vendors, selling everything from bunches of garlic and sweet potatoes to palm hats woven in Nahua villages such as Acatlán, Zitlala and Atzacoaloya; since 2003 it has set up along the Chilpancingo-Tlapa highway and nearby streets rather than in the main square. To eat, Chilapa is known for pozole, chalupas, pan de Chilapa and home-made mezcal.