El Grullo

El Grullo is a town in southwestern Jalisco, in the Sierra de Amula region, about 876 metres up in the valley it shares with Autlán de Navarro. The 2020 census counted 22,738 people, nearly nine in ten of the municipality's residents, and it now forms a single built-up area with Autlán and El Limón. The valley is flat, hot and fertile, watered by the irrigation system of the Tacotán and Trigomil dams, with the Ayuquila River marking the line with Autlán; the municipal coat of arms shows squash, maize and sugarcane under the motto "Salve, feraz valle" (hail, fertile valley), and a musical score on the same shield honours the town's many musicians.

Despite the name, there is no evidence cranes (grullas) ever lived here: the name comes from zacate grullo, a grass that grew in the marshes of the old Hacienda de Zacate Grullo. Francisco Cortés de San Buenaventura, nephew of Hernán Cortés, conquered the area in 1524, when it belonged to the lordship of Autlán. The first settlers lived by the El Colomo stream before moving onto hacienda land; families from Zacapala arrived in the early 1800s, and by about 1830 the town had taken shape. El Grullo became a comisaría in 1900 and a municipality on 13 December 1912, with its first council sworn in on 1 January 1913; it lost El Limón, which became a municipality of its own, in 1921, and was made a city on 27 December 1962.

The Parroquia de la Virgen de Guadalupe on the square is a 20th-century church with two towers, one carrying a clock, and a neo-Gothic main altarpiece; Monsignor Luis Robles Díaz, a former apostolic nuncio, is buried inside. El Grullo holds its Guadalupe festival in January, from the 1st to the 25th: the first twelve days are religious, with a novena, dawn mañanitas, pilgrimages from the outlying villages on the 12th and an evening serenade, followed by the crowning of the queen, charreadas, bull riding, decorated floats and dances. The town also has the Porfirio Corona Museum and the Daniel Arreola naturist clinic, on the strength of which El Grullo calls itself the cradle of modern naturism in Latin America.

Food is a point of local pride: El Grullo-style enchiladas, small and flat and topped with a piece of chicken; carnitas cooked until dry and served with a thin salsa on the side; river prawns (chacales) in tomato; lechuguilla, a fermented drink made from the plant of that name; and for something sweet, marinas (baked peanut brittle) and meringues made by the nuns of the Madres Adoratrices convent. Local craftspeople make roof tiles, huaraches, saddles, leatherwork and pottery. There are woods in the north of the municipality, and nearby are the Cucuciapa caves, the La Laja canyon and the El Tigre and La Laja waterfalls.