Jalostotitlán

Jalostotitlán, known around the region simply as Jalos, is a town in the Los Altos highlands of northeastern Jalisco and the seat of the municipality of the same name, at about 1,750 metres. It had 24,890 people at the 2020 census. The Nahuatl name translates as "place among the sand caves", after caves that were dug for sand.

Before the Spanish arrived it was a Tecuexe and Caxcan lordship that held sway over Temacapulín and what is now San Miguel el Alto. Pedro Almíndez Chirinos passed through in 1530, and in 1541 the people burned the missionaries' chapel and joined the Mixtón rebellion. After their defeat they returned to resettle the site, and Fray Miguel de Bolonia formally founded the town in 1544; by 1583 it was split into four barrios, La Cruz, San Andrés, San Nicolás and Santa Rosa. The independence fighter José María González Hermosillo, after whom the capital of Sonora is named, was born here, as was the priest and poet Alfredo R. Placencia.

The centre is the arcaded plaza, including the Portal de la Unión of 1829, and the parish church of Nuestra Señora de la Asunción, begun in 1622 and dedicated in 1736, with a pink stone front and two towers. Inside are a stone altar covered in 18-carat gold and murals by the local painter Rosalío González, made for the papal crowning of the Virgin in 1948. The Sagrado Corazón church of 1808 has an eclectic front and a neoclassical altarpiece, and the 1921 town hall holds a mural by Alfredo Soto on the town's history.

Jalos is a pig-farming and workshop town: it is one of the state's main pork producers, and for centuries craftsmen here have made inlaid wood, setting fine patterns into mahogany or sabino for furniture, chests and frames.

The biggest party is the carnival, colonial in origin, filling the ten days before Ash Wednesday with a palenque, bullfights at the Fermín Espinoza "Armillita" bullring (opened in 1973, seating 6,500), hot-air balloons and, on the last weekend, the "terrazas", bar stalls with banda and mariachi set up in the historic centre. Many emigrants living in the United States come home for carnival and for the August fortnight of the Virgin of the Assumption. About 11 km away is Santa Ana de Guadalupe, the hamlet where Saint Toribio Romo was born, a Cristero War martyr canonized in 2000 and venerated by migrants.