Jesús María

Jesús María is the seat of the municipality of the same name in Jalisco's Altos Sur region, right by the Guanajuato state line at about 2,100 metres. It had 9,436 people at the 2020 census, half the municipality's population; in 2014 the neighbouring suburb of La Esperanza (El Sauz) was folded into the town. The climate is temperate and subhumid, with around thirty days of frost a year.

The town began as a roadside inn on the royal road in the late 16th or early 17th century. The owners or tenants of the land were three widows, Gertrudis Quiteria, Petrona Manuela and María Asunción de los Remedios, so the place became Barranca de las Viudas, the Widows' Ravine. Earlier the area was Tecuexe country and then part of the Purépecha domain; Cristóbal de Olid entered Jalisco in 1522 by way of Ayo el Grande, now in the municipality, and pre-Hispanic mounds survive at San José de las Pilas, El Zapote and Cerro Pelón, along with spiral petroglyphs near the reservoir. In 1798 Bishop Ruiz de Cabañas made the settlement a vicarage, in 1882 the parish of the Purísima was founded and the town took the name Purísima de Jesús María; in 1907 the priest Miguel Díaz Orozco switched its patrons to the Holy Family of Jesus, Mary and Joseph.

The parish church went up between 1835 and 1840. Its square tower rises about 30 metres with a Moorish and late Gothic feel, under a Tuscan dome. Inside are the Holy Family, the Señor de las Raíces (the town's first patron), the Señor de la Agonía and the Dolorosa, plus oil paintings of the Evangelists by Rosalío González from 1914 to 1916. On the plaza stand the Vicente Guerrero and Leona Vicario arcades, built of stone in 1778. The composer Clemente Aguirre Ayala, who wrote the waltz "Ecos de México" (1887), was born here.

Farms grow maize, beans, wheat and agave, and drinks production, chiefly tequila, is now the municipality's largest formal employer. Local saddlers are known for riding saddles, belts embroidered in pita fibre and whips stamped with cheeky phrases such as "Todas son mías". The main festival is the nine-day novena of the Holy Family, ending on the last Sunday of January, with pre-Hispanic dance groups from Los Robles, Uña de Gato and El Pantano escorted by "diablos" cracking henequen whips, plus jaripeos, cockfights, horse races and a country picnic with serenade the following Monday. Many emigrants return from the United States for it.