Oconahua

Oconahua is a delegation of the municipality of Etzatlán in western Jalisco, about 100 km from Guadalajara at 1,458 m above sea level. It had 2,360 inhabitants at the 2020 census. It sits beside a green hill that frames the stone-and-brick welcome arch on the way in, and life here revolves around the plaza, the parish of San Miguel Arcángel and an archaeological site that residents never built over.

The reason to come is the Palacio de Ocomo, a few blocks from the centre. It is a tecpan, a governing palace with a sunken patio, roughly 125 m on a side, which archaeologist Phil Weigand recorded and mapped and which belongs to the Grillo tradition, between about A.D. 450 and 900. It was greatly expanded around the year 600. Archaeologists Sean Montgomery Smith Márquez and Samuel Mateo Guadarrama have dug here since 2009, and restoration is still under way: what you see today are stone platforms and walls among grass, not a monumental site of rebuilt staircases. Many small houses once surrounded the palace, and residential units of three buildings around a patio have been identified. The excavations were run alongside the community, and a group of archaeologists, residents and municipal officials linked Oconahua's present-day dances to rituals at the palace. A community museum on dance came out of that, with posters and costumes rather than archaeological pieces.

The patron-saint fiestas for San Miguel Arcángel run from 21 to 29 September, with pilgrimages, serenades in the plaza, fireworks castles and a fire bull; on the 28th the ejidatarios lead the pilgrimage of the ears of corn, and the 29th is for absent sons and daughters who return home. On 1 September the village also holds its mojiganga, with giant papier-mâché figures, a brass band and free corn on the cob.