Ojuelos de Jalisco

Ojuelos de Jalisco is the seat of Jalisco's easternmost municipality, in the Altos Norte region, at 2,223 metres on a high plain where the state meets Aguascalientes, Zacatecas, Guanajuato and San Luis Potosí. The 2020 census counted 14,424 people in the town, almost 43% of the municipality. The name refers to the many springs (ojos de agua) and pastures found here when it was founded, and the "de Jalisco" recalls an old dispute: in 1862 Zacatecas declared only half the town a municipality, because the state line ran down one of its central streets. Residents campaigned under the slogan "Ojuelos es de Jalisco" until, in 1874, the whole town was placed in Jalisco and became a municipality.

The area was Chichimec and Guachichil country. In 1569, on the orders of Viceroy Martín Enríquez de Almanza, a fort or presidio was built here to protect the convoys carrying silver from Zacatecas to Mexico City, which were being raided by the Guachichil leader Maxorro. It was one of seven forts built along what became the Camino Real de Tierra Adentro, and the only one still standing with much of its original structure. Today it houses the municipal government. The site later became a cattle ranch, then a hacienda, and in 1811 the surrounding hills sheltered guerrillas who held up stagecoaches coming from the mines.

In 2010 UNESCO inscribed the historic centre of Ojuelos, including the fort and the Parián, and the Ojuelos bridge as part of the Camino Real de Tierra Adentro World Heritage Site. The Parián is a square enclosed by 102 pointed arches of white stone, designed in the late 19th century by the priest Luis G. Maciel. On the main plaza, between the town hall and the church of San José, a colourful sign calls Ojuelos the "Heart of Mexico", although the geographic centre calculated by INEGI lies in Zacatecas.

The municipality is fighting-bull country, home to ranches such as La Alianza de San Fermín, founded by the bullfighter Fermín Rivera, and Chinampas. The town makes wool sarapes, pottery, colonial-style furniture, rompope (eggnog) and melcocha, a chewy prickly-pear sweet. The archive of the old Hacienda de San José de Ojuelos, covering the 18th and 19th centuries, survives almost complete in the Casa de la Cultura.