San Agustín

San Agustín is a district in the northwest of Tlajomulco de Zúñiga, at 1,594 metres in the Zapotepec valley, an extension of the Toluquilla valley, about 20 km from central Guadalajara and 13 km from the municipal seat. For a time it was officially named Nicolás R. Casillas, after a revolutionary colonel. With 49,402 people at the 2020 census it is now almost a city, ringed by housing developments, but its centre keeps the layout of a village: a plaza with a bandstand, the district office, the market and Sunday evening fairs.

Its founding probably dates to 1542, with Indigenous settlers from Apozol and Juchipila. The Indigenous name, Sapotepec, means "on the hill of the zapote"; the name San Agustín appears in Franciscan chronicles from the mid-16th century. The village was served from the Franciscan convent in Guadalajara and later from the mission of Santiago de Tlajomulco, and it is part of the Franciscan Route. In 1942 the Franciscans opened the Colegio Seráfico here, the first formation house of their Jalisco province; residents agreed to wash the seminarians' clothes, and local women cooked for them some days without pay.

Facing the main church is the chapel of Nuestra Señora del Refugio, which began as the chapel of the Indigenous hospital, dedicated to the Immaculate Conception, and changed its dedication in the 18th century. Inside it has Baroque stone arches and door frames carved with flowers and rosettes, and a carved date of 1872. The Greek-cross church of San Agustín was rebuilt from 1935 after the original collapsed, roofed in 1948 and finished in 1980. Half a block away, the Casa de la Cultura holds a two-room archaeology museum with more than a hundred late Classic pieces from western Mexico: obsidian blades and points, jewellery, figurines, spindle whorls and pots. The surrounding hills, such as El Sapo and La Herradura, have pre-Hispanic terraces and mounds, and between El Picacho and La Herradura lies a basalt petroglyph about 3 metres across known as La Rosetta.

The fiesta of the Virgen del Refugio runs from 25 June to 4 July; on 3 July her image is carried in a procession of about 8 km to Los Ocotes, and on the 4th there are dawn serenades, a procession with the original painting brought by Franciscans in 1711, and fireworks. In late August Saint Augustine is honoured with a procession in which people enter the church carrying maize plants, and in November there is a parade of floats.