Santa María de los Ángeles

Santa María de los Ángeles is the seat of the municipality of the same name, in the far north of Jalisco, at about 1,700 metres above sea level and right against the Zacatecas border. It had 927 residents at the 2020 census. The town goes back to 1578, when its founding record was entered by royal decree, on Caxcan land that then belonged to the frontier of Tlaltenango; by about 1825 it already had a town council. The municipality was created in 1861, suppressed in 1872 for lack of population and restored in 1875.

The parish church of Nuestra Señora de los Ángeles was built between 1738 and 1772 and inaugurated on 5 February of that year; its baroque façade is dedicated to Nuestro Señor del Perpetuo Socorro. The town hall occupies a building of 1787 that in colonial times was known as the Casa Consistorial or Casas Reales. Beside it stands La Esmeralda, a two-storey building of pink quarry stone raised in 1899–1900 by master stonemason Francisco Ortega. The Capilla del Hospital, built by the Franciscans, dates from 1572.

El Molino, from the colonial era, was used only to grind wheat, and around 1895 a second level was added to the aqueduct that carried water to it. That red-brick aqueduct, with its row of arches beside a pond, still stands beside a pond. The sculpture of Jesús Nazareno is also kept here and already appears in an inventory of 1792.

The annual fair runs from the first to the second Saturday of September, and the patron saint's day is 8 September, with a novena, dawn serenades, streets hung with tissue-paper banners and a parade of floats. Local crafts include pita embroidery on leather, used for belts, chaps and saddles.