Unión de Tula

Unión de Tula is the seat of its municipality in the Sierra de Amula region of southern Jalisco, at about 1,350 metres, with 9,529 people in 2020. Its name reads like a founding charter: "Unión" honours one of the three guarantees of the Plan of Iguala, proclaimed months earlier, and "Tula" (once spelled TVLA) is made of the initials of the four founding families, Topete, Villaseñor, Lazcano and Arriola.

In the 18th and early 19th centuries the small valleys between Tenamaxtlán and Autlán held thriving haciendas: San Clemente, Santa Ana, San Cristóbal and Santa Rosa. Owners of three of them decided to build a town to secure labour and services, bought the San Cristóbal hacienda from the priest José María Villaseñor for 2,200 pesos, and founded Unión de TVLA on May 28, 1821. It is held to be the first town founded in independent Mexico. Pedro García-Lazcano León served as its mayor, with short breaks, until his death in 1865.

The San Cristóbal hacienda house stood on the shore of the Buenavista lagoon, drained in the first half of the 20th century. The present parish church was begun in 1872 on the site of a first church finished in 1824. The climate is semi-dry, averaging 21.2 °C, with rain from June to August; the municipality raises cattle, crops and bees, and is crossed by the Ayutla and Ayuquila rivers.