Villa Purificación

Villa Purificación is the seat of its municipality in Jalisco's Costa Sur region, at about 458 metres, with 5,965 people in 2020. It is one of the oldest Spanish foundations in western Mexico: Nuño de Guzmán established it on February 2, 1533, the feast of the Purification, in the Tecomatlán valley, with Juan Fernández de Híjar as alcalde mayor. The first chapel in what is now Jalisco was built here.

Its first settlers included Cristóbal de Oñate and other soldiers of good family, in a villa one chronicler described as short of both people and means. The local peoples, who had come from Sayula, resisted the land grants, and an epidemic in 1650 killed thousands. In 1872 Porfirio Díaz hid in the area while on the run after the Plan de la Noria, and in 1914 men from Jocotlán led by Pedro Zamora burned and looted the town. It became a municipality in 1871, lost the status in 1883 and regained it in 1888.

The Purificación river splits the municipality almost in half from north to south, with the San Nicolás to the west. To the north rise the foothills of the Sierra de Cacoma, up to 1,800 metres, whose forests cover much of the land; the rest is hills and cattle country.