Jiquilpan

History

In pre-Hispanic times Xiquilpan was an important farming, trading and cultural center, as the remains at the El Otero archaeological site show. Its Nahuatl name refers to a place of indigo or dye plants. Around 1450 the Purépecha lords brought it into their domain and called it Huanimban, place of huanita trees.

Cristóbal de Olid arrived to conquer it in 1522. The Franciscans took charge of evangelization, organized the population into barrios and, with indigenous labor, built a church, convent and hospital in the second half of the 16th century; the church keeps a crucifix said to have been a gift from Charles V to Fray Jacobo Daciano. A royal order of 1598 formally congregated the town. Under Spanish rule it was the seat of a corregimiento, later an alcaldía mayor and then a subdelegation.

Jiquilpan was raised to the rank of city on April 16, 1891, as Jiquilpan de Juárez. Its best known son, Lázaro Cárdenas, born here in 1895 and president from 1934 to 1940, left a deep mark: he protected the Cuauhtémoc and Juárez forests, opened a forestry library in the Casita de Piedra, and during his era Orozco painted the library murals and Roberto Cueva del Río those of the Francisco I. Madero school, in 1940. President Anastasio Bustamante, trumpeter Rafael Méndez and artist Feliciano Béjar were also born here.