Lagos de Moreno

History

Before the Spanish, this valley was the territory of Chichimeca peoples, among them Guachichiles, Zacatecos, Caxcanes and Tecuexes. Their raids during the Chichimeca War made settlement difficult; in 1551 an attack wiped out the livestock of Diego de Ibarra's hacienda. To secure the silver road linking Mexico City with Zacatecas, the Audiencia of Nueva Galicia ordered Hernando Martel, mayor of Teocaltiche, to found a town. He established the Villa de Santa María de los Lagos on March 31, 1563, named for the Virgin and for the lakes then scattered across the valley.

The villa prospered as a way station and ranching center; by 1600 some 20,000 head of cattle grazed the area, the background to the local charrería tradition. The current parish church was begun in 1741 under the priest Diego José Cervantes, with Nicolás de Santiago Medina as master builder, and the Capuchin convent was formally established in 1756.

Local lawyer Francisco Primo de Verdad was an early voice for independence, and the insurgent Pedro Moreno, born here in 1775, gave the city its present name in 1829. A literary flowering followed in the later 19th century; novelist Mariano Azuela was born here in 1873. The railroad arrived under Porfirio Díaz. INAH declared the center a historic monument zone in 1989, UNESCO listed it in 2010, and the Pueblo Mágico title came in 2012.