Mocorito

History

When the Spanish arrived, Cáhita-speaking peoples lived in permanent villages along the Mocorito River and the other rivers of northern Sinaloa. The name Mocorito is Cáhita; one reading is "place of people who speak a dialect of Cáhita", while the historian Eustaquio Buelna preferred "place of the dead". In 1532, a year after Nuño de Guzmán reached the northwest, Sebastián de Évora came to the valley as encomendero and gave his own name to the town and river. In 1594 the Jesuits Juan Bautista Velasco and Hernando de Santarén founded the Mission of Mocorito.

The first adobe chapel raised by the Spanish was torn down to build a sturdier church with indigenous labor, finished in the seventeenth century, which explains its mix of styles. Inside are 14 engravings of the Stations of the Cross dating from the sixteenth century.

When Sinaloa separated from Sonora in 1830, Mocorito became one of the new state's eleven districts, and it was established as a municipality by a decree of April 8, 1915. The plazuela was begun in 1900 and opened on September 16, 1902. A second square, the Plaza de los Tres Grandes, holds bronze statues of three local heroes: Agustina Ramírez, Eustaquio Buelna and General Rafael Buelna Tenorio. Mocorito was named a Pueblo Mágico in 2015.