Cuilápam de Guerrero

Cuilápam de Guerrero lies in the Central Valleys about 10 km southwest of Oaxaca city, at roughly 1,560 m, on the road to Zaachila. Its first, Mixtec name was Sahayuco, "at the foot of the hill", because the original settlement stood below Monte Albán; Cuilapan is the later Nahuatl name. The town added "de Guerrero" after General Vicente Guerrero, hero of independence and former president, was shot here against the convent walls at dawn on 14 February 1831.

The town is known for the former Dominican monastery of Santiago Apóstol, on a low rise with views over much of the valley. The friars settled here in 1550, the viceroy Luis de Velasco licensed a "modest" building in 1555, and construction began in 1556 to a design by Antonio de Barbosa. Work stopped in the 1570s for reasons that are still unclear. What remains is a huge roofless open basilica with a Plateresque front of three arches between two towers and three naves of heavy Tuscan columns meant to carry a roof that was never built. Behind it are the single-nave church, roofed in the 19th and 20th centuries and still used for worship, and a two-storey cloister, restored in 1962, with monochrome murals that mix Christian scenes with Mixtec and Zapotec imagery.

INAH, which declared the complex a national monument in 1937, uses part of the cloister for restoration workshops and runs a small museum with liturgical pieces, Zapotec stone carvings and a display on Guerrero, including a painting in the room where he spent his last night. A monument to him stands south of the convent. Local tradition holds that the Zapotec princess Donají, daughter of the last king of Zaachila, is buried in the church. The town celebrates Santiago Apóstol in July with calendas, fireworks and horse races, and is known for the Danza de la Pluma.