Ocotlán de Morelos

Ocotlán de Morelos is the main town of the southern Central Valleys, about 35 km south of Oaxaca city on Highway 175, at around 1,500 m. Some 14,000 people live in the town itself. The Dominicans founded a monastery here in 1555, the year the town is counted from, because the valley had a sizeable population when the Spanish arrived. José María Morelos camped here for three days on his way to Acapulco during the War of Independence, which is where the "de Morelos" comes from. Ocotlán was declared a town in 1875 and a city in 1926.

The Temple and former convent of Santo Domingo de Guzmán, built in stages from the 16th to the 19th century, faces a long atrium lined with cypresses; its blue and white façade mixes Baroque and Neoclassical work, and the Chapel of the Señor de la Sacristía sits alongside. By the late 1800s the convent was abandoned. The painter Rodolfo Morales (1925–2001), born in Ocotlán and known for his dreamlike scenes of village women, set up a foundation in 1992 that restored the church and convent along with some fifteen other churches in the valleys. The convent now holds a museum with rooms of Morales's work, Oaxacan crafts and colonial art, and Morales's remains rest there. His 18th-century family house is a free cultural centre, and he also painted the 1950s murals in the council chamber of the municipal palace.

The Friday market, one of the oldest and largest in the Central Valleys, fills the streets around the square and the Mercado Morelos with produce, mezcal, textiles, crafts, regional food and a livestock section, drawing people from the surrounding villages. Ocotlán is also home to the Aguilar family of potters: the sisters Josefina, Guillermina, Irene and Concepción make colourful clay figures of market women, weddings and nativity scenes, and Josefina won a national arts prize in 1977. The Aguilar brothers' workshop in town forges decorative knives from recycled car springs and rail steel.