Alaquines

Alaquines lies at the bottom of a small valley closed in by tall hills, in the Zona Media of San Luis Potosí, on the road between Cárdenas and Ciudad del Maíz. The first thing you notice on the way down is the centre, where nearly every house has two storeys, which sets it apart from every other municipal seat in the state. The village has 1,177 people, and the whole municipality, spread over 46 settlements, about 7,800, living from farming, cattle and trade.

The name comes from the Alaquines, an Indigenous people settled here around 1616, when the Marquis of Guadalcázar, Diego Fernández de Córdoba, was viceroy. Friar Juan de Cárdenas left a mission under the Franciscan custody of Rioverde, but its first church, a thatched hut, was destroyed when the Alaquines rose up. The settlement was formally founded in 1691 as San José de los Montes Alaquines.

Most visitors come for the Señor del Santo Entierro, known locally as the Cristo Milagroso: an 18th-century Guatemalan carving of the dead Christ, close to life size, with a gold crown and gold nails on an iron cross, kept in a chapel of its own. Townspeople tell a legend about how the image arrived and why it stayed. Its fiesta runs from May 25 to 29, when pilgrims from across Mexico and from the United States bring flowers, gifts and requests. Local cooking leans on nopal and prickly pears, barbacoa, tamales and candied squash, washed down with champurrado, a hot chocolate drink thickened with corn.