Cerritos

The name comes from the lie of the land: Cerritos sits on a flat stretch ringed by low hills, about 1,150 metres up in San Luis Potosí's Zona Media. In colonial times it was known as the Rancho de San Juan de los Cerritos, and around 1640 Martín de Turrubiartes brought the first settlers here, when the area still belonged to Guadalcázar. The state congress made it a villa in 1826 and a municipality in 1830, and for a time Cerritos also governed La Carbonera, the territory that is now Villa Juárez.

The Revolution hit hard. The town sided with the Cedillo faction, and looting and hunger left it struggling until about 1918. By then it already had a railway station: until 1970 cattle and sulphur were loaded there, and until the early 1980s passenger trains still ran through on the line between San Luis Potosí and the Gulf port of Tampico.

The 2020 census counted 15,692 people in town. Recent growth came with the Cementos Moctezuma plant, a campus of the Intercultural University of San Luis Potosí and a new road towards Rioverde. Outside town, ranchers raise cattle and farmers grow maize, chile and sorghum, and workshops turn ixtle fibre into everyday goods.

The parish church of San Juan Bautista, the patron saint, anchors the centre. His feast, June 16 to 24, brings a fair, horse races and cockfights. Local cooking leans on oven-baked gorditas, gorditas filled with nopal cactus in chile, chorizo, fresh cheese, cecina and chicken enchiladas.