Charcas

Charcas is the seat of a municipality on the high plateau of San Luis Potosí, 191 km north of the state capital, on federal highway 63 between San Luis Potosí and Matehuala and beside the railway that runs up to Nuevo Laredo. About 14,000 people live here, in a town tied to its mine since the 16th century.

Spanish settlers founded the mining camp in 1578 as Santa María de las Charcas, after the Virgin Mary and after Charcas, the silver region north of Sucre in Bolivia. The state congress confirmed its status as a city in 1928.

Long before that, these plains held lakes and marshes where mammoths died, and their bones still turn up in the north of the municipality. The area also gave up a fossil Astenocormus, a fish resembling a whale shark known from only four specimens worldwide, the only one found in Mexico.

In 1811 Miguel Hidalgo came through Charcas while fleeing north. A monument on the main square marks his stay, and the house where he slept, on Calle 16 de Septiembre, carries a plaque. The mine, about fifteen minutes from the centre, still produces zinc, silver and copper, and a 100 MW Enel Green Power wind farm turns on the plains nearby. It makes a stop on a loop of the plateau between San Luis Potosí, Matehuala and Real de Catorce.