Villa Juárez

For nearly three centuries this town was called La Carbonera. It was founded in 1643 as the congregation of Santa Gertrudis de Carbonera, though the first settlement is dated half a century earlier, around 1592, at what became the Ojo de León hacienda. It became a villa in 1829, and in 1928 governor Saturnino Cedillo renamed it after Benito Juárez.

The town has 3,488 people and stands about 1,100 metres up in the Zona Media of San Luis Potosí. Water is what sets it apart. The Puerta del Río spring gives rise to the Río Choy, which runs past the picnic spot of San Tiburcio and, some 3 km south of town, feeds the El Aguaje water park and La Presita, both busy during school holidays. It then flows on towards Rioverde. Two more springs, Ojo de León and El Sabino, water the fields.

The municipality also holds Guaxcamá, where sulphur was mined from 1808; after an explosion in one of the mines in 1972, they were abandoned. Its old hacienda keeps an arched aqueduct that carried water from the Buenavista spring, a water-driven sugar mill and a former mezcal works. Serrano chiles and maize are the main crops, and Pame families still live in the area.

Many people have left for Texas, Illinois and Nebraska, and their hometown clubs pay for local projects: a Houston foundation got the municipal market built. Many come back for the feast of Santa Gertrudis on November 16, preceded by a fair of about two weeks, with bullfights and jaripeos. Try pacholes, pipián, wedding-style asado and candied squash and chilacayote.