Teúl de González Ortega

History

The hill beside the town was a sacred place for centuries. Shaft tombs have been found there, and in the 15th and 16th centuries it remained an important ceremonial center of the Caxcan people. The Teules who lived here, a group related to the Caxcanes, had settled the area around the 12th century. In 2010 archaeologists announced the discovery of a sculpture of a decapitated ballplayer at the site.

After the troops of Nuño de Guzmán defeated the Teules, the Spanish captain Juan Delgado and Fray Juan de Pacheco founded San Juan Bautista de Teúl on June 24, 1536. The Franciscans received permission in 1574 to build a church and friary. That building was replaced in 1772 by what is now the Sanctuary of Our Lady of Guadalupe, which the order handed to the secular clergy in 1800.

Townspeople joined the independence struggle under an insurgent named Cañas, who was executed in 1813, and the town was left devastated by fighting between liberals and conservatives during the Reform War. In 1935 it took its present name. Farming and cattle have long sustained it, along with a musical tradition that includes a youth symphonic band founded in 1982.