Plateros

Plateros sits on rolling hills 2,175 metres up, just northeast of Fresnillo, and lives off its pilgrims. Its sanctuary holds the image of the Santo Niño de Atocha, a devotion born in the silver mines of Zacatecas that now draws about 1.5 million visitors a year, behind only the Basilica of Guadalupe and San Juan de los Lagos among Mexico's shrines.

The town began by mistake in 1566, when miners looking for the camp at Fresnillo lost their way, struck silver on Saint Demetrius's day and named the spot San Demetrio. By 1621 it was called Plateros, after the silver miners who settled it.

The present church was finished over two hundred years ago (keystones over some openings read 1790), a late folk baroque building whose side altarpieces were later replaced with neoclassical ones carved by José Rosas Montaño. Its facade honours the Señor de los Plateros, a heavy wooden Christ from the 16th century on a cross plated in silver in the 17th. The Child came as part of a Virgin of Atocha that a wealthy mine owner brought from Spain; over time the little figure took over the devotion, and the first accounts of his miracles date from 1829. In 1882 the bishop of Zacatecas ordered the Salón de Retablos built to hold the ex-voto paintings pilgrims leave in thanks, finished the next year: walls covered in small painted stories of accidents survived and illnesses cured.

The big feast is December 25; the older July 1 feast faded as the Child's grew. Huichol people come down from the sierra to sell their crafts to the crowds. About 6,000 people live here, and the streets around the sanctuary are lined with stalls selling candles and keepsakes.