Valparaíso

Valparaíso sits on a valley floor about 1,880 metres up, with the sierra climbing to nearly 2,900 to the west; the name is Latin for vale of paradise. The town of about 13,500 lives from corn, beans and cattle and heads a municipality that reaches Durango, Nayarit and Jalisco, with pine forest, sawmills and Huichol communities in the south.

Diego de Ibarra reached the valley on December 8, 1568, and set up a cattle ranch here; as land was added, the hacienda grew to nearly half a million hectares. In the 18th century it passed to the de la Campa y Cos family, counts of San Mateo de Valparaíso, whose money built, in Mexico City, the Palacio de los Condes de San Mateo de Valparaíso and what is now the Palacio de Iturbide, both designed by Francisco Antonio de Guerrero y Torres. Back in the valley, the church of the Purísima Concepción was begun with a flat earthen roof in 1568, took its present form in 1737 and got its vaulted ceiling in 1870.

In August 1926 Pedro Quintanar rose up from these ranches and on the 29th rode into Huejuquilla el Alto, the first real battle of the Cristero War. The painter and sculptor Manuel Felguérez was born here.

The Museo Regional shows fossils, Indigenous embroidery and finds from the shaft tombs at La Florida, about 7 km away. Atotonilco, 3 km out, has thermal-water pools. The regional fair, FEREVA, takes over early December: the 8th belongs to the Purísima, the valley's patron, and the 12th to the Virgin of Guadalupe. There is a Sunday street market.