Explore Northern Jalisco and Michoacán
To the southeast of Jalisco, Michoacán state is one of the most beautiful and diverse in all Mexico, spreading as it does from a very narrow coastal plain with several tiny beach villages, up to where the Sierra Madre Occidental reaches eastwards into range after range of wooded volcanic heights.
However, despite its beauty and charms, Michoacán remains a region that people travel through rather than to. Morelia, Pátzcuaro, Uruapan and other towns lie conveniently near the major route from Guadalajara to Mexico City. The state tourism department’s website is wwww.turismomichoacan.gob.mx, and there’s more online information at wwww.michoacan-travel.com.
Read More- Pátzcuaro and around
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Morelia
Morelia
The state capital, MORELIA, is in many ways unrepresentative of Michoacán. It looks Spanish and, despite a large indigenous population, it feels Spanish – with its broad streets lined with seventeenth-century mansions and outdoor cafés sheltered by arcaded plazas, you might easily be in Salamanca or Valladolid. Indeed, the city’s name was Valladolid until 1828, when it was changed to honour local-born Independence hero José María Morelos.
Morelia has always been a city of Spaniards. It was one of the first they founded after the Conquest – two Franciscan friars, Juan de San Miguel and Antonio de Lisboa, settled here among the native inhabitants in 1530 and first laid claim to the city. Ten years later, they were visited by the first viceroy of New Spain, Antonio de Mendóza, who was so taken by the site that he ordered a town to be built, naming it after his birthplace and sending fifty Spanish families to settle it. From the beginning, there was fierce rivalry between the colonists and the older culture’s town of Pátzcuaro. During the lifetime of Vasco de Quiroga, Pátzcuaro had the upper hand, but later the bishopric was moved here, a university founded, and by the end of the sixteenth century there was no doubt that Valladolid was predominant.
Though there are specific things to look for and to visit in present-day Morelia, the city as a whole outweighs them: it was declared a UNESCO World Heritage site in 1991 and city ordinances decree that all new construction must perfectly match the old, such that it preserves a remarkable unity of style. Nearly everything is built of the same faintly pinkish-grey stone (trachyte), which, being soft, is not only easily carved and embellished but weathers quickly, giving even relatively recent constructions a battered, ancient look. Best of all are the plazas dotted with little cafés where you can while away an hour or two.
Everything you’re likely to want to see is within easy walking distance of the Plaza de Armas, the heart of the colonial centre. Avenida Francisco Madero, which runs along the north side of Plaza de Armas and the cathedral, is very much the main street, with most of the important public buildings and major shops strung out along it.
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The Monarch Butterfly Sanctuary
The Monarch Butterfly Sanctuary
Each winter more than 150 million monarch butterflies migrate from the northeastern US and Canada to the Oyamel fir forests in the lush mountains of Michoacán in order to reproduce. It’s an amazing sight any time, but especially in January and February when numbers peak: whole trees are smothered in monarchs, branches sagging under the weight. In the cool of the morning, they dry their wings, turning the entire landscape a rich, velvety orange, while later in the day they take to the air, millions of fluttering butterflies making more noise than you’d ever think possible. As the afternoon humidity forces them to the ground, they form a thick carpet of blazing colour.
The best place to see them is in the Santuario de la Mariposa Monarca (middle weekend in Nov to last weekend in March daily 9am–4pm; M$55; wwww.santuario-monarca.com.mx), just outside the village of El Rosario, about 120km east of Morelia. It is best to go early in the morning (and preferably on weekdays, to avoid the crowds), when the butterflies are just waking up and before they fly off into the surrounding woodlands. Guides, whose services are included in the entry fee, show you around the sanctuary and give a short explanation of the butterflies’ lifecycle and breeding habits. For a couple of weeks on either side of the main season, those same guides run the place unofficially, still charging the entry price and offering their services for a tip. There are fewer butterflies but it is still worth the journey anytime from early November to early April. The walk to the best of the monarch-laden trees is about 2km, mostly uphill at an altitude of almost 3000 metres: take it easy if you’re not acclimatized.
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Vasco de Quiroga – the noble conquistador
Vasco de Quiroga – the noble conquistador
When the Spaniards arrived in Michoacán in 1519, they found the region dominated by the Purépechan people – whom they named Tarascans – whose chief town, Tzintzuntzán, lay on the shores of Lago de Pátzcuaro. The Tarascan civilization, a serious rival to the Aztecs before the Conquest, had a widespread reputation for excellence in the arts, especially metalworking and feathered ornaments. Though the Tarascans submitted peaceably to the Spaniards in 1522 and their leader converted to Christianity, they did not avoid the massacres and mass torture that Nuño de Guzmán meted out in his attempts fully to pacify the region. Guzmán’s methods were overly brutal, even by colonial standards, and an elderly Spanish nobleman-turned-priest, Vasco de Quiroga, was appointed bishop to the area in an attempt to restore harmony. He succeeded beyond all expectations, securing his reputation as a champion of the native peoples – a reputation that persists today. He coaxed the native population down from the mountains to which they had fled, established self-sufficient agricultural settlements and set up missions to teach practical skills as well as religion. The effects of his actions have survived in a very visible way for, despite some blurring in objects produced for the tourist trade, each village still has its own craft speciality: lacquerware in Uruapan, guitars in Paracho, copper goods in Santa Clara del Cobre, to name but a few.
Vasco de Quiroga also left behind him a deeply religious state. Michoacán was a stronghold of the reactionary Cristero movement, which fought a bitter war in defence of the Church after the Revolution. Perhaps, too, the ideals of Zapata and Villa had less appeal here as Quiroga’s early championing of native peoples’ rights against their new overlords meant that the hacienda system never entirely took over Michoacán. Unlike most of the country, the state boasted a substantial peasantry with land it could call its own and therefore it didn’t relate to calls for land and labour reform.
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The Dance of the Little Old Men
The Dance of the Little Old Men
The Danza de los Viejitos, or the Dance of the Little Old Men, is the most famous of Michoacán’s traditional dances. It is also one of its most picturesque, with the performers (usually children), dressed in baggy white cotton and masked as old men, alternating between parodying the tottering steps of the viejitos they represent and breaking into complex routines. Naturally enough, there’s a lot of music, too. You’ll see the dance performed at festive occasions all over Michoacán, but the finest expression is in Paracho.
