Melahuacan

Melahuacan was the head town of a small pre-conquest province on the southern coast of what is now Jalisco, whose people had come from Sayula. It headed a cluster of villages including Tenzitlán, Xirosto and Pampochin.

Francisco Cortés de San Buenaventura conquered the province in 1525, and in 1533 the captain Juan Fernández de Híjar, sent by Nuño Beltrán de Guzmán, founded the Spanish town of Villa Purificación in the same valley, around which the old communities were later gathered.