Melahuacan

Melahuacan lies in the coastal hill country of western Jalisco, near the Tomatlán district, where forested hills, rivers and coastal lowlands meet. Nahua-speaking communities lived in these valleys before the Spanish arrived, farming maize and exchanging goods along river routes. The Spanish conquest of western Mexico under Nuño de Guzmán in the 1530s brought the region into the colony of Nueva Galicia, bringing new tribute demands, and missionaries followed.