Tlalpujahua

Tlalpujahua lies among the wooded mountains of eastern Michoacán, where veins of gold and silver attracted miners after the Spanish conquest. Indigenous people had worked gold in the area before the newcomers opened their own mines in the sixteenth century. By 1560 the settlement was known as the Real de Minas de Tlalpujahua. Its mines joined the district to the expanding silver economy of New Spain, drawing labour and settlers into the highlands.