Uruapan

Uruapan lies where the wooded Purépecha highlands descend toward the warmer country of western Michoacán. The Cupatitzio River rises nearby and runs through a green ravine, its springs and cascades giving the settlement abundant water. The town developed as a centre for the surrounding Indigenous communities and their markets.

In the 1530s the Franciscan Juan de San Miguel organized the colonial town of San Francisco Uruapan. Dispersed communities from the mountains were gathered into neighbourhoods, with the church of San Francisco and the hospital known as La Huatápera forming a spiritual centre. These institutions combined religious instruction with care for local inhabitants. Uruapan’s neighbourhoods preserved links with the communities from which their residents came, even as the colonial town acquired a new layout and institutions.