INSTITUTE OF SOCIAL ANTHROPOLOGY — PUBLICATION NO. 11 



MEXICO 



QUIR0GA-PATZCUAR.0 AR.EA 

 MlCHOflCAN 



SCALE. OF miLES 



50 100 ZOO 5'OQ ^00 500 



Map 1. — Mexico, showing the Quiroga-Pdtzcuaro area within Michoacdn. 



mestizos, and highly acculturated Tarascan In- 

 dians. This promised better cooperation from 

 the inhabitants, who would not suspect and 

 resent our intrusion and our questionings so much 

 as would the people of less acculturated Tarascan 

 villages. On the other hand, Qunoga (as Cocupao) 

 had been a pure Tarascan village during much of 

 the Spanish colonial period, and Tarascan was 

 still spoken as the mother tongue by the inhabi- 

 tants of an entire ward or barrio into the nine- 

 teenth century. Furthermore, the Tarascan 

 villages of Santa Fe de la Laguna (about 2^ nules 

 distant), San Jerdnimo Purenchecuaro, and San 

 Andres Zir6ndaro, had been attached administra- 

 tively to Quiroga for more than a century. Thus, 

 with headquarters in Quiroga, we had hopes of 

 being accepted by the community, while main- 



taining contacts with a considerable gamut of 

 economies and stages of acculturation. 



Another reason was the excellent transportation 

 facilities. Quiroga is situated on the main western 

 national highway, No. 4, from Alexico City to 

 Guadalajara, and is at the junction of the branch 

 leading to Pdtzcuaro and Tacdmbaro. This nodal 

 position in a communications network is not new. 

 Before the coming of the paved highway, and of 

 the earlier railroad along the west side of the lake, 

 Quiroga had been a great mule-train center, with 

 many jondas and w.esones, and with muleteers 

 who went frequently to the tierra caliente, the 

 Costa Grande of the Pacific, Guadalajara, Guana- 

 juato, etc. Even earher, in colonial and prehistoric 

 times, an important road led from Pdtzcuaro and 

 Tzintzuntzan through Quu-oga to Copdndaro, 



