QUIROGA: a MEXICAN MUNICIPIO — BRAND 



r 35 



QUIROGA TOWN 



(MAP 4) 



Having discussed all of the permanent ranches, 

 there remains only the lyilla or town of Quiroga 

 itself among the settlements in our area of study. 

 Previously we have outlined what is kno\VTi of the 

 development of this settlement during the six- 

 teenth and seventeenth centuries. There is prac- 

 tically nothing more to be added until the period of 

 independence after 1822. By this time we know 

 that Cocupao had become the seat of a municipal 

 government, and that its population included 

 whites, mestizos, and mulattoes, as well as In- 

 dians. Tradition, as obtained about 1874 by 

 Nicolas Le6n from old inliabitants, claims that the 

 pueblo was burned to the ground in May 1811 by 

 a revolutionary chief (Padre Antonio Torres, a 

 native of Cocupao) so that it could not give shelter 

 to royalist forces. Since all of the houses probably 

 were of wood with roofs of shakes or grass it is 

 quite likely that the tradition is true, at least as 

 far as a great fire that wiped out the village. It 

 was also claimed that the village church, former 

 Franciscan convent (Cocupao was secularized in 

 1786), Indian hospital and chapel, and aU associ- 

 ated structures were destroyed at the same time. 

 The present parish church presumably was built 

 some time between 1812 and 1818. Granting the 

 total obliteration of all structures in Cocupao in 

 1811, probably the resettlement that took place 

 in the quiet years of the revolution against Spain 

 (1816 to 1821) took the same lines as the carher 

 settlements since each family would rebuild on its 

 traditional solar. There is no Ioiowtq basis for 

 Le6n's assumption that at this time Cocupao 

 moved from La Tepdricua to its present site. In 

 1827 the State congress passed a law requirmg the 

 pueblos and larger settlements of Michoacd,n to be 

 divided or organized into quarters (cuarteles) and 

 blocks (manzanas). As we have no detailed 

 records of Cocupao until 1860, we can only assume 

 that this was done. Up until this date presumably 

 Cocupao had only the division into barrios and a 

 few streets with names. 



We have already listed and located the four 

 barrios of Cocupao, and given our opinion that 

 they originated with four nuclear communities 

 that went into the make-up of the pueblo in 1 534 . 

 There is no indication that any of these barrios 

 might represent differences in dialect or occupa- 

 tion, or sib groupings and landowning groups, as 



was sometimes the case elsewhere. It is of some 

 interest that San Miguel is represented as a barrio 

 name in most of the Michoacdn towns with which 

 we are familiar, but the other three names repre- 

 sented in Cocupao (San Francisco, San Bai'tolo, 

 and La Ascension) are not so common. After 

 San Miguel the most popular names are San 

 Pedro, Maria Magdalena, San Juan, and Santiago. 

 Apjjarently there was a tendency in Michoac&n 

 pueblos to have either four or eight barrios (this 

 type of barrio is not to be confused with the term 

 as applied to an outlying dependent community). 

 Perhaps this tendency stemmed from the fact 

 that four was the most popular and esteemed 

 number among the Tarascans. Only one street 

 name is definitely known from the pre-Independ- 

 ence period — that of the Calle Real. As was true 

 with nearly all Spanish-American communities in 

 colonial days, the Calle Real (Royal Street) was 

 the main thoroughfare of the community. It is 

 somewhat puzzling that the former Calle Real 

 was not what is now known as the Calle Nacional 

 (passing between the church and the municipal 

 palace) but was the street now termed Calls 

 Zaragoza which extends west from the center of 

 town between cuarteles I and II, and in front of 

 the Plaza de la Constituci6n. Perhaps an answer 

 to the puzzle is the alternative name for this plaza 

 which is "Plaza Vieja" or "The Old Plaza." 

 Possibly the main market square or plaza of 

 Cocupao was here at some time prior to 1858, but 

 this supposition encounters a difficulty in the fact 

 that half of this plaza belonged to Santa Fe until 

 it was purchased in 1861. There is, of course, the 

 possibility that Santa Fe and Cocupao held a joint 

 market in this plaza. At all events, we can be 

 fau'ly certain that Cocupao, like Pdtzcuaro, never 

 had any religious buildings fronting on its largest 

 or principal plaza. What Toussaint (1942, p. 202) 

 mistakenly has labeled Plaza Antigua, in front 

 and to the west side of the parish church, never 

 was the principal plaza of Quiroga. The area in 

 front of the chirrch was the cemetery, which was 

 replaced in 1850 by the Pante6n Civil erected on 

 the northeastern outskirts near La Tep6ricua. 

 The area to the west of the church, now known as 

 the Plaza de los Mdrtires, and where the market 

 is held, did not exist until some time in the 1860's 

 (after the French Intervention) when the old 

 municipal buildings (office of the ayuntamiento, 

 jail, etc.) which occupied this site were torn down 



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