Short answers, pulled from the story.
Zapopan means "among the sapote trees." The name derives from the Nahuatl word tzapotl, meaning sapote, combined with the locative suffix -pan. The municipality was also historically known as ex Villa Maicera, or former corn village, reflecting its past prominence in corn production.
The Virgin of Zapopan is a 34 cm tall image of Our Lady of the Conception, made in Michoacán from corn stalks with wooden hands. Placed in the settlement on the 8th of December 1541 by friars Antonio de Segovia and Ángel of Valencia, she was named patron of Guadalajara in 1734 and military "General" of the Army of the Three Guarantees in 1821. Pope Benedict XV crowned her Queen of Jalisco in 1919.
Construction of the Basilica of Zapopan began in 1689 and was completed in 1892. Pope Pius XII designated it a basilica in 1940. The facade is Plateresque in style, and the main altar is made of marble from Carrara and Cyprus.
Pope John Paul II visited the Basilica of Our Lady of Zapopan in 1979. A bronze statue of him, depicted with a child dressed as a charro representing Jalisco, stands in the basilica's atrium.
Zapopan's population grew from 27,115 in 1950 to over one million by 2000. The municipality doubled in population between 1950 and 1960, tripled again by 1970 to 163,185, and grew by 238.5% during the 1970s alone, reaching 389,081 by 1980.
Zapopan has three main archaeological sites: Ixtépete, which contains a Teotihuacan-style pyramid 20 m long, 16 m wide, and 1.83 m high with construction phases from the fifth to tenth century; El Grillo, which has fourteen shaft tombs in the Atemajac Valley; and La Coronilla in the area known as La Experiencia. In May 2009, construction workers also uncovered pre-Hispanic objects from the Shaft Tombs Tradition dating between 100 BCE and 500 CE at Ciudad Granja.