Guadalajara

• 1. Introduction

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  Guadalajara sits at 1,700 meters above sea level in the Atemajac Valley, a city that was moved four times before it finally stayed put. It is the capital of the western Mexican state of Jalisco, home to more than 1.3 million people within the city limits and over 5.2 million across the wider metropolitan area, making it the third-largest metropolitan zone in all of Mexico. Its population density runs above 10,361 people per square kilometer, a figure exceeded in the country only by Mexico City. Today, Guadalajara is where Mariachi music became a national symbol, where a UNESCO World Heritage orphanage stands next to a market that claims the title of the largest indoor market in Latin America, and where a nickname borrowed from northern California marks the city as a tech hub for an entire continent. But none of that came easily. The city's name itself traces back to a Moorish Arabic phrase meaning "Valley of the Stones." Its first colonial settlement, planted in 1532, ran out of water and had to move. Its independence movement touched off here and then was crushed here. And in 1992, a gas explosion tore through eight kilometers of downtown streets and killed more than 200 people, with a warning that went ignored for three days. How a settlement this restless, this contested, and this catastrophe-prone became one of the most culturally and economically significant cities in the Americas is the story ahead.

• 2. Four Foundations

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  Cristóbal de Oñate, a Basque conquistador operating under the orders of Nuño de Guzmán, planted the first colonial settlement in 1532 at Mesa del Cerro, the site now known as Nochistlán, Zacatecas. The purpose was to secure recent conquests and, in the blunt language of the Spanish record, to defend them from the "still-hostile natives." The site failed almost immediately; it had no reliable water supply. By 1533 the settlement had moved near Tonalá, and four years after that, Guzmán ordered it relocated again to Tlacotán.

  The Mixtón War of 1540-1542 changed everything. The Caxcan, Portecuex, and Zacateco peoples rose up under the command of Tenamaxtli, directly in response to the treatment of indigenous people under Guzmán, which included the enslavement of captured natives. After several Spanish defeats, Viceroy Antonio de Mendoza took personal command of the campaign and ultimately made concessions: enslaved indigenous people were freed, and amnesty was extended. The village of Guadalajara barely survived the conflict. The residents credited their survival to the Archangel Michael, who remains the city's patron to this day.

  After the war ended, the village moved one final time to a more defensible position. In 1542, records show 126 people living in Guadalajara. That same year the king of Spain granted it cityhood, and it was officially founded on the 14th of February 1542 in the Atemajac Valley. The settlement was named for Nuño de Guzmán's Spanish hometown, itself derived from the Moorish Arabic for "Valley of the Stones." On the 8th of November 1539, Holy Roman Emperor Charles V had already granted it a coat of arms and designated it the capital of the Kingdom of Nueva Galicia, a region within the Viceroyalty of New Spain. In 1560 it became the province's new capital, and three years later construction began on what would become the cathedral.

• 3. Silver, Rebellion, and Independence

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  After 1572, the Royal Audiencia of Guadalajara, previously answerable to Mexico City, gained full autonomy over Nueva Galicia. The reason was money: silver had been discovered in the kingdom and wealth was accumulating fast. By the 18th century, despite epidemics, plagues, and earthquakes, Guadalajara had become Mexico's second-largest city, shaped by mass colonial migrations in the 1720s and 1760s. In 1771, Bishop Fray Antonio Alcalde arrived and founded the Civil Hospital and what would become the University of Guadalajara. The university was formally established in 1791 and dedicated the following year at the site of the old Santo Tomas College.

  Miguel Hidalgo y Costilla entered San Pedro, now known as Tlaquepaque, on the 25th of November 1810, and the next day the city received him warmly. Workers had endured poor living conditions and responded to his promises of lower taxes and an end to slavery. On the 6th of December 1810, Hidalgo made good on that promise: slavery was abolished in Guadalajara, a proclamation that has been honored since the war's end. He also founded the newspaper El Despertador Americano, dedicated to the insurgent cause, from within the city.

  Royalist forces arrived in January 1811 with nearly 6,000 men. Hidalgo commanded between 80,000 and 100,000 troops and 95 cannons, but the better-trained royalist army prevailed at the Puente de Calderon just outside the city, decimating the insurgent force and driving Hidalgo toward Aguascalientes. Guadalajara stayed in royalist hands until near the end of the war. New Galicia, now Jalisco, accepted the Plan de Iguala on the 13th of June 1821, and by 1823 Guadalajara had been named capital of the newly created state of Jalisco. The 19th century that followed brought rail lines to the Pacific coast and north to the United States, intensifying trade and establishing what source records call the city's ranch culture identity.

• 4. The 1992 Explosions

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  Three days before the disaster, residents in the Analco neighborhood began reporting a powerful gasoline-like odor rising from the sewers. City workers investigated and found dangerously high concentrations of gasoline fumes underground. No evacuation order was issued.

  On the 22nd of April 1992, the accumulation ignited. Over four hours, gasoline explosions running through the sewer system destroyed eight kilometers of streets in the downtown district of Analco. Gante Street suffered the worst damage. When it was over, 206 people had been killed officially, nearly 500 were injured, and 15,000 were left without homes. Estimated monetary damage fell between $300 million and $1 billion.

  Investigators identified two structural causes. New water pipes had been laid too close to an existing gasoline pipeline, and chemical reactions between the materials caused erosion. Separately, a design flaw in the sewer system prevented accumulated gases from escaping. Four officials of Pemex, the state oil company, were charged with negligence, but all were ultimately cleared. Calls to restructure Pemex were made and resisted. Investigators found no clear assignment of responsibility, and the investigation ran for more than eleven years before being closed, attributing the event to an accident. The neighborhood still shows the difference: the affected blocks are recognizable today by their more modern architecture, rebuilt in the years after the blast.

  The explosion arrived at the start of a difficult decade. It was followed by the murder of Cardinal Juan Jesús Posadas Ocampo in 1993 and the Mexican peso crisis of 1994. Taken together, those three events ended what had been Guadalajara's industrial momentum.

• 5. Silicon Valley of Mexico

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  The passage of the North American Free Trade Agreement opened Guadalajara to an influx of international technology firms. Companies including General Electric, IBM, Hewlett Packard Enterprise, Intel, Motorola, Siemens, Oracle, and Tata Consultancy Services established facilities in the city or its suburbs. Telecom and computer equipment produced in Guadalajara came to account for roughly a quarter of Mexico's total electronics exports, and the city's two main products became electronics and beer.

  In 2007, FDi magazine ranked Guadalajara first among major Mexican cities and second among major North American cities in economic potential, behind only Chicago. That same survey named it the most business-friendly Latin American city. In 2009, Moody's Investors Service assigned the municipality a Ba1 rating on the global scale and A1.mx on the Mexican national scale. Exports from the city climbed from roughly $3.92 billion in 1995 to $14.3 billion in 2003.

  In 2013, the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers designated Guadalajara a Smart City. That same year saw the formation of the first "Cluster Smart Cities" arrangement in the world, joining Dublin, San Jose, Cardiff, and Guadalajara in a formal information-sharing alliance focused on agribusiness and health sciences. The city was also designated the official venue for Mexico's first Digital Creative City. The concentration of technology activity came at a cost, however: when economic downturns hit, international firms scaled back operations, and the shift away from manufacturing toward technology-dependent services left the unskilled working class with fewer options. Mexico's traditional advantage in proximity to the United States market remains one of the factors keeping Guadalajara competitive against China in electronics.

• 6. Mariachi and Cultural Life

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  Mariachi music did not originate in Guadalajara; it came from the nearby town of Cocula, Jalisco. The connection between the city and the style began in 1907, when an eight-piece mariachi band and four dancers from Guadalajara performed at the Mexican president's residence for Porfirio Díaz and the United States Secretary of State. That performance made mariachi a symbol of western Mexico. When many people from the Guadalajara area later migrated to Mexico City, settling near Plaza Garibaldi, the music spread further and became a symbol of Mexican identity nationally.

  Guadalajara hosts the Festival of Mariachi and Charreria, which started in 1994. In August 2009, during the XVI Encuentro Internacional del Mariachi y la Charreria, 542 musicians played together for just over ten minutes, breaking the world record for the largest mariachi group. They ended the performance with two classic songs: "Cielito Lindo" and "Guadalajara." The previous record, set in 2007 in San Antonio, Texas, had been 520 musicians.

  Beyond mariachi, the Guadalajara International Book Fair is the largest book fair in the Americas, held each year over nine days at the Expo Guadalajara. More than 300 publishing firms from 35 countries attend regularly, and more than 350,000 people come from Mexico and abroad. The fair awards the Premio FIL for literature and the Premio de Literatura Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz. In 2009, participants included Nobel laureate Orhan Pamuk and Peruvian writer Mario Vargas Llosa. The city was designated the World Book Capital for 2022 by UNESCO. The Orquesta Filarmónica de Jalisco, founded by José Rolón in 1915, kept performing even after state funding lapsed in 1924, eventually regaining official support in 1939. Film directors including Guillermo del Toro and writers including Juan Rulfo were born or shaped by this city.

• 7. Architecture and Landmarks

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  The Former Hospice Cabañas, built beginning in 1805 by Manuel Tolsá under orders of Carlos III, was inaugurated as an orphanage in 1810 though construction continued until 1845. It was named after Bishop Ruiz de Cabañas y Crespo, and in 1997 UNESCO declared it a World Heritage Site. Today it houses the Cabañas Cultural Institute, and its main attraction is the murals by José Clemente Orozco, a native of Jalisco. Among them is "Hombre del Fuego" (Man of Fire), considered one of Orozco's finest works. The Palace of the State Government, also decorated with Orozco murals including "Hidalgo," was begun in the 17th century and finished in 1774, then completely remodeled inside after an explosion in 1859.

  Construction began on the Metropolitan Cathedral in 1558. The church was consecrated in 1616, and its two towers were added in the 19th century after an earthquake destroyed the originals. The interior holds three naves and eleven side altars, all supported by 30 Doric columns. The Degollado Theater, considered the oldest opera house in Mexico, was built in the mid-19th century in Neoclassical design. Its main portal carries a marble relief by Benito Castañeda depicting "Apollo and the Muses," and its vaulted ceiling is painted with a fresco by Jacobo Gálvez and Gerardo Suárez showing a scene from the Divine Comedy.

  The Jalisco Famous People Roundabout, built in 1952 of quarried stone, is a circular structure of 17 columns surrounding 98 urns holding the remains of distinguished people from Jalisco. The Plaza Tapatía, covering 70,000 square meters between the cathedral and the Hospice, centers on a sculpture called Inmolación de Quetzalcóatl. The Barranca de Huentitán, a national park just north of the city, covers approximately 1,136 hectares and varies 600 meters in altitude. On the 5th of June 1997, it was declared a Protected Natural Area.