Travel Guide Lagos De Moreno

Lagos de Moreno is a small and pleasant colonial town located two hours drive from Guadalajara, on the border of the states of Guanajuato, San Luis Potosi and Aguascalientes. It is dominated by the El Sombrero plateau , and its heyday was in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries; its centre has some very fine buildings, and its surroundings have an architectural heritage consisting of more than 80 haciendas spread over its territory. The whole has been recognized as cultural heritage of humanity by UNESCO. It was in 1542 that the first haciendas were established in this water-rich plain, essentially dedicated to agriculture and livestock. In the surrounding area, only two of them were dedicated to the exploitation of precious metals, around Comaja, a few dozen kilometers from the present city of Lagos de Moreno. The latter was founded in 1563 under the name of Santa Maria de Los Lagos, after several expeditions that also included Portuguese merchants and slaves of African origin. The first expedition was also made up of two writers, the beginnings of the literary tradition of this city that was soon to be considered the Athens of Jalisco because of its vibrant cultural and artistic life: Francisco Gonzalez Leon (1862-1945) and Manuel Azuela (1873-1952), author of the cult book Los de abajo (1916), are its main icons. Its current name was given in 1829, in homage to Pedro Moreno, a hero of independence.