Travel Guide La Quemada

Located on the border between the two least-studied areas of Mexican archaeology (the West and the North), the origins of the great fortified city of La Quemada are still a matter of debate. In terms of dating, all we know is that the city's inhabitants built it from the 4thcentury AD onwards. The city's heyday was between 600 and 850 AD, and it was finally abandoned in the 12thcentury . Hypotheses and suppositions concerning the site's cultural affiliation abound: could it have been an outpost of the great Teotihuacán, with which the site shares its heyday and decline (AD 500-900)? A trading post for the Toltecs, who founded the city of Tula at the time of La Quemada's decline? A stronghold of the combative Purepechas of Michoacán, who steadfastly resisted the Mexicas of Tenochtitlán and then the Spanish invaders? Or could it be the legendary Chicomostoc, where the Mexicas settled for a time during their long exile from Aztlán towards the Central Valleys, where they would go on to found the great Tenochtitlán, capital of the so-called Aztec empire? Questions abound, and answers are few and far between... Let's just say that the configuration of the site certainly evokes the idea of a defensive place, but we now know that it was an agricultural capital and a ceremonial center of the first rank. In those days, the region was much better irrigated and much wetter than the semi-desert plain would suggest. Corn, beans, squash and maguey were grown here, as were amaranth seeds, tomatoes and nopal leaves. Given its location, it's easy to imagine that the city was part of a trade network that included the Chalchihuites (site of Alta Vista, in the Sierra de Organos, known for its extraction of precious metals), the Juchipila cañon and the Atemajac valley, the present-day territory of the state of Aguascalientes, Los Altos de Jalisco and, of course, the north-western state of Guanajuato. For this was a region that saw the transit of products as diverse as salt, minerals and shellfish, not to mention turquoise, which came from as far away as a thousand kilometers to the north.