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Mexico Travel :: The Colonial States

State of Queretaro

Before the arrival of the Spaniards, Queretaro was on the border between the great Meso-american civilizations to the south and the barbarian Chichimecs. The principal inhabitants were the Otomi tribes, who had a fairly developed culture influenced by the Toltecs and the Aztecs. As the Tarascan empire based in Michoacan ascended, they began to expand into Queretaro. In 1446, the Aztecs defeated the Tarascans here, pushed them back to Michoacan and established military posts to protect against Chichimec raids. In 1531, a local Otomi chief named Conin was converted to Christianity and agreed to help the Spaniards colonize Queretaro. Rebaptized Hernando de Tapia, he led an expedition of converted Indians and Spaniards across the state, founding communities and convincing the Indians to give up their pagan beliefs.

On July 25,1531, the local chiefs agreed to convert, but only after a symbolic battle without weapons. According to legend, the battle ended when a cloud came across the sun and a cross and the image of the apostle Santiago appeared in the sky. The city of Queretaro was founded at that site. The state was originally just a way-station on the road between Zacatecas and Mexico City. As the silver mines to the north prospered so did Queretaro's mining supply, agricultural, cattle and industrial enterprises; within decades it was the third richest city in Mexico, after the capital and Puebla. At the end of the 17th century, the Franciscans built in Queretaro the Colegio Apostolico de Propaganda Fide de la Santisima Cruz de los Milagros, from which famous missionaries like Junipero Serra evangelized among the Indians of Northern Mexico. In the early 19th century, Queretaro became a center of the rebellion against the Spanish. The principal conspirators-Hidalgo, Allende, the Aldama brothers among others-met at the house of Queretaro's corregidor (the mayor) and planned to begin the rebellion on October 4, 1810. The conspiracy was discovered on September 11 but the corregidor's wife, Dona Josefa Ortiz de Dommguez, was able to warn Hidalgo and he started the revolt before the Spanish could arrest them. In February 1848, at the end of the US invasion of Mexico, the peace treaty was ratified in Queretaro's Templo de la Congregation.

Two decades later another invasion, this time by the French, ended in Queretaro. After the Emperor Maximilian was forced from the capital in 1867, he retreated to Queretaro, where his army was besieged for three months until he was captured by the liberal forces under Mariano Escobedo. He was sentenced to death in the Teatro de la Republica, and on June 19 was executed by a firing squad on the Cerro de las Campanas just outside town. As the Mexican Revolution drew to a close, Venustiano Carranza named Queretaro his provisional capital, and on February 5, 1917 the Mexican Constitution-still in use today-was signed in the Teatro de la Republica. In the same theater in 1929, President Plutarco Calles inaugurated the Partido National Revolutionary, a precursor to today's ruling Partido Revolutionary Institutional (PRI).

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