Guachinango parish, is one of the oldest doctrine of Reino de Nueva Galicia, is located in the northwestern of the central region of Jalisco State, at north of the slope region.

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By drawing the present historical review, the deep thought of Rabindranath Tagore (Nobel Prize 1913) has often come to my mind: "There is only one story: The history of man"; And in the light of this truth, I have reaffirmed my conviction that the historical past of every people, however small it may be, can never cease to be interesting, let alone when it comes to a people that, like Guachinango, knew a past Although his current career, alongside other, more fortunate places, is, by reason of various factors, at a distinct disadvantage.

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I.ORIGINES
Although this part is somewhat extensive, I will try to reach the earliest antecedents of the man who first inhabited the vast region of New Galicia, since besides the fact that the entire territory of our Diocese was part of it, we may perhaps find in those origins , Some anthropological reasons for our own way of being.
With regard to the ethnological antecedents of primitive American man, nothing is known with certainty; One can only affirm with a number of serious ethnologists and historians that the Aboriginal race was not indigenous but rather immigrated, and that from Asia it entered America through Alaska, probably when its culture could be classified as Neolithic (see Perez Brotchie). Serious historiographers argue, however, that there was an autochthonous race, and that this was the Otomi.

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The race that in the earliest time could have inhabited Jalisco-except for the previous hypothesis about the Otomi-was the Nahoa that, coming from the North, arrived in our country about six thousand years ago. However, all the knowledge about the first settlers of the Mexican Republic dates from the sixth century of our era, so that the whole hypothesis based on time before that century, does not deserve full credit.

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It is fair to affirm in favor of the Nahoa race the high degree of culture which it has achieved, as demonstrated by its theogony and cosmogony, certain knowledge of construction and hydraulics, marriage and family organization, social organization and, above all, Non-existence of the practice of human sacrifices, a phenomenon not freed from even many races subsequent to it (Cf Topete Bordes, Jalisco Precortesiano, Chapter 2).

Already in a cycle of greater historical certainty, during the second half of S. VI, the Toltecs, descendants of the Nahoas, arrive at Jalisco, and found Chimalhuacan Atenco. The name Chimalhuacán ("place of the ones that use shields") is the cornerstone for the history of this region, since it has served to all the historians to indicate the region jalisciense and the one of the neighboring States of the precortesian era.

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As inheritors of the Nahoas culture, the Toltecs - also in their specification of Chimalhuacans - were a people advanced: polytheists, but recognizing a god superior to the others; Industrious in construction, in agriculture, and in some arts; Recorded their history with paintings and geroglficos; They had a social organization of family and government; In their houses in some cases they were already houses of terrado and, mainly they were very good astronomers. Clavijero, visiting Boturini, affirms that the Toltecs devised the leap year more than a hundred years before Jesus Christ, and that the learned Mexican races, as learned to the Toltecs, had the calendar year according to the solar, through the Intercalary days, as was the Roman calendar after Julius Caesar.

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About the first settlers of Guachinango, Mr. Cura Dn. Librado Tovar, illustrious member of the Mexican Society of Geography and Statistics at the Auxiliary Board of Guadalajara, in his address in 1933 to celebrate the fourth centenary of the foundation of Guachinango, said:

"By the year 567 of the vulgar, the inhabitants of this territory were the Toltecs, who dominated the lower races, which had their own language and customs. Mexican domination followed with the kingdom of Chimalhuacán being constituted numerous Tlatoanazgos or independent dominions, only united in time of war to resist the common enemy. Señorío chimalhuacano was Guachinango, with Mixtlán and Atenguillo, with seat in those towns and others like El Rojo, of importance in the times said, as mineral, because the bond of union,
It seems that aboriginal tribes were here, in the contours, the extraction and benefit of the precious metals, without denying that, like Chimalhuacanos, they also fomented agriculture, commerce and the manufacturing arts. "

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II. TOPONYMIC ETIMOLOGY
Like the majority of the ancient indigenous names, the origin of the word Guachinango is controversial and curious, since, for the popular ancestral tradition, it simply means "stream without water" or "fortified place", for the philological scholarship of the students there are the following versions :
"Seto in the woods" (Mendoza);
"Place that has fenced of wood or trees" (Arreola);
"In the chinampas of wooden stakes" (Ibarra de Anda);
"In the enclosure of trees" (His Excellency Archbishop D. Guadalupe Ortiz and Mr. Prof. José Ramírez Flores)

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This version, which seems to be the most accurate, comes according to Hon. Mr. Ortiz, from the Mexican dialect "CUATI" (wooden tree or cuate) and "NANGO" (surrounded or surrounded by); The illustrious Jalisco historian Ramírez Flores, in better elaborated philology, makes him derive: "CUAHUITL" (tree), "CHINOMITL" (hedge, hedge) and "CO" (instead of), roots that when agglutinating in a better resultant Phonetic, give rise to the name "cuauh-chinan-co" (Cf. Páez Brotchie, Jalisco, Historia Mímina, Volume I).

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III. THE SPANISH
The foundation of the people in their present place is linked to the name of Dn. Juan Fernandez de Hijar, Spanish captain who in 1541 settled in Guachinango where he lived for a long time, because in March 1579 he still appears living here; Died perhaps shortly after that year and was buried in this land that he wanted so much and where indefatigably worked as a pioneer of mining. By male straight line descended from the House of Hijar of the royal of Dn. Jaime Aragón.

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From 1533 he dated the title of property in favor of the "Founding People and cacicazgo of Guachinango" that on September 08 of that year, in the name of Emperor Carlos V, the Viso Rey, Dn. Antonio de Mendoza, Captain General of the Royal Armies of New Spain, Dn. Hernando Cortes, and the Council and Synod of the Council of the Indies.

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On this title, it should be noted that, next to the fourth centenary of the foundation of the town (December 08, 1933), the most distinguished residents of Guachinango commissioned Mr. Dn. Joaquín Ponce to consult with competent and authoritative persons on the authenticity of said Title, perhaps reasonably doubted. Mr. Ponce consulted in Guadalajara with the members of the Auxiliary Board of the Mexican Society of Geography and Statistics, gathering all of them unanimously that "these historical documents are of the most undeniable authenticity, both because their writing corresponds to the used one In which they are written, as well as by the signatures that fit those titles, being the main the one of the Conquistador Dn. Hernando Cortés Márquez del Valle, which is perfectly clear to date, carrying a golden marmaja, which was the characteristic that always carried the signatures of the Conqueror "(Cf. The Informant of December 10, 1933).

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Associated also to the first years of the colonial life of Guachinango are the names of Pedro de Ulloa, conqueror of the New Galicia to the control of Nuño de Guzmán who shortly after 1531 named him encomendero of Guachinango; The Captain Cristóbal de Oñate that in 1545 discovered some mines in Guachinango, Etzatlán and Purificación (See Paez Brothchie); Cristóbal de Oñate, son of the previous one, and to whom his father "had bequeathed houses in Compostela and a mine in Guachinango that Sancho de Rentería knew" (Bioteca de Occidente); "Sancho de Renteria, corregidor of the mineral of Guachinango, honest man, married and who in 1563 had been ten years of residing in the land" (ibid.).

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In 1570 he counted the Real de Minas de Guachinango with six Spanish neighbors, miners. During two centuries (XVII and XVIII) the life of the town was intimately linked to the Rodriguez family Ponce; Founder of this family was Alonso Rodríguez Ponce, originally from Lepe, in Huelva (Andalusia) who came to Mexico as a miner in 1600. Son of the former was Don Francisco Rodríguez Ponce of which speaks Tello (chapter 248 of his second book) As a builder in 1605 of mills to benefit metals. This first Francisco appears like Mercedarian in Guachinango in 1618; In 1627 already appears like resident occupied in matters of mining, besides being Judge Mayor of Real of Mines and its provinces. Married to Francisca de Velasco Mújica y Rentería, of Juchipila, had four children, of whom only one was male and also Francisco.

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This second Francisco, captain, landowner and businessman, although natural of Juchipila and absent of Guachinango in performance of diverse positions (Investigating Judge, provisional mayor of the Holy Brotherhood, Judge of plateaus, glens and registries, etc.), appears, However, linked to this town for which he obtained permission from Philip IV in 1655 for the manufacture of a mill. Married in 1638 to Juana Ávalos de Bocanegra, he fathered eight children (4 women and 4 men), of whom the fifth was named after Francis and the seventh Ambrose, "who was a Bachelor and then a long-lived, Fame "(Bioteca de Occidente).

The third Francisco married Maria Luisa Ortiz Palomera, and one of her sons, Br. Juan Antonio Rodríguez Ponce, was for several years Vicar of Guachinango (in 1749 she was at least 14 years old); Along with his brothers, had in the neighborhood of the town ten major sites and six caballerias, plus the Hacienda of Santa Barbara as well as half a league from the Real. Perhaps it is due to him the cession of the house-hacienda of the Rodriguez Ponce Family in favor of the parochial temple, as the inscription reads that in red quarry is under the first bell tower:

“De los Ponce fue esta casa,

y para emplearla mejor,

a Dios se la dedicaron

para casa de oración”.

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