On the way to trout fishing in colonial San Miguel Regla, in the state of Hidalgo, I was pleasantly surprised by a picturesque little town.
Unlike traditional towns, which keep a certain monotony in terms of the colors of their facades, this one shows an extraordinary diversity of clean and paste-like tones, magnificently alternated between house and house; the facades are only standardized in the cherry-colored overall, limited by a white stripe. I could not resist the temptation to take a closer look at this rare chromatic display and took a path that descended to the ravine where the colorful town of Omitlán de Juárez is located.
Once there, I began to ask questions of the locals, who in a friendly and caring way responded to me, without ceasing to include, of course, the innumerable comments with which the inhabitants of some provincial place tend to decorate their answers.
So I was able to find out that it was the municipal government that decided to paint the facades with this polychrome, perhaps to differentiate itself from the other municipal seat, Mineral del Monte, which also decided to redecorate itself, painting itself all yellow.
I considered that it was appropriate to take advantage of the splendid light of that moment and began to take photographs. While wandering through the clean and lined streets, I learned that the town's extension is barely 110.5 km2 and its population of approximately 10,200 inhabitants, mostly workers from the Mineral del Monte and Pachuca mining companies. The rest are peasants who plant mainly corn, broad beans and barley, while others tend the orchards that produce plums, pears and Creole or San Juan apples.
As the town is really small, very few people dedicate themselves to commerce and bureaucratic tasks. However, its smallness does not prevent it from being a prosperous and very well organized town. It has all the necessary public services, such as drinking water, public health, schools, and so on.
A fact that deserves special recognition is the way in which they maintain the two tributaries that cross the town: the Amajac River and the Salazar Stream, which are perfectly clean and, fortunately, no type of drainage or residual water is poured into them, an example that many cities in the country should take.
Consistent with this ecological awareness is the care that the residents provide to the extensive wooded areas that surround the municipality, effectively controlling the immoderate or clandestine felling of trees, as well as forest fires, to which they have paid special attention, as shown by the good condition in which the surrounding hills are.
Another of the unique characteristics of this town is the location of its temple: it is not in the main square, as is normal in the vast majority of Mexican towns, but on the shore. It is a 16th century construction founded by Augustinian friars, which in its beginnings was only a chapel, and later, in 1858, it was rebuilt to become a church consecrated to the Virgen del Refugio, whose feast is celebrated on July 4. Although modest and austere, the church also keeps the same peculiarity of the town, as it is in a perfect state of paint and cleanliness, both inside and outside.
Following the tour, I stopped at the municipal palace, where I had the opportunity to learn about the history of the founding of Omitlán and the origin of its name. Regarding the first point, although there is evidence of pre-Hispanic groups, such as the large number of obsidian arrowheads and warrior axes found in the surroundings, the town was not founded until 1760, and received municipal status on December 2, 1862. After several studies carried out by archaeologists, it was concluded that the weapons that have been found were used by the hardened Chichimecas settled in Mextitlán, against the Aztec armies that disputed the strategic hollow, although apparently never they managed to snatch it from him completely, nor subdue or collect any tribute, as was the common practice of the powerful empire.
On the origin of the name, Omitlán derives from the Nahuatlome (two) ytlan (place, which means “place of two”, presumably due to the two crests of rocks, called del Zumate, which are located to the west of this municipality.
In colonial times, Omitlán also left an important record of its presence, as evidenced by the Catalog of Religious Constructions of the State of Hidalgo, and which literally says: “In El Paso the first silver smelting department was built, which it was baptized with the name of Hacienda Salazar, perhaps after its owner, that area being subject to the Great Province of Omitlán ”. And in another chapter of the same work it is pointed out that during the Spanish domination it came to hold the category of republic of Indians, dependent on the mayor's office of Pachuca.
General José María Pérez was a native of Omitlán, officially declared a hero of the Republican army for having starred in the famous battle of Casas Quemadas, which took place in the neighboring town of Mineral del Monte, and in which a large number of Ottoman soldiers to defeat, in an extremely forceful way, the imperialist Austrian army, defender of the cause of Maximilian of Habsburg.
Another singularity of the Omitlenses is their fondness for sports, because despite being a tiny population it has the second most important baseball park in the entire state, called “Benito Ávila” park, name of the famous Veracruz man who played in American baseball from the fifties. Such is the attachment to this sport that only in the municipality there are 16 teams or novenas, and especially the children have stood out with championships won at the state level. If it was ever believed that baseball had greater roots in the northern states or in the coastal states, well we can see that it does not.
Going to Omitlán de Juárez gives us the opportunity to visit many other attractive and interesting places, such as El Chico National Park, or the huge Estanzuela dam, where you can see the ravages of the drought that has hit that area . Also, a few kilometers from there are the evocative towns of Huasca, with its beautiful colonial parish, or San Miguel Regla, where you can fish, paddle and admire the famous waterfalls of the Prismas.
Thus, in Omitlán de Juárez a good number of interesting qualities of our culture, history and customs meet. Above all, it is a positive example for many regions of Mexico of what can be achieved in terms of quality of life, through a respectful relationship with the environment. Not for pleasure the Xochimilca poet Fernando Celada composed the Poem to Omitlán, which in one of its tenths says:
Omitlán full of loves, Omitlán full of life that is the promised land of all fighters. Here the flowers do not die, the stream does not tire of gazing at the always blue and transparent sky like a placid stream that is furrowing its ground.
IF YOU GO TO OMITLÁN DE JUÁREZ
Take highway no. 130 to Pachuca, Hidalgo. From there continue on road no. 105 short road Mexico-Tampico, and 20 km later you will find this population; the name of Juárez was added in honor of the worthy of the Americas.
Source: Unknown Mexico No. 266 / April 1999
