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Mexico Travel :: The Colonial States

State of Aguascalientes

Not much is known about pre-Conquest Aguascalientes. The area was occupied by Za-catecos and Chichimecs, and the city of Aguascalientes sits on a network of tunnels apparently used by an unknown tribe. After Beltran de Guzman's 1530 expedition to Zacatecas passed through Aguascalientes and killed many Indians, the native tribes withdrew to the mountains. The main road to the Zacatecas mines led through Aguascalientes, and all travelers had to contend with bands of marauding Indians. Finally, a series of presidios was built, one of which became the city of Aguascalientes (founded 1575). Because of disease and Indian raids, the latter was soon abandoned; it was resettled in 1596 and became part of the state of Zacatecas. Soon the first Franciscan missionaries arrived. During the 18th century silver was discovered, and since some of the mines were owned by Jesuits, they used the profits to finance their missions.

Gradually, Aguascalientes became an agricultural and industrial center, achieving statehood in 1835. In October 1914, a convention was held there to decide who would become the next president of Mexico. All the main revolutionary factions attended, fully armed, and the proceedings soon deteriorated into a violent squabble. On one side were the peasant revolutionary armies of Villa and Zapata, on the other were the bourgeois revolutionaries who supported Carranza and Obregon. When they finally decided on a candidate- Eulalio Gutierrez-Carranza rejected him and ordered his delegates to withdraw. This action led to five more years of bloody civil war all across Mexico. Nevertheless, some of the egalitarian measures first proposed at the Convention of Aguascalientes, such as land redistribution, became law in the following decades.

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