Santa Clara del Cobre 3.59

Santa Clara del Cobre is a town and municipality located in the center of the state of Michoacán, Mexico, 18 km from Pátzcuaro and 79 km from the state capital of Morelia. While the official name of the municipality is Salvador Escalante, and the town is often marked as "Villa Escalante" or "Salvador Escalante" on maps, both entities are interchangeably called Santa Clara del Cobre. The town is part of the Pátzcuaro region of Michoacán, and ethnically dominated by the Purépecha people. These people have been working with copper since the pre-Hispanic era, and led to this town’s dominance in copper crafts over the colonial period (1519–1821) until well into the 19th century. Economic reverses led to the industry’s near-demise here until efforts in the 1940s and 1970s managed to bring the town’s work back into prominence.Santa Clara del Cobre was named a "Pueblo Mágico" in 2010.HistoryThis area, like the rest of the Lake Pátzcuaro region, was settled by the Purépecha people starting from the 12th century. In this area, the Purépecha founded villages such as Churucumeo, Cuirindicho, Andicua, Huitzila, Taboreca and Itziparátzico with the village closest to the modern town of Santa Clara del Cobre being Xacuaro. Of Mesoamerican cultures, only the Purépecha and the Zapotec peoples in Oaxaca were able to extensively use copper. This metal was rare among the Aztecs. The Purépecha were the most advanced in metallurgy, with the ability to fashion bells, decorations, jewelry and tools such as axes. They also knew how to inlay gold into copper objects. Burial grounds here have yielded copper items such as axes, masks and pincers. Part of the reason for this is that the area contained mines such as Inguarán and Opopeo which were known for abundance and which attracted the Spanish when they arrived.