Mazapil is a
municipality
A municipality is usually a single administrative division having corporate status and powers of self-government or jurisdiction as granted by national and regional laws to which it is subordinate.
The term ''municipality'' may also mean the go ...
in the
Mexican state of
Zacatecas
, image_map = Zacatecas in Mexico (location map scheme).svg
, map_caption = State of Zacatecas within Mexico
, coordinates =
, coor_pinpoint =
, coordinates_footnotes =
, subdivision_type ...
and the state's largest municipality by area. The
Peñasquito mine The Peñasquito Polymetallic Mine is the fifth largest silver mine in the world and the second largest in Mexico. It is located in north-eastern corner of the State of Zacatecas and is wholly owned by Newmont Goldcorp. It is an open pit operation w ...
, Mexico's largest gold mine, is located in this sparsely populated municipality.
Geography
The municipality of Mazapil is located in northern Zacatecas where it borders three other Mexican states. The Zacatecan municipalities it borders are
Melchor Ocampo
Melchor Ocampo (5 January 1814 – 3 June 1861) was a Mexican lawyer, scientist, and politician. A mestizo and a radical liberal, he was fiercely anticlerical, perhaps an atheist, and his early writings against the Catholic Church in Mexico gain ...
to the north,
General Francisco R. Murguía to the west,
Villa de Cos to the south and
Concepción del Oro
Concepción del Oro is the largest city and the seat of the Concepción del Oro Municipality in the Mexican state of Zacatecas
, image_map = Zacatecas in Mexico (location map scheme).svg
, map_caption = State of Zac ...
to the east. Mazapil also borders the municipalities of
Catorce,
Santo Domingo
, total_type = Total
, population_density_km2 = auto
, timezone = AST (UTC −4)
, area_code_type = Area codes
, area_code = 809, 829, 849
, postal_code_type = Postal codes
, postal_code = 10100–10699 (Distrito Nacional)
, websi ...
and
Vanegas
Vanegas is a town and municipality in the Mexican state of San Luis Potosí in central Mexico
Mexico (Spanish: México), officially the United Mexican States, is a country in the southern portion of North America. It is bordered to the n ...
, to the east, all part of
San Luis Potosí
San Luis Potosí (), officially the Free and Sovereign State of San Luis Potosí ( es, Estado Libre y Soberano de San Luis Potosí), is one of the 32 states which compose the Federal Entities of Mexico. It is divided in 58 municipalities and i ...
;
San Juan de Guadalupe
San Juan de Guadalupe is a city and seat of the municipality of San Juan de Guadalupe, in the state of Durango, north-western Mexico
Mexico (Spanish language, Spanish: México), officially the United Mexican States, is a List of sovereign ...
in the state of
Durango
Durango (), officially named Estado Libre y Soberano de Durango ( en, Free and Sovereign State of Durango; Tepehuán: ''Korian''; Nahuatl: ''Tepēhuahcān''), is one of the 31 states which make up the 32 Federal Entities of Mexico, situated in ...
to the west; and
Saltillo
Saltillo () is the capital and largest city of the northeastern Mexican state of Coahuila and is also the municipal seat of the municipality of the same name. Mexico City, Monterrey, and Saltillo are all connected by a major railroad and highwa ...
and
Viesca
Viesca () is a town and seat of the surrounding municipality of the same name, located in the northern Mexican state of Coahuila. Named after the third governor of Coahuila and Texas, José María Viesca, Viesca had a population of 19,328 ...
to the north, both in
Coahuila
Coahuila (), formally Coahuila de Zaragoza (), officially the Free and Sovereign State of Coahuila de Zaragoza ( es, Estado Libre y Soberano de Coahuila de Zaragoza), is one of the 32 states of Mexico.
Coahuila borders the Mexican states of N ...
.
[ Mazapil is Zacatecas's largest and Mexico's twelfth largest municipality, covering an area of ][ and comprising 16.1% of the state's area.][
Mazapil is situated in the ]Chihuahuan Desert
The Chihuahuan Desert ( es, Desierto de Chihuahua, ) is a desert ecoregion designation covering parts of northern Mexico and the southwestern United States. It occupies much of far West Texas, the middle to lower Rio Grande Valley and the lower P ...
and has an elevation range between .Matorral
300px, Springtime in Chilean matorral a few kilometers north of Santiago along the Pan-American Highway
Matorral is a Spanish language, Spanish word, along with ''tomillares'', for shrubland, thicket or bushes. It is used in naming and describin ...
vegetation predominates in the mostly arid and semi-arid climate, although open pinyon-juniper woodlands occur in the more elevated regions with their more temperate and partially sub-humid climates.[
]
History
Mazapil's name derives from the Nahuatl
Nahuatl (; ), Aztec, or Mexicano is a language or, by some definitions, a group of languages of the Uto-Aztecan language family. Varieties of Nahuatl are spoken by about Nahua peoples, most of whom live mainly in Central Mexico and have smaller ...
place name ''Mazatlpilli'', itself derived from ''mazatl'' "deer" and ''pilli'' "small".Chichimeca
Chichimeca () is the name that the Nahua peoples of Mexico generically applied to nomadic and semi-nomadic peoples who were established in present-day Bajio region of Mexico. Chichimeca carried the meaning as the Roman term "barbarian" that des ...
peoples known to the Spaniards as Guachichil
The Guachichil, Cuauchichil, or Quauhchichitl, are an Indigenous people of Mexico. Pre-contact, they occupied the most extensive territory of all the indigenous Chichimeca Nations tribes in pre-Columbian Central Mexico.
The Guachichiles roamed t ...
es. Francisco de Ibarra
Francisco de Ibarra (1539 –June 3, 1575) was a Spanish- Basque explorer, founder of the city of Durango, and governor of the Spanish province of Nueva Vizcaya, in present-day Durango and Chihuahua.
Biography
Francisco de Ibarra was born a ...
reached the area in 1554. In 1562, Pedro de Ahumada y Samano reported finding the valley inhabited by 6000 native warriors armed with bows and arrows. Silver mines were first established in the valley in the late 1560s.meteorite
A meteorite is a solid piece of debris from an object, such as a comet, asteroid, or meteoroid, that originates in outer space and survives its passage through the atmosphere to reach the surface of a planet or Natural satellite, moon. When the ...
in the area during the Andromedids
The Andromedids meteor shower is associated with Biela's Comet, the showers occurring as Earth passes through old streams left by the comet's tail. The comet was observed to have broken up by 1846; further drift of the pieces by 1852 suggested th ...
meteor shower
A meteor shower is a celestial event in which a number of meteors are observed to radiate, or originate, from one point in the night sky. These meteors are caused by streams of cosmic debris called meteoroids entering Earth's atmosphere at extre ...
attracted scientific attention, although a cometary origin for the meteorite is now considered unlikely and the timing of its fall has been ascribed to coincidence.
In 1907 Gustavo A. Madero
Gustavo Adolfo Madero González (16 January 187518 February 1913), born in Parras de la Fuente, Coahuila, Mexico, was a participant in the Mexican Revolution against Porfirio Díaz along with other members of his wealthy family. He was als ...
set up four factories in the municipality for the extraction of guayule rubber.[ Guayule from the Mazapil region was also exported to the US for rubber production during ]World War II
World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposin ...
.[
]
Administration
Mazapil's municipal government comprises a president, secretary, councillor (Spanish
Spanish might refer to:
* Items from or related to Spain:
**Spaniards are a nation and ethnic group indigenous to Spain
**Spanish language, spoken in Spain and many Latin American countries
**Spanish cuisine
Other places
* Spanish, Ontario, Can ...
: ''síndico''), and six trustees (''regidores'').[ The current president of the municipality is Gregorio Macías Zúñiga.][
]
Demographics
In the 2010 Mexican Census, the municipality of Mazapil recorded a population of 17,813 inhabitants living in 4275 households.[
There are 175 localities in the municipality,][ of which only the municipal seat, also called Mazapil, is classified as urban. Located in the northeast corner of the municipality, it recorded a population of 794 inhabitants in the 2010 Census.][
]
Economy
The main economic activities in Mazapil are mining and agriculture.[
In 2015, the municipality produced of gold, of silver, 15,563 tonnes of copper, 85,334 tonnes of lead and 207,844 tonnes of zinc. ]Goldcorp
Goldcorp Inc. was a gold production company headquartered in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. The company employed about 15,800 people worldwide, engaged in gold mining and related activities including exploration, extraction, processing and ...
's Peñasquito gold mine, Mexico's largest, is located in Mazapil. Local communities have protested the mine's activities, citing water overuse and contamination, creation of health problems for locals, and inadequate compensation for workers and landowners.
The main crops in Mazapil are corn and beans. Ixtle
Ixtle, also known by the trade name Tampico fiber, is a stiff plant fiber obtained from a number of Mexican plants, chiefly species of ''Agave'' and ''Yucca''. The principal source is ''Agave lechuguilla'', the dominant ''Agave'' species in the C ...
fiber and candelilla wax
Candelilla wax is a wax derived from the leaves of the small Candelilla shrub native to northern Mexico and the southwestern United States, '' Euphorbia antisyphilitica'', from the family ''Euphorbiaceae''. It is yellowish-brown, hard, brittle, a ...
are also produced.
References
{{Zacatecas
Municipalities of Zacatecas
1825 establishments in Mexico
States and territories established in 1825