Santiago de Querétaro (Spanish pronunciation: [sanˈtjaɣo ðe keˈɾetaɾo]; Otomi: Dähnini Maxei), most commonly known as Querétaro, is the capital and largest city of the state of Querétaro, located in central Mexico. It is part of the macroregion of Bajío.[4] It is 213 kilometers (132 mi) northwest of Mexico City, 63 kilometers (39 mi) southeast of San Miguel de Allende and 200 kilometers (120 mi) south of San Luis Potosí.[5] It is also the seat of the municipality of Querétaro, divided into seven boroughs. In 1996, the historic center of Querétaro was declared a World Heritage Site by UNESCO.
The city is a strong business and economic center[4][6][7] and a vigorous service center that is experiencing an ongoing social and economic revitalization. All this has resulted in high levels of migration from other parts of Mexico.[8][9]
Querétaro has seen outstanding industrial and economic development since the mid-1990s. The Querétaro metropolitan area has the second highest per capita GDP among Mexico's metropolitan areas with US$20,000 after Monterrey. The city is the fastest-growing in the country, basing its economy on IT and data centers, logistics services, aircraft manufacturing and maintenance, call centers, the automotive and machinery industries, and the production of chemicals and food products. The region of Querétaro has a rapidly growing vineyards agriculture and hosts the famous wine producer from Spain Freixenet. Wine production in the state of Querétaro is now the second largest in Mexico after that of the Baja California region.
Major international corporations in the aerospace, electronics, automotive, chemical, food, and financial areas have their national headquarters in Querétaro.
In the Otomi language, it is referred to as "Maxei" or "Ndamaxei", which means ball game and the grand ball game respectively. In the Mendocino Codex the town is called Tlaschco or Tlaxco, from the Nahuatl word for ball game. However, Querétaro most likely comes from k'eri ireta rho, meaning place of the great people, especially since during Aztec times about 15,000 people lived here. Querétaro has an Aztec glyph to represent it as it was a tributary province. In 1655, it received a coat of arms from the Spanish Crown.[8]
The word Querétaro was voted by 33,000 participants as "the most beautiful word in the Spanish language", before being approved by the Instituto Cervantes.[10][11] In Pre-Columbian terminology, Querétaro literally means "the island of the blue salamanders."[12] Nevertheless, other scholars suggest that it can mean "place of the reptiles" or "place of the giant rocks."[13]
The area was settled around AD 200 by Mesoamerican groups moving north, and archeological sites here show Teotihuacan influences. From the Classic Period, there were two population centers in this area called Toluquilla and Las Ranas. The mountain now known as El Cerrito was a ceremonial center, but was later abandoned for unknown reasons.[8]In the later pre-Hispanic period, the area was populated by the Otomi, who had become sedentary urban dwellers with sophisticated politics by the time of the Aztec Empire, who referred to them as the Tlacetilli Otomi or "Otomi Nation/State" . This area was under control of the Otomi dominion of Xilotepeque in the 1440s, which in turn was subject to the Aztec Empire of Mexihco-Tenochtitlan. Under the reign of Ahuizotl in the late 15th century, the Aztecs administered the area directly, considering it a bulwark against the Chichimeca lands to the north.[8] The Otomi were the most populous ethnicity in Xilotepec although there were other groups, primarily Chichimeca as well. These two groups are still found here today. During the pre-Hispanic and colonial times, the Otomi were organized into familial clan like groups with defined territories, living in stone, wood or adobe dwellings. They were sedentary farmers, who fought, but unlike the Aztecs, did not make warfare a large part of their culture.[8]
The Spanish city of Santiago de Querétaro was founded on 25 July 1531, when Spaniard Hernán Pérez Bocanegra y Córdoba arrived with the allied Otomi leader Conín (later named Hernando de Tapia) who was the administrative head of the Otomi peoples living in Aztec controlled territory.[5] On this date, the Spanish and their Nahuan allies were battling the local insurgent Otomi and Chichimecas at a hill now known as Sangremal and which was called Ynlotepeque and considered sacred in pre-Hispanic times. Chronicles of this event, such as that written by Friar Isidro Félix de Espinoza, state that the Chichimeca were at the point of winning when a total eclipse of the sun occurred. This supposedly scared the Chichimeca and the Spanish claimed to have seen an image of Saint James (the patron saint of Spain) riding a white horse carrying a rose-colored cross. This event caused the Chichimeca to surrender.[8] This event is why the city is called Santiago (Saint James) de Querétaro, with James as patron saint.[5][14] A stone cross imitating the one the Spanish supposedly saw was erected on the hill, which later was accompanied by a church and monastery.[5]
Spanish dominion, however, grew gradually, and was definitively not won through just a single battle. In the 1520s, the Otomis and many Chichimecas of what is now southern Querétaro and northern Mexico State allied with Hernán Cortés under the control of the lord of Xilotepeque, who still maintained a certain amount of control of the old dominion. The first Spanish arrived between 1526 and 1529, headed by Hernán Pérez de Bocanegra.[8] Bocanegra at first tried non-violent means of subduing the area and founding a Spanish city.[15] However, the initial attempts to establish the city of Querétaro were repelled by the locals, forcing Bocanegra south and establishing the cities of Huimilpan and Acámbaro.
Bocanegra continued negotiating with the lord of Xilotepeque, Conín. The lord's cooperation was gained, for which he was eventually credited for bringing an end to the Spanish-Chichime/Otomi conflict and was made the Spanish governor of the area. However, most of Querétaro's early colonial history was marked by skirmishes between the remaining Chichimeca insurgency and the Spanish authorities, with one of the first being over the establishment of encomiendas.[8] Conín separated the indigenous and Spanish residents of the new city, with the indigenous on and around Sangremal hill and the Spanish around where the current historic center is.[8] The Spanish part of the city was laid out by D. Juan Sanchez de Alaniz,[5] and the indigenous section was laid out in the traditional Otomi manner. The first city council convened in 1535, and the settlement was named a Pueblo de Indios (Indian Village) in 1537, ending the encomiendas.[8] During this time, the Franciscans arrived for missionary work, who were later joined by the Jesuits, the Augustinians and other who built monasteries such as the Monastery of San Francisco, Lima and the Monastery of Santa Cruz.[15]
