Cañada de la Virgen
watercolour and crayon sketch
©2025 Charlene Brown
My daughter and I were in San Miguel de Allende last week enjoying a wonderful Road Scholar trip. One day we visited a nearby archaeological site, Cañada de la Virgen. One of the northernmost step pyramid sites in Mexico, it is situated on the MesoAmerican border north of which people were more nomadic and did not build such enormous structures.
The original name of this Otomi celestial and moonrise-aligned ritual and ceremonial location, dating from around 300 CE, is unknown. The Spaniards renamed the (by then abandoned) site Cañada (canyon) de la Virgen when they arrived in about 1540 CE. The virgin to whom the name refers is the Virgin of Guadalupe ̶ Mary, the mother of Jesus ̶ who appeared to a man in Mexico in 1531.
