Xilitla, San Luis Potosí
Xilitla is a municipality (Spanish: municipio) and town in the state of San Luis Potosí, in the Huasteca region of Mexico. The town is located at 21°23′08″N 98°59′25″W / 21.38556°N 98.99028°W The municipality has an area of 415 square kilometres (160 sq mi) and had a population of 51,498 in 2010 of whom 6,576 lived in town of Xilitla.
Xilitla is known for its fertile mountains and springs which create panoramic landscapes throughout the municipality. Las Pozas gardens are a tourist attraction.
The rugged landscape has partly shielded Xilitla from industrialization, helping preserve its indigenous Huastec and Nahuatl cultures and traditional agrarian lifestyles. Most of Xilitla's residents live in over 100 rural villages of several dozen up to several hundred people. About 30,000 people in Xilitla live in an indigenous (Indian) households and about 20,000 of them speak an Indian language, principally Huastec. Most of the speakers of an Indian language also speak Spanish.
Augustine missionary activity in the Xilitla area began in 1537 and in 1553 construction began on the St. Augustine Convent. It was built to serve both a religious building and a fortress as the Chichimeca war was in progress and one of the hostile Chichimeca tribes, the Pame, lived to the northwest. The convent was attacked and burned by the Indians in 1569 and 1587 and largely abandoned by the Augustines. In the 17th century the Dominicans made another attempt to evangelize but were unable to overcome the hostility of the Indians. Finally, in the mid-18th century, Fray Junípero Serra and the Franciscans succeeded in establishing a permanent missionary presence in the region.
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