San Juan Parangaricutiro

A stone church tower and the front of a colonial-era temple rise straight out of a field of black, jagged lava – almost all that is left of a town of nearly 1,900 people that disappeared under the flows of a volcano born in a cornfield. San Juan Parangaricutiro stood in the highlands of Michoacán until 1943–44, when the newly formed Parícutin volcano buried it; today the half-submerged church is one of the most striking images of how quickly a landscape can be rewritten.

The story began on 20 February 1943, when the ground opened in a field belonging to the farmer Dionisio Pulido near the village of Parícutin. Within a day a cone of cinders some fifty metres high had appeared, and the eruption went on for nine years, until 1952, leaving a scoria cone about 424 metres above the valley floor. It was the first time scientists could follow the complete life of a volcano of this kind, and researchers from the Smithsonian and the Mexican government documented it in thousands of photographs and samples. In late 1943 a new vent on the north side of the cone sent lava towards San Juan Parangaricutiro, and the town had to be abandoned for good; within months it was covered by lava and ash, with only the upper parts of its main church still showing. The slow advance of the flows meant that the evacuation cost no lives. Most of the inhabitants rebuilt their community on a former hacienda to the east, the town now known as Nuevo San Juan Parangaricutiro.

The ruins remain a place of pilgrimage as well as a landmark: candles and flowers are still placed at the old altar that survives among the lava blocks. The eruption also left its mark on Mexican art – painters such as Dr. Atl and Diego Rivera depicted or alluded to it – and on Hollywood, which filmed Captain from Castile with the erupting volcano as a backdrop. The surrounding country belongs to the Michoacán-Guanajuato volcanic field, part of the Trans-Mexican Volcanic Belt, with some 1,400 vents of which Parícutin is the youngest; around the lava, the land is a patchwork of forest, agave fields and avocado groves.

Getting there

The usual approach is from the Purépecha village of Angahuan, from which both the church ruins and the volcano can be seen; the volcano lies about 29 km west of the city of Uruapan. The nearest town in a straight line is Peribán de Ramos, about 18 km away. The nearest airport is Uruapan International Airport (UPN), about 27 km from the site.