Plateros, Zacatecas

The site of Plateros was inhabited as early as 1566 when some miners lost their way while trying to find the nearby mining town of Fresnillo.

The miners found silver as they reconnoitered the area on Saint Dimitri's Day, and thus named the place San Demetrio.

In the nineteenth century interest in Santo Niño de Atocha spread through the mining region of Zacatecas.

By the early twentieth century, the Plateros Sanctuary's priests used this image to convert some Huichols to Christianity.

It draws 1.5 million visitors annually, behind the Basilica of Guadalupe in Mexico City and San Juan de los Lagos in the state of Jalisco.