The king of Parangaricutirimícuaro wants to de-parangaricutirimicuarize, he who de-parangaricutirimicuarizes him will be a good de-parangaricutirimicuarizer. That is the tongue twister that most of the Mexican population learned in early childhood, but few of them learned to pronounce it correctly beyond adulthood. It is also a real place in Michoacán, Mexico, which was struck by a terrible natural disaster: the eruption of the volcano that wiped out its people.
San Juan Parangaricutiro was a Purepecha village on the slopes of the Paricutín volcano. On February 20, 1943, the earth trembled and the ground opened up to the imminent eruption of Paricutín, which seemed to rise within the bowels of the earth, covering the town with incandescent rocks, sulfur and lava. The few people who survived made it by miracle, but lost almost all of their livestock and material possessions: the town was covered with lava, which spread for 10 kilometers around the volcano.
#Fact: The eruption of the Paricutín volcano was violent, but the lava was moving relatively slowly, so it did not cause any deaths.
The following year, the town was completely buried. The only thing that remained of the villages of El Paricutín and San Juan Parangaricutiro was the church of the Señor de los Milagros, appropriately named for those who managed to save themselves in the midst of the inferno that struck their home. This temple is the only thing that remains of the old town of San Juan and, even today, it can be visited “embedded” in the volcanic rock, which remained as a testimony of the birth of Paricutín.
The history of San Juan Parangaricutiro is compared to Pompeii’s, which was buried after the eruption of the Vesuvius volcano in the 79. Fortunately, in Michoacán almost all the inhabitants were saved, who were later moved to the Ex Hacienda de los Conejos, today known as San Juan Nuevo Parangaricutiro, 33 kilometers away from the old town. That is the reason why the place is also known as “The town that refused to die.”
This story was originally published in Spanish by Daniela Bosch in Cultura Colectiva
