San Francisco de Asis

It was founded by Friar Alonso de la Oliva in 1604 and is the second oldest town in the state of Chihuahua after Santa Bárbara. The temple of San Francisco de Asís in San Francisco de Conchos was built as a chapel of the Royal Presidio of San Francisco de Conchos in the second half of the 17th century.

Friar Alonso de la Oliva was a young missionary who carried out these expeditions in search of indigenous villages to bring the gospel to their inhabitants; he was custodian of the San Bartolomé Valley and worked among the indigenous people of the Conchos River from the late 16th century, but he did not found the mission of San Francisco, which was the first dedicated to the Conchos, until 1604.

In 1645 there was an uprising in which two missionaries were killed. Around 1650, the Bishop of Durango secularized the mission, but we have no further information about this change, and the friars returned in the 1670s and remained until 1769, when secularization became definitive. Licenciado López de Sierra y Osorio, governor of Nueva Vizcaya, ordered it to be repopulated in 1677 under its current name.

The temple of San Francisco de Conchos has a long and narrow nave, typical of the vast majority of the constructions described here, as the wooden beam roofs did not allow for very wide spaces. The apse, often octagonal in shape and separated from the nave by an arch, is also common. In churches, this arch is called 'triumphal' as it celebrates Christ's victory over death, which is remembered in the liturgy. It also serves, along with the octagonal shape of the apse, to draw attention to the most sacred space, where the altar is located. In this case, it is interesting to note that the apse’s octagonal shape is not noticeable from the outside, as it is enclosed within thick walls that give the church a rectangular appearance externally. Perhaps this detail was intended to convey the idea of strength, further supported by the large expanses of walls, scarcely interrupted by a few small windows.

The proportions of the elements and the sober, balanced composition are typical of the architectural language disseminated in 16th-century European treatises, which greatly influenced our colonial architecture.

It is linked to the national history and is a Historic Monument under the code 080580010001 by determination of the Federal Law on Archaeological, Artistic, and Historic Monuments and Zones.