Pinal de Amoles

Pinal de Amoles is a town and municipality located in the north of the state of Querétaro in central Mexico. It is part of the Sierra Gorda region which stretches over northern Querétaro into Guanajuato, Hidalgo and San Luis Potosí, with 88% of the municipality’s land part of the Sierra Gorda Biosphere Reserve, declared in 1997. The town began is a mining camp in the 17th century and the municipality contains large areas of forests and the highest peaks in the region, which separate the wetter areas of the north and east of the Sierra Gorda from the drier areas of the south and west. Most mining in the area has disappeared and the municipality is one of the poorest in Mexico, despite recent efforts to promote ecotourism and restart mining. This has led a large number of residents to migrate out to larger cities in Mexico and to the United States to work, sending remittances back home. These remittances now overshadow the locally generated economy.