Mexican Horology

Colonial-era Mexico (New Spain) received mechanical clocks and watches chiefly as imports from Spain and, via the Manila Galleon trade, from other regions, for cathedral, civic and elite domestic use from the sixteenth century onward, without developing a large indigenous clockmaking manufacturing trade of its own during the colonial period; surviving early tower and church clocks in Mexican cathedrals are generally of Spanish or other European origin or manufacture rather than locally made.

Independent Mexico in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries continued to rely substantially on imported watches (chiefly Swiss and American) for personal timekeeping, though the city of Zacatlán, Puebla, developed a distinctive regional artisanal clockmaking tradition from the late nineteenth century onward, most closely associated with the Centella family workshop and, in the twentieth century, the establishment of a clock museum and continued small-scale artisanal clock manufacture in the town.

Documentation of Mexican horology in general English-language horological literature is limited relative to the major European and American traditions covered elsewhere in this encyclopedia, and this entry focuses on the comparatively well-attested Zacatlán artisanal tradition rather than asserting a broader named-maker history not supported by the sources consulted.