Its metropolitan area, with a population of 1,,, was the 17th most populous metropolitan area in Mexico. The genuine Aztec name of the Nahuatl language is Colhuacan or Culhuacan , which is from colhua or culhua and can , which is a place, and its meaning varies according to different historians: "snake place", "crooked hill" or "where walkers twist the path".
The most accepted theory is "place of the colhuas", or "inhabited by the colhua tribe", and the most frequent meaning is "place of worshiping the god Coltzin".
The Aztecs built it during their pilgrimage. Upon their arrival in the 16th century, the Spanish found the existence of farmhouses organized in indigenous nations by the tribe of the Tahues , which brought together a group of people of the same origin and language who had a common tradition. In , during the conservative government of the French Intervention , prefectures were installed, and the Municipalities Law was decreed that divided the Districts into City Councils.
This remained the case until when Badiraguato returned to being a district with the limits that previously corresponded to it. Municipalities were established by law in as a new form of internal government. However, this law did not come into force until , when political directories were suppressed, causing the districts to become free municipalities. The completion of the Pan-American Highway and the regional airport in the s accelerated the expansion of workable distribution infrastructure for the enterprising few families that would later come to dominate the international drug cartels along Mexico's Pacific Northwest.
Its shape is square with rounded corners ending in a point. The entire face of the shield is covered with a carmine color. In the center is a hieroglyph representing a hill with a human head inclined forward. Across the face of the shield, there are symbols of water referring to rivers. In the central part and towards the left side, a cross is followed by a path on which footprints can be observed that end in a small construction.
