San Miguel Ajusco

San Miguel Ajusco is one of the original villages of Tlalpan and the first stop on the road to Cumbres del Ajusco National Park. It sits at about 2,900 m on the volcano's lower slopes, among cornfields and forest, and with 37,282 people at the 2020 census it is a good deal more than a hamlet. Old documents give 1531 as the year it was founded as a pueblo, under the Nahuatl name Axochco, usually translated as "place of flowers where water springs". Tradition says that after the conquest the Archangel Michael appeared to the villagers at least three times, and he has been their patron ever since.

The church of San Miguel Arcángel on Calle Miguel Hidalgo dates from 1707. In the 20th century the parishioners themselves built a new nave and a chapel to the Sacred Heart, and the sanctuary keeps an 18th-century wooden carving of St Michael. Santo Tomás Ajusco, the neighbouring village, is less than a kilometre away; in its church atrium stands El Cuartillo, a ceremonial stone chest that some archaeologists place at the Tequipa pyramid, a late Postclassic Tepanec platform now abandoned and overgrown, 1.6 km from the centre.

The village honours its saint twice a year, on May 8 and September 29. Both are long celebrations, with family meals, a fair with rides, fireworks castles, rodeos, street dances and chinelo and arriero dancers; the May 2026 fair ran until the 17th, with free banda concerts. The rest of the year San Miguel Ajusco is a starting point for cyclists, since the bike path on the old Cuernavaca railway line sets out from here across farmland with the volcano behind. For anyone heading up to the Pico del Águila and the high part of the park, this is where you swap the bus for a local taxi.