Coscomatepec

History

The name comes from the Nahuatl Cuezcomatepec, "hill of the granaries". The first settlement, Tetlalpa, was founded around 1325 by Totonac people who had come from the Puebla highlands. They named the snowy peak above them Poyautécatl, today the Pico de Orizaba. The Mexica later conquered the area under Moctezuma Ilhuicamina and imposed tribute, though they left local customs largely in place.

After the Conquest the people here paid tribute to the Spanish crown in cotton and cacao, and Franciscan friars gathered families who had fled into the hills. In 1597 Coscomatepec became the head town of its district and a new Spanish settlement, San Juan Coscomatepec, was laid out on a ridge west of the old village. Muleteering, ranching and trade made it prosper, and more families arrived from Mexico City and Orizaba in 1620. Landowners from Coscomatepec were among those who petitioned for the founding of nearby Córdoba.

The town joined the independence movement early. A local muleteer, Mariano Gómez, brought back the ideas he heard in Querétaro and was shot in 1811 for refusing to name fellow insurgents. In 1813 the insurgent general Nicolás Bravo and some 600 men withstood a 33-day royalist siege and broke out on October 4. In his honor the town became Coscomatepec de Bravo when it was made a city in 1903, and it received the title Heroica in 1980.