Cacalomacán

Cacalomacán, Nahuatl for the place where crows are caught by hand, lies about 7 km south-west of Toluca and is now delegation number 22 of the municipality: 13,796 people in 2020 (12,001 in 2010), spread over nine barrios and several newer colonias. Its southern edge touches the Nevado de Toluca. A Matlatzinca settlement paid tribute to the Mexica; under the Spanish it was a república de indios, and in the 1500s haciendas took shape around it: San Antonio Abajo, La Garcesa and San Miguel Zacango. After the Revolution those estates lost land to the ejido, 277 ha from San Antonio Abajo in 1925 and another 606 in 1929.

The centre keeps vernacular architecture and a cluster of churches. The parish of the Asunción dates from the 18th century; San Francisco de Asís chapel stands in its atrium, and facing it is the Jesús Nazareno chapel, dated 1837, with neoclassical touches. There is also a cemetery chapel, a Guadalupe chapel and a humilladero at the southern end of Hidalgo street. Some civil buildings, the delegation among them, echo the portales of Toluca.

The other reason to come is the Parque Ecológico Ejidal de Cacalomacán: 240 hectares inside the Nevado de Toluca national park, roughly 2,800 to 3,250 m. The ejido pushed for it from 2003, on a volcanic cone reforested in the 1980s; a 2015 study logged 85 vertebrate species, 24 endemic to Mexico. Visitors hike, cycle, birdwatch and camp.