Ozumba

Ozumba de Alzate, the seat of Ozumba municipality, lies in the southeast of the State of Mexico on the lower slopes of Popocatépetl, at about 2,340 m. It had 18,580 residents in 2020. The Nahuatl name is usually read as "place of little caves". "De Alzate" was added in 1879, when the town became a villa, to honour José Antonio Alzate, born here in 1737, a scientist who observed the transit of Venus and was the only member from New Spain of the Paris Academy of Sciences. The state named it a Pueblo con Encanto in 2013, and it belongs to the Ruta de los Volcanes along with Chalco, Tlalmanalco and Amecameca.

The town runs on its market, probably pre-Hispanic in origin and recorded since the 17th century. On Tuesdays and Fridays buyers come from the southeast of the state, eastern Morelos, villages in Puebla and Mexico City; grain, seed and livestock are sold wholesale alongside clothes and food. In the rainy season older women sell dozens of kinds of wild mushrooms outside the market building, and the food stalls are all about barbacoa and moronga blood sausage.

Across from the market stands the parish church of the Immaculate Conception, which began as a 16th-century Franciscan friary. Its porch and murals survive from that time: Cortés greeting the first twelve Franciscans, the child martyrs of Tlaxcala, and an unusual scene of the friars flogging Cortés. The church was rebuilt from 1696 and the tower dates from 1717; inside are gilded altarpieces with twisted Solomonic columns, paintings by Juan Correa and a high choir of carved wood, one of the few left in Mexico. Nearby are the chapel of San Francisco de Asís with an 18th-century altarpiece, the José Antonio Alzate cultural centre and the old Interoceanic Railway station of 1895.

Just south, in San Vicente Chimalhuacán, the former Dominican friary keeps the 1542 baptismal font where Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz was baptised, and the church of San Vicente Ferrer has a small museum of pre-Hispanic finds. The town's big feast is the Immaculate Conception, 7 to 13 December, with chinelo dancers, the Doce Pares de Francia, Aztec dancers and fireworks towers built by local pyrotechnicians.