San Martín Obispo

On the eastern side of Donato Guerra, along the road that drops from El Monumento toward Valle de Bravo, San Martín Obispo is one of the villages where Mazahua heritage is still part of daily life. The municipal encyclopedia lists it first among the communities that keep the Mazahua language, customs and food, together with San Simón de la Laguna, San Antonio de la Laguna and San Francisco Mihualtepec; the municipality has about 10,000 Mazahua speakers. The village is named after its patron, Saint Martin of Tours, and has around 1,570 residents.

Its past is tied to Malacatepec, the old name of Donato Guerra. This was Mazahua land, conquered by the Mexica between 1474 and 1477 and evangelised by Franciscans working out of the parish of La Asunción, begun around 1548. When the viceroy split the region into two congregations in 1604, San Martín Obispo was one of the villages attached to La Asunción, and its church is counted among the municipality's colonial-heritage buildings. In January 1927, during the Cristero War, rebels took refuge in these hills, and the Cristero leader Federico Fábila was executed by firing squad in San Martín Obispo.

Today the village has a state health clinic and a public library. Its feast falls on 11 November, just after the Day of the Dead, which Mazahua communities here mark by decorating cemeteries and churches and setting out zende, sambumbia, pulque and fruit liqueurs. To the west rise the Sierra de las Mil Cumbres and Cerro Pelón, 3,040 m, where monarch butterflies spend the winter; visitors climb to them from the El Capulín sanctuary.