Tenango de Arista

Hardly anyone calls it Tenango de Arista: to most people it is simply Tenango del Valle, the same name as the municipality it governs. The town sits at about 2,600 m at the southern end of the Toluca valley, 25 km south of the state capital, and had 24,612 people in 2020. It was born on the valley floor after the Spanish Conquest, when the Spaniards moved people down from the walled city on Tetépetl hill. Those ruins, now the Teotenango archaeological zone on the western edge of town, have their own Puebloteca page.

The long official name has a story behind it. The town became a villa in 1847, added "de Arista" in 1861 to honour Mariano Arista, president from 1851 to 1853, and in 1868 the state congress gave it the title Heroica because Ignacio López Rayón had used the Tenango hill as a camp during the War of Independence. It was raised to city status in 1994 and named a Pueblo con Encanto by the state in 2015, but it still feels like a farm town: the municipality is one of the State of Mexico's biggest potato producers.

The centre is a plaza with a bandstand, arcades and the municipal market. The parish church of the Assumption dates from the 16th century, a good example of provincial Baroque, and where the main east-west street runs into Tetépetl hill stands the Neoclassical Calvario church. Two Art Nouveau buildings survive from the Porfirio Díaz years: the municipal theatre inside the town hall, and the Benito Juárez primary school, which fills almost a whole block. The liberal lawmaker León Guzmán and the politician Narciso Bassols were both born here.

On Thursdays and Sundays the street market brings vendors in from across the municipality. Tenango is known for barbacoa, mutton consommé, cecina and rabbit, for pulque bread, and for two drinks of its own, piñitas and banderitas. Leatherwork, especially belts, bags and saddles, is a local trade. The biggest festival honours Padre Jesús in mid-January, with Moors-and-Christians and conchero dancers.