Tlatlaya

Few municipal seats in the State of Mexico are this small: Tlatlaya had 595 residents in 2020, though it heads a municipality of 31,762 people spread over 165 localities, the largest being San Pedro Limón. It sits in the far southwest of the state, right against Guerrero, at about 1,800 m. The Nahuatl name is usually read as "place of fire-land" or "hot country", yet the seat itself is cool; the heat belongs to the low country further down.

Before the Conquest this was a frontier between the Matlatzinca and the Mexica, raided by the Tarascans. Missionaries arrived in 1526 at El Veladero, Juan Saucedo took the encomienda a year later and the Spanish opened mines around 1532. Tlatlaya split from Amatepec on 21 September 1849 and became a free municipality on 17 September 1919; Zapatista fighting was so intense that by 1914 there were no town authorities left.

A visit is short: the parish of Santiago Apóstol, the main square with its Antigua Pila monument (1994) and the town hall built in 1972–75. Farms across the municipality grow maize, beans, squash, sesame and sugarcane for piloncillo, plus oranges, bananas and papaya, and there are remains of the Mezcala culture at Las Parotas.