Tlahuelilpan

Tlaualilpan, "where the land is watered", was the original Nahuatl form; colonial papers write it Tlahuelilpa and the 16th-century titles of the San Servando hacienda Tlagualilpan. The name fits: the town sits on a Valle del Mezquital plain at 2,043 metres, laced with irrigation canals, growing maize, beans, alfalfa, oats and green chiles. Toltecs, Chichimecs, Mexica and Otomí all passed through before the Spanish arrived around 1560. By the late 19th century a hacienda controlled land now in Tula, Atitalaquia, Tlaxcoapan, Tezontepec and Mixquiahuala; after the Revolution it was broken up into ejidos. Tlahuelilpan belonged to Tlaxcoapan until January 1970, when the state congress made it a municipality. In 2020 the town had 8,657 residents.

Its treasure is the Franciscan complex. The chapel of the Purísima Concepción is attributed to the friars who settled in Tula in the 16th century, with alterations in 1795 according to an inscription on one of its bells. Signed canvases have survived inside: a Crucifixion by Rodríguez Juárez dated 1711, a Virgin of Covadonga signed by Arellano in 1614 and a Virgin of Guadalupe by the Augustinian Miguel de Herrera from 1729. South of the church are remains of a single-storey cloister: six round arches and three flattened ones on short monolithic Ionic columns, some fluted and carved with animal motifs that show an indigenous hand.

Tuesday is market day, and the big feast is that of St Francis of Assisi, with processions that draw the neighbouring villages. Otomí artisans make baskets, ayate cloths, ixtle and palm weaving, jugs and pots; on the table there is mutton barbacoa, white maguey worms and chinicuiles. The town's name is also tied to 18 January 2019, when an illegal tap on a Pemex fuel pipeline exploded in an alfalfa field at San Primitivo, on Tlaxcoapan land, killing 137 people; every anniversary relatives hold a mass at the site, where they have built small chapels.