Tutotepec

Tutotepec is not the seat of San Bartolo Tutotepec, though it belongs to that municipality: the seat lies about 8 km away and far lower (1,016 m, 2,764 people), while this village stands at 1,994 metres and had 164 residents in 55 homes in 2020. The name is Nahuatl, toto-tepec, "place of birds". The Señorío de Tutotepec was settled up here, with a view over the whole region.

Its monument is the convent of Santa María Magdalena, regarded as the oldest monastery in the Otomí-Tepehua region. The Augustinians founded it under the jurisdiction of the convent at Atotonilco el Grande, with Fray Alonso de Borja as commissioner. The first church was dedicated to the Santos Reyes and later changed its dedication; it was finished in 1620 and several fires have swept through it. The present church has a single nave with a polygonal apse, a carved-stone portal with two pairs of fluted columns and a one-storey bell tower. The cloister arcade was partly destroyed when the priest's house was built against it, and the churchyard is still used as a cemetery. The area saw an Otomí uprising between 1766 and 1769.

The most singular thing is its bells, which are dressed in clothing and held to be miraculous. Every two years, or whenever funds allow, the Santa Campana ritual takes place in May: men clean the bell and change its clothes, traditional Otomí garments made by the women; people leave offerings (kitchen utensils, toys), and food is buried in clay pots to "feed the earth". It blends pre-Hispanic and Catholic elements.