Ixcateopan

History

The area was home to Coixca and Chontal peoples, and the settlement at the south end of today's town was a regional ceremonial center closely tied to cotton, a valuable good at the time. The name is usually read as temple of cotton, and its glyph in the Codex Mendoza shows a cotton flower above a stepped temple. The buildings known so far date from about 1350 to 1450.

Between 1440 and 1469 Moctezuma I made war on the towns of this region, and Ixcateopan ended up inside the tributary province of Tepecoacuilco, serving as a collection point for tribute and as a buffer against the Purépecha. Mexica soldiers and settlers moved in, and the once Chontal town became a mixed one. Tradition holds that Cuauhtémoc's mother was the daughter of the local ruler.

In 1949, documents kept by the family of the town doctor claimed that Cuauhtémoc's body had been carried here and buried beneath the church. The archaeologist Eulalia Guzmán excavated, and on September 26 bones were found under the altar. The state congress added de Cuauhtémoc to the town's name in 1950. Later reviews, the last by a commission in 1976, concluded there was no scientific basis for the identification: the bones came from several people and the documents were modern. Many residents still honor the site as the emperor's resting place.