Narciso Mendoza

The name of this village remembers a boy. Narciso Mendoza was born in Cuautla in 1800 and on 5 March 1812, during the siege of the city, he was about twelve and belonged to the Compañía de Emulantes, the children's unit Morelos organised. When Calleja's forces attacked the plaza de San Diego, defended by Hermenegildo Galeana, a false report of defeat caused panic; Narciso, already wounded in the arm by a royalist dragoon, lit a loaded cannon and its blast pushed the attackers back. Morelos promoted him to alférez, and after Independence he reached lieutenant colonel.

The locality that now carries his name is small and grew quickly: 269 people in 1980, 776 in 1990, 1,138 in 2000, 1,612 in 2010 and 1,988 in 2020. It lies at about 1,342 metres, with a semi-arid climate: 20.9 °C average and about 1,099 mm of rain a year. About 40 percent of residents were born outside Morelos.

Right beside it are Ampliación Narciso Mendoza (half a kilometre west), Peña Flores or Palo Verde, with more than 4,400 people (1 km east), and Cocoyoc, with over 10,000, under 2 km to the north-west. Cocoyoc has the Hacienda Cocoyoc, now a hotel, and about 3 km north is the IMSS Centro Vacacional Oaxtepec.

The village itself has no sights; its value to a traveller is the name and the position, roughly halfway between Cuautla and Tlayacapan.