Palpan de Baranda

Palpan de Baranda sits at 1,611 metres on a plateau in the northwest corner of Morelos, so close to the State of Mexico line that two neighbouring hamlets, Casa Blanca and La Lagunita, already belong to Malinalco and Ocuilan. The 2020 census counted 913 people. Life here follows the fields: maize, sorghum and beans, cattle, and from the milk come cheese and cream. On the way in you pass the agave plots that feed the mezcal distilled in the village.

The name has several Nahuatl readings: "on the black clay", "on the sand" or "place of butterflies". The documented story begins in 1635, when the community appears as a barrio of Malinalco, Santa Cruz, under the name Pilpan, glossed as "children from outside". When Morelos became a state in 1869, Miacatlán was made a municipality with Coatetelco and Palpan de Barandas among its settlements. A second story starts here too: in the 1930s some thirty Palpan ejido members were given land high in Temixco and founded the colony of Alta Palmira, where they ended up growing roses for the national market.

The parish of the Purísima Concepción sets the calendar. Its feast falls on the weekend before Ash Wednesday, with masses, fairground rides and bullfights. Local food includes camarones, a sweet bread baked in the village, and Palpan plums, which ripen in August and September and are also eaten candied. Women's embroidery on clothing and household linens is another local craft. The climate is temperate, with heavy rain from June to September, and in the dry forest around the village opossums, armadillos, coyotes and ringtails still turn up, mostly at night.