San José de los Laureles

The village sits on a spur of land hemmed in by sheer rock walls at 1,866 metres, roughly 200 metres higher than Tlayacapan, the town it answers to. Archaeologist Raúl Francisco González Quezada, who leads work at the El Tlatoani site, notes that residents now remember its old name, Tlalmimilulpan, only faintly, and that early in the colonial period it may have been called Izquitepetl, "hill of toasted maize", after the red volcanic-rock hill that rises over it, Tezontlala. People today know it by the saint of its chapel, Joseph of Nazareth, the only chapel in Tlayacapan dedicated to him.

What sets the place apart lies in its fields and cliff faces rather than on its main street. Survey work in 2015 recorded ten sites with rock paintings and seven with carved petroglyphs, one of them even on a house wall. Some signs are red and date to the Epiclassic period (AD 600 to 900); others are white, one of them Postclassic (1200 to 1521). One panel carves a small model of a staircase with a balustrade. The surrounding hills, Tonantzin, Ayotzin, Tezontlala, El Sombrerito and Cihuapapalotzin, each have a name and a story in local oral tradition.

The 2020 census counted 1,662 residents, up from 1,377 in 2010. Religious life runs through delegates and mayordomos who organise each year's processions and welcome the "promesas", visiting delegations from other villages, with flowers, candles and prayers. On 15 August the Virgin of the Assumption procession sets out: Mass around five in the afternoon, a loop around the church with copal smoke, chopped flower petals and a brass band, and a dance in the churchyard that night.