Tetelcingo

Tetelcingo is a Nahua community about 6 km north of central Cuautla, now almost absorbed by the city's growth. In June 2024 Mexico's federal tourism ministry named it a Barrio Mágico at the third Tianguis Internacional de Pueblos Mágicos, together with eleven other neighbourhoods around the country.

The name is usually translated from Nahuatl as "in the little stony place". What sets it apart is its language: people here speak Mösiehuali, the town's own variety of Nahuatl, still used by many residents although Cuautla's spread has left it seriously endangered. Linguists have long been drawn here. In 1935 President Lázaro Cárdenas met William Cameron Townsend, founder of the Summer Institute of Linguistics, in Tetelcingo, and in 1954 the linguist Richard Pittman published a grammar of this variety.

Many older women still wear the town's dress: the chincuete, a wrapped skirt, with a navy wool huipil so dark it looks black, tied with backstrap-woven sashes, the main one red. Only a handful of sash weavers remain, and most garments are now made from factory cloth. In the yards you can still see coscomates, traditional granaries that keep the maize away from rats and squirrels.

The best-known celebration is the harvest fiesta in late October (25 to 27 October in 2025), with dances by the mayordomías, processions, offerings of produce and communal rituals that blend Indigenous roots with Catholic faith; the state government uses it to honour farming families. Some years ago the Morelos congress voted to turn Tetelcingo into an Indigenous municipality, along with Xoxocotla, Coatetelco and Hueyapan, but Cuautla challenged the decision and the community still belongs to Cuautla.