Xoxocotla

Xoxocotla is a Nahua community in southern Morelos, about 26 km south of Cuernavaca in a straight line. The name comes from Nahuatl and is usually translated as place of green pines (others read it as place of old pitch-pines). The 2010 census counted 21,074 people, and the whole municipality reported 28,640 in 2020. Its neighbours call its people "los xoxos", and the community keeps the language, song and dance of its Nahua roots.

For a long time it depended on other municipalities: in 1871 it was annexed to Puente de Ixtla, and later it belonged to Jojutla. It had to be evacuated in 1913 and 1914 because of Revolution fighting. On 1 January 2019 it became its own indigenous municipality, governed by uses and customs, alongside Coatetelco and Hueyapan, and since then it has had to settle public debt and boundaries with Puente de Ixtla, including 200 hectares in dispute at Shaya Michan. The Third Indigenous Book Fair was held here in 2016, and the community is twinned with Santa Ana Tlacotenco in Milpa Alta.

It is not a place of monuments: people come for the community, its festivals and its Holy Week, which researchers have studied since the 1960s, and for what lies nearby. Inside the locality is Acuaski, an action park for extreme sports with water skiing, kneeboarding and wakeboarding, plus BMX and enduro on land. With Lake Tequesquitengo and the spas of southern Morelos a short drive away, it works as one stop on a tour of the region.