Teotongo

Santiago Teotongo, in the Teposcolula district, has a church out of scale with its 550 residents. It is dedicated to Santiago Apóstol and is baroque in character, from the time the Diocese of Oaxaca began founding parishes (from 1767). It has a broad stair across the front, an Ionic portal and two belfries: the south one a baroque double belfry, the north one plainer and topped with a small dome. Inside it is a Latin cross with a single nave of five barrel-vaulted bays and an octagonal dome over the crossing, in limestone masonry.

What stands out are the carved, gilded wooden altarpieces in Solomonic, estípite and churrigueresque styles, many with oil paintings and carved saints. The three-tier high altar and the Amatlán altarpiece in the transept are the main ones. There is also an octagonal wooden pulpit and a carved organ. The parish house beside the church was ruined when the complex was documented in 1985, and the church was being restored: ask in the village whether you can go in. The patron fiesta is on 25 July.

Teotongo lies at about 2,100 metres beside the Salado river, with a temperate subhumid climate (18 °C average) and rain from June to October, around 800 mm a year. The land is worn plain, stripped by logging, with trees mostly near the rivers. The village counted 1,729 people in 1940 and 756 in 1960. It has no market of its own; people shop at the regional ones: Tamazulapan on Wednesdays, Tejupan and Coixtlahuaca on Tuesdays, Tepelmeme on Sundays. Its old name, Xadedauxo, is glossed as "son of lightning".