Buenavista Tetela

Tetela comes from the Nahuatl tetetl, plural of tetl, stone, with the ending tlan, meaning abundance: "stony ground", the place where rocks are everywhere. Three villages carry the name, almost touching, in the south of Puebla municipality: Buenavista Tetela, with 1,480 residents and 337 occupied homes in 2020; San Baltazar Tetela, the largest, just over a kilometre to the south; and Los Ángeles Tetela, a little further south-east. Buenavista sits at 2,060 m on rural land, 14 km in a straight line from the historic centre of the capital.

Although it belongs to the same municipality as the city of Puebla, the built-up sprawl is already behind you here. The municipality is huge and varied: more than 42% of its land is urban, yet almost a quarter is still farmed, with grassland and woods on the margins. The Atoyac and Alseseca rivers run through it, and in the south lies the Manuel Ávila Camacho dam, known as Valsequillo. The climate ranges from mild and sub-humid to cool, with averages of 10 to 16 °C and 400 to 900 mm of rain, nearly all in summer.

Living in Buenavista Tetela means having the capital close without being inside it: Talavera, onyx and the rest of Puebla's craft repertoire are on sale downtown, half an hour away. Municipal kitchens are ruled by mole poblano, chiles en nogada, green and red pipián, chalupas, cemitas, tlacoyos, mole de panza and mutton barbacoa. For anyone exploring the south of the municipality, the three Tetelas make one outing of hamlets and plots on the stony ground that named them.