La Galarza

La Galarza sits in a mountain pass at roughly 1,400 metres, on the road that drops from Atlixco toward Izúcar de Matamoros. It belongs to the latter municipality, and English Wikipedia gives it 3,846 residents. Anyone travelling between the two valleys goes through here: the Pass of Galaxara, as period military accounts spell it, is the narrows that separates the Atlixco side from the Izúcar basin, about five miles (some eight kilometres) north of Izúcar.

The place made it into the history books because of one morning. On 24 November 1847, during the war with the United States, General Joseph Lane's column was marching back to Puebla after surprising General Joaquín Rea's base at Izúcar the night before. Rea's Light Corps was an irregular force that had been harassing the supply line between Veracruz and the capital. In the pass the column strung out along the road, and about two hundred Mexican lancers charged the advance guard. Texas mounted riflemen under Colonel John Coffee Hays drove them off and chased them uphill until they ran into Rea's main body, around five hundred lancers. Hays fell back, reloaded and beat off the second charge. The Americans reported two dead, and Lane put Mexican losses at no fewer than fifty killed and wounded.

The column marched on through the night, reached Atlixco about ten on the morning of the 25th and Puebla that afternoon. Today the fight lives mostly in the campaign histories of the 1846-48 war.