Quecholac

Quecholac is the seat of the municipality of the same name, in east-central Puebla, within the Ciudad Serdán region. The town stands at about 2,170 metres and had 10,216 residents in 2010; the whole municipality reached nearly 58,000 in 2020. The name is Nahuatl and has been read several ways, from water of the brightly feathered birds to clear water; the etymological sources cited on Wikipedia point out that the glyph shows an eagle-feather headdress tied to the month quecholli and to the god Mixcóatl.

It was a Popoloca settlement that, between 1398 and 1441, fell under the Mexica lordship of Tecamachalco. It became a corregimiento in 1531 and was run by the Franciscans from 1540 to 1560. Royalist troops were beaten here in 1812, French troops camped in 1862, the free municipality was created in 1895, and in 1925 a monument to General Matamoros went up in the plaza.

What remains of that past includes the sixteenth-century parish church of Santa María Magdalena, now in ruins, the former hacienda of San Miguel de Osorio, the old general headquarters (now the town hall), the curate's house and the Rosario chapel. In the San Diego neighbourhood stands the church of San Diego, the building shown in the town's lead photograph. Cerro Chichipico lies nearby, and the climate is temperate and sub-humid, with summer rain and mean temperatures of 12 to 18 °C.