San Cristóbal Tepatlaxco

Anyone driving federal highway 190 from Mexico City passes San Cristóbal Tepatlaxco just before entering San Martín Texmelucan, and few suspect that a short walk away, on the slopes of Cerro Totolqueme, stand nine pyramid bases. The village lends its name to that archaeological zone, reached by heading out along Avenida del Trabajo. In Nahuatl, Tepatlaxco has been read two ways: "in the ballcourt of the palace" or "plain of stony ground". In the immediate surroundings, the hamlet of Campo Melesio Solano had 11 residents in 2020, at 2,265 metres.

The landscape is the western rim of the Puebla-Tlaxcala Valley, where the foothills of the Sierra Nevada begin, the range that divides it from the Valley of Mexico. North and west of the municipality rise the Totolqueme, Tepeyacac, Mendocinas and Ayecac hills, while the Atoyac River, born of runoff from the volcanoes, crosses the plain less than a kilometre from the pyramids. Texmelucan covers about 71 km²; half its land is farmed and the other half is now built up; rainfall runs from 800 to 1,000 mm a year and average temperatures from 14 to 16 °C.

The mounds were a fortified site with Olmec influence, inhabited according to INAH from 300 BC to 600 AD, although INEGI's municipal compendium gives an older occupation, from 1200 BC, and links it with Cacaxtla and Tlalancaleca. Local cooking is led by mole poblano, barbacoa and the area's dried chiles; sweets include muéganos, candied apples and preserves, and people drink tepache in the hot season and ponche at Christmas. Texmelucan was known for its clay pots and casseroles and, earlier, for wood carving for furniture.