San Felipe Teotlalcingo

Teotlaltzinco, the Nahuatl form of the name, combines teotl (god), tlalli (land) and the diminutive tzintli, and is usually rendered as "little valley of the gods". The village sits on a slope at 2,401 metres on the western rim of the Puebla-Tlaxcala valley, and its municipality borders the Iztaccíhuatl-Popocatépetl National Park. The 2020 census counted 7,124 residents here, and the town heads a municipality that belongs to the San Martín Texmelucan metropolitan area, alongside San Salvador el Verde and Chiautzingo.

Its past is tied to the old lordship of Huejotzingo: Acolhua and Nahua groups settled it first, allied themselves with the Spaniards soon after Tlaxcallan fell, and in colonial times it was folded into the large Huejotzingo encomienda. During the French intervention many people from the area joined Ignacio Zaragoza's troops, and in the Revolution its surroundings saw clashes between Zapatistas and federal forces, the former led by General Marcelino Carabeo. The Puebla state congress made it a free municipality around 1927.

The landscape shifts with altitude: nearly a third of the municipality is still forest and most of the rest is farmland. INEGI records mean temperatures of only 6 to 16 degrees, with a semi-cold band toward the mountains, 900 to 1,000 millimetres of rain a year and year-round streams such as the Cotzala and Santa Elena flowing down toward the Atoyac basin. Local workshops turn out brick and roof tile; the table features mole poblano, pipián, tamales, fruit preserves, cider, chocolate atole and champurrado.