San Luis Temalacayuca

San Luis Temalacayuca is a junta auxiliar of the municipality of Tepanco de López, on the north-western side of the Tehuacán valley. It stands at about 1,880 m and had 2,695 people in 2020. Its Nahuatl name, Temalacayocan, means "place full of spindle whorls or stone wheels", and in Ngiwa, the Popoloca language, it is Taann Cuchi. The malacates were round sandstone discs used to spin cotton and also in a ceremonial combat; there were said to be a great many here.

It borders Pazoltepec, in the municipality of Tlacotepec de Benito Juárez, to the north-west, and Tepanco de López, the municipal seat, to the south-east. Farming is the mainstay, with maize, beans and wheat, though plots are small and soils poor; guaje pods, prickly pears and other plants round out the diet, and a few goats, pigs, turkeys and chickens are raised. Women weave palm mats, which they trade for maize or sell to middlemen, and many men work as labourers or migrate to Mexico City and the United States.

The church of San Luis Obispo de Tolosa was built around 1604 and is one of the oldest in the region, in Franciscan style. The municipality of Tepanco takes the name López in honour of the liberal guerrilla José María "El Güero" López, born here, who distinguished himself in Oaxaca during the French Intervention.