San Mateo Tlaixpan

Behind the city of Tecamachalco, on the hill that rises north of San Mateo Tlaixpan, you can make out the outline of an eagle drawn on white tepetate by the peoples who lived here before the Conquest; that is why it is called Cerro del Águila, though its name is Cuautepec. Between that hill and Techachales, the two that enclose the city and Tlaixpan, lies the cave of King Cuetzpa. With 11,824 residents in 2020, Tlaixpan is one of the municipality's most important communities, along with Santiago Alseseca and Santa Rosa, and sits at about 2,058 metres, right next to the municipal seat.

Tecamachalco means "at the stone jaw", after the jaw-shaped hill where its first settlers lived. According to municipal history, Popoloca groups founded it in 1441; it lived under Tepeaca, Tlacotepec and the Mexica, and after the Conquest the Franciscans built its convent. That convent holds a rarity: 28 medallions painted in 1562 by Juan Gerson, an Indigenous painter, on the vault beneath the choir loft, showing Old Testament and Apocalypse scenes taken from European engravings; they are signed and dated murals, unique in sixteenth-century Mexico. In the atrium of the nearby church of San Sebastián, bulls were fought in 1568 and 1585.

The municipality covers about 218 km² and borders Quecholac, Palmar de Bravo, Xochitlán Todos Santos, Yehualtepec, San Salvador Huixcolotla and Tochtepec. Irrigation shapes the landscape: the main canal of Irrigation District 30, Valle de Valsequillo, runs through here, which is headquartered here and makes Tecamachalco the only municipality in the state with a federal irrigation district, along with smaller canals such as Tochtepec, Águila, Arenal, El Muerto and San Nicolás, which continue south toward the Tehuacán valley. That is why more than 60% of the land is farmed even though rain is scarce, 500 to 700 mm a year, with averages of 14 to 18 °C. Weaving, woodwork and palm craft are practised in the area, and on August 15 the municipal seat celebrates the Assumption with a mole fair.