Tecamachalco

Tecamachalco is the seat of the municipality of the same name in central Puebla, in the Tecamachalco valley, about 65 km from the capital by road. The town stands at about 2,040 m and had 31,315 people in 2020. The name comes from the Nahuatl tetl, stone, and camachalli, jaw: "in the stone jaw", after the jaw-shaped hill where the pre-Hispanic peoples settled.

Popoloca groups founded it in 1441 on Cerro del Monumento, and when the Spaniards arrived it paid tribute to the Aztecs. Franciscans, among them Jerónimo de Mendieta and Francisco de Toral, evangelised the area and built the church and convent, and the town became Tecamachalco de la Asunción. In 1861 it was named the villa of Tecamachalco de Guerrero and in 1877 a city.

Its great treasure is the 16th-century Franciscan convent, with an austere crenellated façade and a tower built between 1589 and 1591. On the ribbed vault under the choir are 28 medallions painted in 1562 by Juan Gerson, an Indigenous painter who drew on European prints, above all the 1522 Wittenberg Bible. According to the historian George Kubler they are exceptional: the only known 16th-century Mexican murals on Old Testament and Apocalypse themes, and the only signed and dated murals of their kind. Bullfights were held in the atrium of the church of San Sebastián Mártir in 1568 and 1585, and the Casa del Conde belonged to Alonso Valiente, the first encomendero. The Virgin of the Assumption is celebrated on 15 August.