Tepeaca

Tepeaca lies about 35 km east of Puebla city, in the Tepeaca-Tecali valley at 2,245 m, and its town had 29,123 people in 2020. The name is a Spanish corruption of Tepeyácac, from tepetl, hill, and yacatl, nose or tip: "at the tip of the hill" or "the hill in front". It is also called Tepeaca de Negrete after General Miguel Negrete Novoa, who was born and lived here.

Before the conquest it was a Nahua lordship of Toltec-Chichimec descent, ruled by three related tlatoque, with Camaxtli as patron god and towns such as Acatzingo under it. The Mexica conquered it in the 15th century and turned it into a tribute-collecting centre whose market had to supply luxury goods. In 1520, after the rout of the Noche Triste, Hernán Cortés punished the people here for killing Spaniards on the Veracruz-Tenochtitlan road and founded the town of Segura de la Frontera on the spot. In the house on the north-west corner of the square he signed, on 30 October that year, the second of his letters to Charles V, asking that the conquered land be called New Spain. In 1543 the Franciscans moved the settlement to the foot of the hill and built their friary; the coat of arms followed in 1549.

The San Francisco complex, built between 1559 and 1593, looks like a castle, with battlements, buttresses capped by sentry turrets and two wall-walks. Across from it stands the Rollo, an octagonal Mudéjar tower begun in 1559 by Friar Sebastián de Trasierra. It was where edicts were read out and where public punishment took place, and in the 19th century it was fitted with the four-faced clock that still keeps time; shackles and feathered big cats remain at its base.

The busiest devotion is to the Santo Niño Doctor de los Enfermos, a Christ Child image brought by a Josephine nun who had carried it while nursing the sick in a Mexico City hospital. It has been venerated here since 1942, and its feast on 30 April draws pilgrims from several states. On weekends more than a hundred stalls outside its church sell onyx and marble, quarried and carved here and in Tecali, plus regional sweets and plaster pieces.

The Friday market, which goes back to the days of Moctezuma Ilhuicamina and still allows barter, sets up around 3 am and packs up at 3 pm; wholesale buyers come from Hidalgo, Morelos and Tlaxcala.