Teteles de Ávila Castillo

No municipality in Puebla is as small as Teteles: just 8.93 km², ranking 217th of 217 by area. Its seat, at about 1,860 m in the northeastern highlands and only 4 km from Tlatlauquitepec, had 5,156 residents in 2020. The name comes from the Nahuatl tetelti, "heap of stones", understood as a reference to the tomb of ancient lords. Its neighbours are few: Yaonáhuac and Hueyapan to the north, Chignautla to the east, Atempan to the south and Tlatlauquitepec to the west.

Those "heaps of stone" are real: the municipality holds 23 mounds that local tradition regards as deliberately buried pyramids. The legend says that around 1520 a noble named Olinteutle or Hueltoc arrived, sent by Cuauhtémoc, married Ixmicoatl, the chief's daughter, and lit bonfires on the hill of Tlatlauquitepec to signal to Nautla and Papantla. On hearing of the Spanish landing he supposedly had the city buried to save its riches; he ended up hiding in a cave at Xocayucan and died in a grotto at Mazatepec. Today much of the mound area is used for crops and cattle, and a group of residents runs the Tetelictic project to rescue the archaeological zone.

The climate is damp and cool, averaging 14 to 16 °C with 1,400 to 1,600 mm of rain and frequent cloud, which suits apples, pears, peaches, plums, capulín cherries, figs, walnuts and avocados. More than half the land is farmed, a third is built up and the rest is forest; streams drain to the Apulco River in the Tecolutla basin. In the centre stand the baroque church of the Virgen del Rosario from 1736, the town hall and a stone bust of Manuel Ávila Camacho; about 2 km away is the Xochihuista bridge. Local crafts include cabinetmaking and embroidered shawls and blouses, and the kitchen is known for mole serrano, mole de oro, chilpozontle, smoked chicken, mole tamales, capulín or fig preserves and a homemade fruit wine. Traditional music is played on violins, with corridos.