El Carmen Aztama

El Carmen Aztama is, together with the seat San Luis Teolocholco and Santa María Acxotla del Monte, one of the three main towns of the municipality of Teolocholco. The 2020 census counted 2,579 people, and it lies at about 2,250 metres above sea level, in the flattest part of the municipality; the level ground, which the Enciclopedia de los Municipios puts at 10% of the territory, belongs to Aztama. "El Carmen" refers to its patron, Nuestra Señora del Carmen, and "Aztama" is Nahuatl, meaning "place where herons are hunted".

The Tlaxcala census rolls of 1556-1557 already name San Zacarías Aztama: it belonged to the third tequitl, headed by San José Acuitlapilco, together with Teolocholco, Acuamanala and Atlahapa, and the whole group depended on Ocotelulco. In the 19th century, under the Empire, Aztama is listed among the villages of the municipality of Teolocholco, and from 4 June 1867 the municipality sat within the Zaragoza district. Today the village is part of the Malintzi industrial corridor, and the Enciclopedia lists manufacturing as its main activity.

The church of the Virgen del Carmen, with its yellow façade and a small domed tower, is the most visible building in the village. Its feast is on 16 July and the fair in honour of the Virgin opens on the 14th; in 2020 the celebrations began on the night of the 15th with mañanitas behind closed doors, with no food stalls or rides because of the pandemic. In autumn the landscape changes with the cempasúchil fields that appear in photographs of the locality, and in Teolocholco the 2 November custom is to take an offering to the cemetery only for those who died in the previous year, a ritual that begins on 28 October.