Natívitas

Natívitas is the seat of the municipality of the same name in southwestern Tlaxcala, on the border with Puebla and about 14 km from the state capital. It is a small place, with 1,583 people at the 2020 census. Its full name is Santa María Natívitas Yancuitlalpan; Yancuitlalpan is Nahuatl for "on the new land".

Its history is unusual for Tlaxcala. Around 1560 the authorities gathered the Indigenous people scattered across the valley's marshes into this spot, and the Franciscans built a convent begun around 1569. The well-watered land produced so much maize and wheat that settlers soon followed: by the end of the 16th century there were 32 Spanish landowners. Spanish families lived around the main square while Indigenous barrios such as San Bernabé and Santa Apolonia Teacalco formed a ring around them, which earned the town the nickname "España Chiquita", Little Spain. That era ended with the Revolution: in May and June 1914 Zapatista forces attacked, residents held out inside the parish church, then fled by train to Puebla, and many families never came back.

Of the convent only some stone walls remain, along with an old font carved with the Franciscan cord near the parish entrance. The parish church of Santa María, built over the 17th and 18th centuries, has an octagonal dome in white and blue tile and baroque altarpieces, the main one with gilded estípite pilasters. Around the centre you can still spot Andalusian-style iron grilles, balconies and patios, and the Casa Colorada, an 18th-century inn with a tiled facade on the old Camino Real.

The feast of the Nativity of Mary runs from 8 to 10 September. Natívitas holds its carnival out of the usual season, in mid-March, with dance troupes in velvet suits, feathered headdresses and carved wooden masks. Basketry in willow, osier and sotol is woven in the municipality, and the Cacaxtla and Xochitécatl archaeological sites are 3 km away.