San Rafael Tepatlaxco

San Rafael Tepatlaxco is a village in Chiautempan municipality, at about 2,540 metres above sea level on the slope of La Malinche. It borders San Pedro Xochiteotla, San José Aztatla, Ocotlán Tepatlaxco, San Felipe Cuauhtenco and San Bartolomé Cuahuixmatlac. In 2020 it had 2,213 people in 549 homes (2,003 in 2010), with an average of 9.5 years of schooling. The mean annual temperature is around 13.6 °C and about 884 mm of rain falls a year, mostly from May to September.

The name comes from Nahuatl tepatlach, stone, and tlaxco, flat, roughly "place of flat stones". Local history says the Teochichimecas or Tlaxcalans displaced the Olmec-Xicalanca, and a band of young warriors settled on the heights of the Matlalcuéyetl and founded Tepatlaxco with seven noble houses. Its people worshipped the goddess Matlalcuéyetl on the small hill of Tlachihualtepec until the Spanish came and the Virgin of Guadalupe took her place. Around 1892 it was a barrio of Santa Ana Chiautempan with a Guadalupe chapel.

The village saw no direct fighting in the Revolution but lent houses as barracks and fed the revolutionaries; in 1917-1918 about 80 people died of flu and hunger. In 1916, after a great famine, Archangel Raphael replaced the Virgin of Guadalupe as patron, linked to the protection of the frogs and toads of the jagüeyes (rain ponds). The municipality has oak forest, rabbits, hares and quail.