Santa María Zotoluca

Santa María Zotoluca is a locality in the municipality of Tlaxco, in northern Tlaxcala, at 2,626 metres and about 10 km southeast of the municipal seat. It is small: the 2020 census counted 243 residents, 116 women and 127 men, up from 232 in 2010 and 179 in 2005. Among Tlaxco's 221 localities it ranks 24th by population.

The name comes from the Nahuatl Zotolucan, translated as "place of palms", and that is as far as the published account of the settlement's origin goes. What is documented is the cattle-ranching character of the area. A 2014 photograph on Wikimedia Commons, taken less than a kilometre from the village's coordinates, shows a cattle hacienda with orange stone walls, an arched doorway and bell-gable over the chapel, a lawn courtyard with a blue talavera fountain and a corridor under a red tile roof.

The Zotoluca name also appears in the history of fighting bulls: the Zotoluca breeding ranch was founded in 1908 by Aurelio Carvajal González at the hacienda of Santiago Zotoluca, with stock from the old Tepeyahualco herd, and in 1913 it fought for the first time at El Toreo in Mexico City. In 1968 the owner sold it to Adrián Vázquez Sánchez, who moved it to its present base, the Axopilco ranch in Xalostoc. It is not documented whether that hacienda is the same one seen in this village.

Zotoluca has no hotels or restaurants of its own and no published visiting hours; it is visited in passing, as part of a drive through the Tlaxco countryside.