Tlalpan

Carnaval in Santa María Magdalena Petlacalco

The Delegación of Tlalpan, the largest and most southern borough in Mexico City, incorporates two very different worlds, geographically and culturally. Its northern quarter is part of the flat land of the Valley of Mexico. Its contains some original indigenous pueblos, such as Huipulco, but has become completely urbanized. The southern three-quarters is strikingly different. The land rises into an imposing wall of the Sierra of Chichinautzin. In the middle, rising to almost 13,000 ft., 6,000 feet above the Valley, is Ajusco, a massif of extinct volcanoes. On the flanks of Ajusco and the saddle at its eastern end, at 10,000 feet, are a group of rural indigenous villages. One Sunday morning in February, Sr. Enrique, a taxi driver we have met by chance, who lives on the mountain, arrives in his taxi with his wife, Lydia, to take us there, to the Pueblo of Santa María Magdalena Petlacalco, where a wonderful surprise awaits us.

San Lorenzo Huipulco - Faces of Dignity

While we were following the Lord of Compassion on his jouneys through the original pueblos of Coyoacán, we had a serendipitous encounter with la Comparsa de Chinelos de San Lorenzo Huipulco. A comparsa is a dance troupe that performs at fiestas. Chinelos are dancers "disguised" by elaborate costumes that seem to be a takeoff on Islamic Moorish dress. The young man carrying the group's banner invited us to the annual fiesta of Huipulco's patron saint, San Lorenzo, St. Lawrence, on August 10. So at about 1:00 p.m. that Wednesday, we take a taxi from our base in Colonia Parque San Andrés, down the Calzada de Tlalpan to Huipulco, in the Delegación de Tlalpan.  

Chimalcoyotl, An Ancient Pueblo That Survives Being Run Over, Literally, by Modernity 

The Facebook page, Fiestas Mágicas de los Pueblos y Barrios Originarios del Valle de México, Magical Fiestas of the Original Villages and Neighborhoods of the Valley of Mexico recently shared an announcement of the patron saint fiesta of Pueblo Chimalcoyotl (Nahuatl: Shield of the Coyote), in Tlalpan. It is the Fiesta of the Immaculate Conception of Mary, on December 8, but as is typical, the fiesta is to be held the following Sunday.Some online research led to our learning that Chimalcoyotl was originally a Tepanec village, a Nahuatl-speaking group that entered the Valley of Anahuac around 1000 C.E. and established settlements along the west side of Lake Texcoco at least two hundred years before the Mexica arrived in 1225. 

In 1428, the Mexica defeated the Tepaneca and control of all their towns, including Chimalcoyotl, which lay strategically at the base of the mountains on the path to Cuauhnāhuac (later hispanicized into Cuernavaca). After the Spanish defeat of the Mexicas in 1521, the Franciscans came to Chimalcoyotl in 1532 and erected their first chapel. During the Colonial period and up until the latter half of the 20th century, the pueblo was a rural one, dedicated to growing roses and maguey (agave).

Tlalpan Centro, the Villa de San Agustín de la Cuevas

The political and — until recent times, with the arrival of malls — the commercial center of the area that is now Delegación Tlapan was originally an indigenous village also named Tlalpan. In the Nahuatl language it meant terra firma, i.e. solid ground, as it lay on volcanic rock. The original village — now officially called “Tlalpan Centro” — is often referred to as “the historic center of Tlalpan”. It has always been located at the intersection of a number of pathways that connected the Mexica capital of Tenochtitlan with villages in the southwestern part of the Valley, as it was when the Spanish arrived in 1519. 

Under Spanish rule, all land became property of the Crown. The king chose to give part of the lands around Tlalpan, including the village, as an encomienda, land grant, to a conquistador, who turned the lands into a hacienda (agricultural estate) of orchards growing fruit to sell in the new Mexico City, far to the north. 

In 1645, the village was officially designated by the Crown as the Spanish Villa de San Agustín de las Cuevas. A Spanish settlement royally designated a Villa had higher status than a pueblo, but less than that of a ciudad, city. The status was, perhaps, similar to an incorporated village in the U.S. — a legal, self-governing entity apart from a township, but not a city. The designation indicates that by 1645 the village was no longer an indigenous pueblo but a Spanish village.

Mule Drivers of Santa Ursula Xitle

When we saw an announcement of a fiesta in the pueblo of Santa Úrsula Xitle we were intrigued by two things. First, fulfilling one of our primary criteria, it was a pueblo we had not previously visited and, additionally, it was in Delegación/Alcaldía Tlalpan, the city's largest but one where we had explored only a few of its original pueblos.

Second, the announcement said cuadrillas (qua-DREE- yahs) of arrieros would be performing. In all of our many experiences of fiesta performers, we have seen many types of comparsas (dance troupes) representing various parts of Mexican identity, but never cuadrillas de arrieros, teams of mule drivers. Our curiosity, of course, was piqued by this new form of fiesta dance. 

San Pedro Mártir, A Fiesta That Has It All

San Pedro Mártir is one of a line of original pueblos in the north-central part of what is now Delegación/Alcaldía Tlalpan. The line begins with the current Tlalpan Centro and runs south to the base of the Sierra Chichinautzin volcanic mountain range. In indigenous times, these pueblos lay along the footpath that led up over the mountains and onward to Cuernavaca in what is now the state of Morelos and on through the present-day state of Guerrero to the Pacific Coast. That path is now the expressway 95D that goes to Acapulco.

San Pedro´s indigenous name was Texopalco (Tesh-o-PAHL-co, apparently meaning "painted blue" in Nahuatl). It was likely founded sometime in the 13th or 14th centuries C.E. by the Nahuatl-speaking Tepaneca, as part of their altepetl (city-state) along the west side of Lake Texcoco, ruled from their central city of Azcapotzalco on the southwest shore of the lake. Like the rest of the Valley of Mexico, it came under Mexica/Azteca control in the early 15th century.

San Pedro, St. Peter of Verona Mártir was a Dominican monk who lived from 1205 to 1252. In 1221, he joined the Order of Preachers, commonly known as the Dominicans. Pedro was assassinated by a Cathar, a member of heretical sect  in April, 1252. Hence, his feast day in April. So on Sunday, April 28, we travel by taxi to the pueblo that has born his name for nearly five hundred years, San Pedro Mártir, to witness its patron saint fiesta.