A Brief History of Tepoztlán

It remains unknown who first settled the valley of Tepoztlán, but the archaeological evidence suggests that people have inhabited the valley since 1500 BCE. Later findings tied Tepoztlán to the rise of the Xochicalco, Toltec, and Chichimec cultures. Notably, Ce Acatl Topiltzin Quetzalcoatl, the ambiguously historical and mythological hero of Toltec canon, was born in Amatlán de Quetzalcoatl, a major town within the current municipality of Tepoztlán. Ce Acatl would go on to study in Xochicalco and then become the ruler of Tula in the tenth century. By the fifteenth century, Tepoztlán was one of approximately fifty Tlahuica city-states within the modern state of Morelos. The Codex Mendoza lists Tepoztlán amongst the territories conquered by Moctezuma II under the direction of Ahuitzotl, the Tlatoani of Tenochtitlan, in the latter half of the fifteenth century. The Codex Ixtlilxochitl mentions the political reorganization of Tepoztlán, Cuauhnahauc, Huastepec, and Xilotepec in the wake of becoming tributaries to the Triple Alliance of Tenochtitlan, Tetzcoco, and Tlacopan. To commemorate these conquests, the glyph of Ahuitzotl was engraved on the south wall of el Tepozteco, the temple built on the summit of Tlahuiltepetl in Tepoztlán.

            According to Bernal Díaz del Castillo, in Historia verdadera de la conquista de la Nueva España, the Spanish passed through Tepoztlán for the first time in 1521, the same year as the fall of Tenochtitlan. Hernán Cortés organized an expedition from Cuernavaca, formerly Cuauhnahauc, to pacify the caciques of Yautepec. The expedition journeyed to Tepoztlán under the assumption that the caciques were hiding within the town. Díaz relates that Cortés set fire to the town when the Tepoztecos refused to cooperate with their search. Years later, the Spanish Monarchs awarded Cortés with the title, territories, and encomiendas of the Marquesado del Valle de Oaxaca for his service in the Spanish-Aztec War. The Marquesado del Valle held the residents of Tepoztlán in encomienda, thereby making them tributaries of Cortés and requiring certain religious and administrative commitments from Cortés until his death in 1547. Some Tepozteco oral traditions speculate that Martin Cortés, the son of Hernán Cortés, lived in Tepoztlán after his father’s death.

The religious conversion of Tepoztlán’s inhabitants to Christianity looms large in the historical memory of the community. Between 1555 and 1580, Dominican friars oversaw the construction of the convent of La Natividad de María in the center of Tepoztlán, establishing a missionary presence in town. Other religious orders began to follow the Dominicans’ example and build capillas, or churches, throughout the valley in the following decades. These capillas (La Santísima Trinidad, Santa Cruz, San Sebastián, Los Reyes, San José, San Pedro, Santo Domingo, and San Miguel) would become the namesake of the contemporary barrios of Tepoztlán. There are no reliable sources concerning these evangelical projects, but local oral traditions claim that the first Tepozteco baptisms transpired at the base of Tlahuiltepetl beside the river Axitla. Tepoztecos commemorate this event every September 7th and 8th during the ‘Reto al Tepozteco,’ which involves allegorical reenactments of these baptisms as well as pilgrimages to the temple. Despite the colonial origin of these celebrations, the ‘Reto al Tepozteco’ was likely popularized in the nineteenth century.

The wars of independence and reform mobilized rural populations and transformed local economies throughout central Mexico in the nineteenth century — and Tepoztlán was no exception. The rise of Liberalism disrupted the rural politics and administration of Indigenous communities like Tepoztlán, especially in regard to land tenure. Mexican liberals opposed the collective land-owning practices of the predominantly Indigenous countryside and sought to develop a class of individual property holders. Tepoztecos formed part of prominent liberal battalions and brigades, but they withdrew their support as it became increasingly clear that the movement would not protect the land rights of their community. The hacienda of Oacalco began encroaching on Tepozteco lands by the 1850s, leading Tepoztlán, despite Tepoztecos’ previous liberal tendencies, to send a delegation to Maximillian of Austria in 1864. The bid for royal intervention was a return to the politics of the colonial period. The expropriation of Tepozteco lands would continue throughout the nineteenth century, culminating in the decline of subsistence agriculture in favor of wage labor for the surrounding landed estates during the presidency of José de la Cruz Porfirio Díaz Mori. The loss of land helped cultivate a distinct Tepozteco politics of resistance that would carry over into the twentieth century.

            Tepoztlán features prominently in the history of the Mexican Revolution. With few exceptions, Tepoztecos backed Emiliano Zapata and the Ejército Libertador del Sur (ELS). The ELS instigated uprisings across the state of Morelos in 1911, rendering the mountains of Tepoztlán into one of the first battlegrounds of the movement. According to Tepozteco stories, five of Zapata’s generals hailed from Tepoztlán and many decisive victories of the ELS are owed to Tepozteco veterans. When Tepoztecos returned home from campaigning with the ELS, they brought a national consciousness that was developed on the frontlines of the movement. Tepozteco conflicts with regional haciendas became part of a national discourse on Indigenous landholding practices. After the Revolution, Tepoztecos reasserted the ejido or communal status of the lands surrounding Tepoztlán, effectively reversing the outcome of the liberal reforms from the previous century. President Lazaro Cárdenas issued land reforms in the 1930s that only further solidified Tepozteco claims over their ejidos, barring outsiders, Mexican or otherwise, from buying Tepozteco land and regulating the legitimate use of communal land. Conflicts over the selling and tenure of land would become the most defining feature of Tepozteco history from then on.

            The twentieth century also saw a surge in scholarly interest in Tepoztlán. Robert Redfield, a United States anthropologist, published Tepoztlán, a Mexican Village in 1930. Redfield reportedly lived in Tepoztlán for just under two years and worked closely with Mexican academics. Indeed, Manuel Gamio, the prominent anthropologist and leader of the indigenista movement, encouraged Redfield to undertake the project. Oscar Lewis, another United States anthropologist, would follow the precedent set by Redfield and publish Life in a Mexican Village: Tepoztlán Restudied in 1951. Lewis was known for theorizing a transnational and intergenerational ‘culture of poverty,’ regularly researching racialized communities from this perspective. Both scholars struggled to reconcile their desire to articulate the authentic experience of rural Mexico with the unique politics and regional positionality of Tepoztlán. Regardless, the paternalistic and extractive nature of their work imprinted a certain ambivalence toward academic researchers in the community.

            Hollywood set its eyes on Tepoztlán in the following decades of the twentieth century. Major productions, such as the classic 1960 Western The Magnificent Seven, transformed Tepoztlán into the Wild West of United States audiences’ imagination. Trades are typically passed down through Tepozteco families, and it is the local belief that contemporary electricians are the descendants of the manual laborers hired by Hollywood productions. There was no infrastructure to support electricity in Tepoztlán prior to these Hollywood productions. Consequently, these companies invested in the electrification of Tepoztlán so that they might light their sets, taking advantage of the low cost of labor. Eventually, this exposure attracted progressively larger groups of outsiders to the town. By 1985, there was a ‘Club de Exploraciones de México’ based in Mexico City that promoted free weekend excursions for English-speaking tourists to Tepoztlán and the ‘ruins’ of el Tepozteco. The promotional material included images of members standing on el Tepozteco in the seemingly obligatory pith helmet and riding boots of the twentieth-century explorer.

            Tepoztlán resisted outsiders’ efforts to encroach on Tepozteco sovereignty and strived to dictate many of the conditions of their occupation. In 1995, Tepoztecos successfully mobilized against the construction of a luxury golf club by the Mexican development corporation Grupo Kladt-Sobrino. They barricaded the town and ousted the municipal government, leading to violent confrontations with state authorities. Crucially, Tepoztecos reaffirmed their land rights and reinforced what community-governed protections remained. President Carlos Salinas de Gortari had amended the Mexican Constitution in 1992, paving the way for the North American Free Trade Agreement by allowing corporations, both domestic and foreign, to acquire communal lands formerly protected by their ejido status. The comunero council of Tepoztlán had approved the purchase of communal land by Grupo Kladt-Sobrino contrary to the wishes of the majority of Tepoztecos. The deposition of local leaders during the uprising set the precedent from which Tepoztlán is governed today. Foreign and domestic corporations have yet to gain a foothold in the town. Communal land rights are still contested every year, but Tepoztecos continue to defend these rights despite the loss of land to outsiders throughout the Valley of Atongo and beyond. The mountains surrounding el Tepozteco remain a national park.

            Tepozteco politics became a standard of the resistance against neoliberalism in Mexico. For this reason, the Ejército Zapatista de Liberación Nacional (EZLN) passed through Tepoztlán on their way to Mexico City during the ‘Marcha del color de la tierra’ or ‘Marcha de la dignidad indígena’ in 2001. Having already expressed support for Tepoztlán during the golf club uprising, Subcomandante Marcos, now known as Subcomandante Galeano, gave a public speech in Tepoztlán for the occasion. Locals still talk about how Tepoztlán received the EZLN by ringing church bells and running to the streets with their families. In recent years, Tepoztlán has faced several more crises. The decade of the 2010s was defined by the slow expansion of the highway from Cuernavaca to Yautepec that encircles the town. It was a contentious issue amongst Tepoztecos. While the highway entailed the appropriation of Tepozteco lands and the ecological devastation of the mountainside, the economy of Tepoztlán has become so entangled with tourism that many Tepoztecos supported the expansion for the sake of local businesses. During the COVID-19 pandemic, Tepoztecos raised barricades at the entrances of the town again, denying entry to tourists in direct opposition to the national policies of the time.

            Tourism has become the greatest source of income in Tepoztlán. The majority of houses surrounding the historic neighborhoods of Tepoztlán no longer belong to Tepoztecos. Wealthy families from the city procure vacation properties throughout the valley and there has been a surge of Tepoztizo residents (people that live in Tepoztlán but are not descended from Tepozteco families). The idealization of rural life in Mexico and Tepozteco sovereignty has partially driven these changes. The national government granted Tepoztlán the title of ‘Pueblo Mágico’ in 2001 as part of the Programa Pueblo Mágicos (PPM) devised by the Secretaría de Turismo. The program was developed and fine-tuned under the presidencies of Vicente Fox, Felipe Calderón, and Enrique Peña Nieto. The PPM awards federal funding to towns with the designation. However, a town may lose the designation if they are no longer deemed to meet the qualifying criteria of a ‘Pueblo Mágico’ according to the state. Tepoztlán already lost the title once due to the shifting economy drawing more locals into lucrative industries, such as the sale of alcohol on the street, and the lack of infrastructure for accommodating the thousands of visitors every summer. Each town in the municipality of Tepoztlán (San Andrés de la Cal, Santa Catarina, Amatlán de Quetzalcóatl, San Juan Tlacotenco, Santo Domingo Ocotitlán, and Tepoztlán) are ‘Pueblos Mágicos.’ The residents of these towns have an ambivalent relationship to the title. The designation brings wealth into these communities while simultaneously consigning these locations to a certain performance of authenticity. Tepoztlán flourishes as long as tourists continue to hike to the pyramid, seek alternative healing, and shop for artisanal trinkets in the market. The latter point is perhaps the most illustrative, as the artisanal trinkets on display in the market are rarely from Tepoztlán. Tourists struggle to reconcile what makes Tepoztlán unique with a desire to experience the ‘real’ rural Mexico that a ‘Pueblo Mágico’ promises.

This brief history of Tepoztlán remains a work in progress. The relative paucity of written histories of Tepoztlán means that there are significant gaps in this summary. Furthermore, many written accounts are layered with the biases of either early twentieth-century researchers or sixteenth-century Iberians. A few sections of this history are entirely based on oral testimonies as well. Significant events, such as the filming of Hollywood movies in Tepoztlán, have left scant paper records and have not yet garnered scholarly interest. With all these limitations in mind, I want to acknowledge that any shortcomings or inaccuracies are entirely my own. Moreover, I want to know what I am doing wrong. If you have insight into any of the topics here, please contact me at sblas@uw.edu. These pages are a living document that will change over time as we conduct more research. We are committed to representing the history of Tepoztlán as faithfully as possible and making necessary adjustments over time.

- Sebastián Arturo Blas Beller