Tepeaca Municipality is a
municipality in
Puebla
Puebla ( en, colony, settlement), officially Free and Sovereign State of Puebla ( es, Estado Libre y Soberano de Puebla), is one of the 32 states which comprise the Federal Entities of Mexico. It is divided into 217 municipalities and its cap ...
in southeastern
Mexico.
Tepeaca is located 35 km (21.75 mi) from
Puebla City and is the municipal seat of the municipality of the same name. Its name comes from a Spanish variant of "Tepeyacac" composed of the
Nahuatl
Nahuatl (; ), Aztec, or Mexicano is a language or, by some definitions, a group of languages of the Uto-Aztecan language family. Varieties of Nahuatl are spoken by about Nahua peoples, most of whom live mainly in Central Mexico and have smaller ...
words ''tepetl'' ("hill") and ''yacatl'' ("nose tip, which is in the foreground") (can be translated in various ways: "in the top of the hill" or "the principle of the hills"). It has been called Tepeaca de Negrete as it was the birthplace and hometown of
General Miguel Negrete Novoa. Along with
Tecali Herrera, he extracted the
onyx and
marble. The town was originally founded by
Hernán Cortés
Hernán Cortés de Monroy y Pizarro Altamirano, 1st Marquess of the Valley of Oaxaca (; ; 1485 – December 2, 1547) was a Spanish ''conquistador'' who led an expedition that caused the fall of the Aztec Empire and brought large portions of w ...
as
Segura de la Frontera.
In the parish of San Francisco de Asís is a
Child Jesus image called the Santo Niño Doctor de los Enfemos. The image is old but devotion to it is relatively recent. The image used to belong to a nun of the
Order of Josephine at Concepción Béistegui Hospital in
Mexico City. When the nun was transferred to Tepeaca, she brought the image with her and had it with her as she treated the sick. This image has had its own feast day at this church since 1961 on the 30 of April.
References
Municipalities of Puebla
{{Puebla-geo-stub