Tetelcingo is a

town A town is a human settlement. Towns are generally larger than villages and smaller than cities, though the criteria to distinguish between them vary considerably in different parts of the world. Origin and use The word "town" shares an o ...

Cuautla, Morelos Cuautla (, meaning "where the eagles roam"), officially La heroica e histórica Cuautla, Morelos (''The Heroic and Historic Cuautla, Morelos'') or H. H. Cuautla, Morelos, is a city and municipality in the Mexican state of Morelos, about 104 kil ...

Mexico Mexico (Spanish language, Spanish: México), officially the United Mexican States, is a List of sovereign states, country in the southern portion of North America. It is borders of Mexico, bordered to the north by the United States; to the so ...

. Located about 6 kilometers north of the city of Cuautla, Tetelcingo and the neighborhoods Colonia Cuauhtémoc and Colonia Lázaro Cárdenas are practically swallowed up in the urban area. Tetelcingo is the homeland of a variant 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 small ...

language,

Tetelcingo Nahuatl Tetelcingo Nahuatl, called ''Mösiehuali̱'' by its speakers, is a Nahuatl variety of central Mexico. It is one of the core varieties closely related to Classical Nahuatl. It is spoken in the town of Tetelcingo, Morelos, and the adjacent '' Colon ...

, which is called ''Mösiehual''i by its speakers. There are still (as of 2008) a number of speakers in Tetelcingo and the two colonies, but the language is under intense pressure from the urbanization, and highly endangered. Tetelcingo was designated to become one of four communities set to become independent municipalities starting January 1,

2019 File:2019 collage v1.png, From top left, clockwise: Hong Kong protests turn to widespread riots and civil disobedience; House of Representatives votes to adopt articles of impeachment against Donald Trump; CRISPR gene editing first used to experim ...

, but authorities of Cuautla objected. The others are Xoxocotla;

Coatetelco Coatetelco or Cuatetelco is a pre-Hispanic archaeological site located next to the Coatetelco Lagoon, two kilometers from Alpuyeca, in the Miacatlán municipality, Morelos, Mexico, near Xochicalco. It had its greatest development between 500 and ...

, and

Hueyapan San Andrés Hueyapan is a small town in the rural northeastern part of the Mexican state of Morelos, formerly in the municipality of Tetela del Volcán. It lies at an elevation of ca 2000–2500 metres above sea level on the southern slopes of t ...

.https://www.sintesis.mx/2017/12/26/tetelcingo-municipios-indigenas/ (Dec 20, 2018) In an explanatory statement, the state government refers to the Constitution of Mexico, which declares: "Indigenous peoples will be granted identity when dealing with a social, economic and cultural units, settled in a territory and that they recognize their own authorities according to their uses and customs ".

Customs

mosiehuali (in Spanish)
The Mösiehuali language has been conserved in Tetelcingo, and there are many monolingual individuals, even though the language has been lost in many other communities. Some of the women still use the traditional ''cuieyitl'' or ''chincuete'' (traditional garment). Other customs and practices are preserved, including the construction of the ''bescomatl'' or ''coscomate'' (silo) designed to keep rats and squirrels from getting in to eat the stored corn.

History

In 1935, ''Guillermo C. Townsend'' of the ''Instituto Lingüístico de Verano'' met President

Lázaro Cárdenas Lázaro Cárdenas del Río (; 21 May 1895 – 19 October 1970) was a Mexican army officer and politician who served as president of Mexico from 1934 to 1940. Born in Jiquilpan, Michoacán, to a working-class family, Cárdenas joined the Me ...

in Tetelcingo. ''Dr. Ricardo Pittman'' began his linguistic studies in Tetelcingo and he wrote several works about ''Mösiehuali̱'', including ''A Grammar of Tetelcingo (Morelos) Nahuatl'', (Pittman, 1954). An illegal, secret graveyard used by the government was discovered in Tetelcingo December 9, 2014. When the government was compelled to exhume the bodies in 2016, 117 bodies were discovered. Of these, 84 demonstrated signs of violence, including amputations and the removal of internal organs. 34 bodies involved cases that the police had not even bothered to investigate. A similar mass graveyard was later discovered in

Jojutla Jojutla is a municipality in the state of Morelos, Mexico. Its municipal seat is the city of ''Jojutla de Juárez''. The name ''Jojutla'' comes from Nahuatl ''Xoxōuhtlān'' () and means, ''Place of abundant blue skies''. Another interpretation is ...

. 30,000 people have "disappeared" in Mexico in the years up to February, 2018.https://www.huffingtonpost.com.mx/2018/02/28/el-fantasma-de-las-fosas-de-tetelcingo-regresa-a-morelos-mientras-las-victimas-luchan-para-encontrar-a-sus-desaparecidos_a_23372511/ (Dec 20, 2018)

References

Āmatlapohualistli de Don Lázaro Cárdenas
(A text in Mösiehuali recounting an important part of Tetelcingo's history: visits from President Cárdenas in the 1930s) {{Coord, 18, 52, 08, N, 98, 55, 58, W, type:city_source:kolossus-nowiki, display=title Populated places in Morelos