Zautla Municipality is a
municipality
A municipality is usually a single administrative division having corporate status and powers of self-government or jurisdiction as granted by national and regional laws to which it is subordinate.
The term ''municipality'' may also mean the go ...
in the
Mexican state
The states of Mexico are first-level administrative territorial entities of the country of Mexico, which is officially named Mexico, United Mexican States. There are 32 federal entities in Mexico (31 states and the capital, Mexico City, as a sepa ...
of
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 south-eastern
Mexico.
History
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 ...
passed through here in 1519, on his expedition to
Montezuma II. Called Xocotlan at the time, Diaz noted, "when we saw the gleam of the flat roof-tops and the ''
Cacique
A ''cacique'' (Latin American ; ; feminine form: ''cacica'') was a tribal chieftain of the Taíno people, the indigenous inhabitants at European contact of the Bahamas, the Greater Antilles, and the northern Lesser Antilles. The term is a Spa ...
s houses, and their ''cues'' and idol houses, which were very high and painted white, they seemed very much like certain towns in our native Spain. In fact we called the place Castilblanco." Olintecle was the ''Cacique''. Diaz relates, "I remember that in the square where some of their ''cues'' stood were many piles of human skulls, so neatly arranged that we could count them, and I reckoned them at more than a hundred thousand." Olintecle provided "twenty of his best warriors to go with us."
[Diaz, B., 1963, The Conquest of New Spain, London: Penguin Books, ]
References
Municipalities of Puebla
{{Puebla-geo-stub