Cihuatlan

Cihuatlan lay around Zihuatanejo bay on the Pacific coast of what is now Guerrero. Its Nahuatl name meant “place of women”. In the Postclassic period its towns belonged to Cuitlatepan, a Cuitlatec-speaking dominion centered on Mexcaltepec.

Between 1497 and 1504 the Mexica emperor Ahuitzotl conquered the coast. Cihuatlan became an Aztec tribute province, recorded in the Codex Mendoza and Matrícula de Tributos. Spanish forces arrived in the 1520s; the Cuitlatec resisted for more than sixty years despite war and epidemics, before the old towns were abandoned.