Tetellan

Tetellan was a Cuitlatec-speaking town in the Balsas basin, in the country the Nahuas called Cuitlatecapan. Its name survived in the village of Tetela del Río.

In the late Postclassic the hill towns lay between the Purépecha and Aztec empires, which subdued most Cuitlatec communities. The geographical survey of 1579 named Tetela and Ajuchitlán among places where Cuitlatec was still spoken. After the Spanish conquest, mines opened nearby at the end of the sixteenth century, and the district was for a time called the Jurisdiction of Tetela.