Tapachultec

The Tapachultec are the Mixe-Zoque-speaking people of the Soconusco coast of Chiapas in southern Mexico, centered on Huehuetán and Tonalá. Their tongue may descend from the speech of the ancient Mokaya and Izapa cultures of the same coast.

In the sixteenth century the friar Alonso Ponce heard it along much of the Chiapas littoral and noted that its speakers used Nahuatl when dealing with Spanish authorities. In 1576 the official Palacio called the language Vebetlateca, after Huehuetán, then the chief town of the region. Epidemics cut deep into the coastal population, and during the seventeenth century Mam migrants from the highlands moved into the depleted lands, their speech replacing Tapachultec in towns such as Ayutla.