Cuitlatec

Cuitlatec is an extinct language isolate, spoken along the Pacific coast and Balsas river country of Guerrero, a land the Aztecs called Cuitlatecapan. Its Nahuatl name comes from cuitlatl, a vulgar word for excrement; the people called themselves a'nelgai.

They may have been heirs of the Mezcala culture. In the late Postclassic their coastal polity centered on Mexcaltepec, while the Balsas communities fell under the Purepecha Empire and the rest were subdued by Aztec campaigns including Itzcoatl's in the 1430s.

The Cuitlatec grew maize, cacao and cotton and resisted the Spaniards for more than sixty years. Epidemics emptied their towns, and Mexcaltepec was abandoned by 1580. The Relacion de Ajuchitlan of 1579 records place names such as Tithichuc umo, meaning water with flowers, and the priest Martin de Espinosa y Monzon compiled a grammar at Ajuchitlan. Wordlists and grammar sketches preserve the language.