Ixtlan

Ixtlán stands in a high valley of the northern Oaxacan mountains, in a region long inhabited by Zapotec communities. Before the Spanish conquest it was an independent Zapotec polity; the mountain Zapotecs were subdued around 1523–24. In the seventeenth century Santo Tomás Ixtlán was separated from the jurisdiction of Chicomesúchil, marking another change in the organisation of the mountain settlements.