Juxtlahuaca

Juxtlahuaca lay among the Mixtec communities of western Oaxaca. Dominican missionaries arriving in the 1530s encouraged people to leave hill settlements for the valley. The colonial town was established there on 13 September 1542. Indigenous leaders remained important: the cacique governor Lorenzo Suárez de Mendoza sought formal land titles for the community, obtaining them in 1585.

In 1592 the corregidor was instructed to mark boundaries and settle disputes with neighbouring Tecomaxtlahuaca. A Dominican house was established in 1595, while the town centre shifted northward in the early seventeenth century. The church of Santiago was built between 1620 and 1633. In 1643 the Indigenous governor Vicente Baltasar commissioned a boundary map and a town model, continuing local efforts to define territory within colonial institutions.