Tecamachalco

Tecamachalco lies southeast of Puebla on the road toward the Tehuacán valley. Before the Spanish conquest it was a Popoloca lordship, by then influenced by Nahua language and culture. The town became a Franciscan centre, and its church and convent served a large and dispersed Indigenous population in the surrounding rural country.

In the 1540s Franciscan friars undertook the evangelization of Tecamachalco. Under Andrés de Olmos the community was moved to a new site, where the religious complex was built. Fray Francisco Toral studied the Popoloca language and prepared a grammar and vocabulary, making the convent a centre for its study. By the end of the sixteenth century the town was held in encomienda while remaining under Franciscan religious care.