Tututepec

Tututepec, known in Mixtec as Yucu Dzaa, rose above the coastal plain of Oaxaca near the lower Río Verde. It was the capital of a powerful Mixtec kingdom that joined mountain and coastal communities under a ruling dynasty. Painted histories associate its foundation with Eight Deer Jaguar Claw, a celebrated lord whose campaigns and alliances extended across the Mixtec world.

The kingdom remained a major power on the Pacific coast into the sixteenth century. Early in 1522, shortly after the fall of Tenochtitlan, Hernán Cortés sent Pedro de Alvarado against Tututepec. Spanish conquest ended its independence and brought the coastal lordship into a new colonial order. Its political reach and the memory of its rulers survived in Indigenous histories and in the landscape of settlements around the Río Verde.