Tequixquiac is a municipality located in the Zumpango Region of the State of Mexico in Mexico. The municipality is located north of Mexico City within the valley that connects the Valley of Mexico with the Mezquital Valley. The name comes from Nahuatl and means "place of tequesquite waters". The municipal seat is the town of Santiago Tequixquiac, although both the town and municipality are commonly referred to as simply "Tequixquiac".
The municipality is known as the "cradle of prehistoric art in the Americas" because of the sacrum bone and other artifacts found in the region.
History The sacrum bone found in Tequixquiac is considered a work of prehistoric art. The first indigenous settlers of Tequixquiac were the Aztecs and Otomi, who settled permanently due to the abundance of rivers and springs. They were engaged mainly in agriculture and the breeding of domestic animals.
In 1152, the Aztecs, on their way from Tula-Xicocotitlan to Tequixquiac and the Valley of Mexico, decided to settle for a short time at a place called Tepetongo. This land was named Teotlalpan by Tepanecs tribe.
In 1168, the village of Tequixquiac was founded, which had approximately 250 houses scattered the length and breadth of the nearby hills. Tequixquiac village was conquered by the Aztecs under the rule of Emperor Chimalpopoca.
During colonization after the fall of Tenochtitlan, Hernán Cortés rewarded his soldiers with parcels of land. One of them was Tequixquiac, which was given to two Spaniards: Martín López, builder of the brigantines used in taking Tenochtitlan, and Andrés Núñez. López and Núñez split the parcel in two, and their children inherited it after their death. Tequixquiac belonged to the Zitlatepec corregimiento. At this time the Viceroy Luís de Velasco made regulations on the Encomienda system, mandating the protection of indigenous people.
In the territory of Tequixquiac, the Apaxco and Hueypoxtla regions had deposits of limestone. Grants awarded to the Spanish introduced a thriving industry using indigenous labor, decimating the population in conditions of extreme poverty and forced labor.
By 1552, families dispersed by a Tlaxcaltec named Francisco Lopez de Tlaltzintlale were gathered and stripped of their land; these possessions were distributed through royal grants to Spaniards, some were Marranos or New Christians (Sephardic settlement converted to Roman Catholic religion).
The Spanish Empire sought to justify their acts through the Christian missions. The Franciscans arrived in New Spain in 1524, but clerics arrived even before that to proselytize to the natives, building a chapel in each encomienda.
With the help of the Franciscan friars, the temple of Saint James the Apostle was built, raising Tequixquiac from the rank of vicarage to parish. The Church of Santiago Tequixquiac became a parish in 1590. The construction of the building was carried out in different stages. The parish is a large atrium space with a cross of carved stone in the center. Indigenous and Christian symbols adorn the four corner chapels in the pits. There is an open chapel with columns on the facade and two stone jambs built by Native Americans and carved with work from their philosophical perspective. The temple was dedicated to Santiago Apóstol, because some families from Galicia, Asturias, Andalusia, and Leon were in the region.
At the beginning of the political jurisdiction, Tequixquiac covered the current territory of Tlapanaloya without the people to be integrated into the eighteenth century. The independence movement spread to Tequixquiac through the medium of dances and arrieria. Tequixquiac was among the first municipalities constituted in the province, on November 29, 1820, by joining the Mexican War of Independence on the basis of the Cadiz Constitution.
Bando Municipal for the December 17, 1823, he published Tequixquiac the form of government that would govern the country. 'Mexican nation adopts for its government as representative of People's Federal Republic,' published in the same way the oath to the Constitution of the United Mexican States in October 1824.
By Decree 41 of April 8, 1825, was added to Zumpango: Hueypoxtla and Tequixquiac belonging andalusia Tetepango party, based on the law at the same time, the prefect of Tula and separates Tequixquiac haciendas de Tena and corners of the municipality of Guadalupe Atitalaquia.
The Grand Canal was built through Tequixquiac during the presidency of Porfirio Díaz in order to drain the Valley of Mexico. It was the second phase of construction by British company Mexican Prospecting and Finance Co Ltd. y la Read & Campbell in 1867, the workers stayed in encampments around the Hacienda of Acatlan in El Tajo de Tequixquiac. During its construction many archeological finds were uncovered of early existence of humans in this area. One of the engineers of the canal project, Tito Rosas, is credited with finding the "Sacro de Tequixquiac".
During the Mexican Revolution, General Emiliano Zapata arrived to Tequixquiac and redistributed the lands of the municipality. Approximately 275 hectares of land was redistributed under the ejido system. Another 3,338 hectares was awarded as ejido land by President Emilio Portes Gil. A system to irrigate these lands was sponsored by President Lázaro Cárdenas between 1937 and 1938, installing a pump to take water out of the drainage canal to irrigate lands here.
Another drainage canal for the Valley of Mexico was built through here in 1954 under the presidency of Adolfo Ruiz Cortines. This spurred economic development of the municipality by increasing the amount of cultivable land. The construction of a highway connecting the municipality to Zumpango, Apaxco and the state of Hidalgo helped it to reach new markets.
In 2009, Xóchitl Ramírez, a native of the town of Tlapanaloya, became the first female mayor of the municipality. Although she was the first woman to govern the mayor's office, her government was in decline due to public insecurity, violence, corruption scandals, problems with ejidatarios (farmers) over land ownership, and abuses of authority backed by the government of the state and the local council.
The first mayor denounced by citizens in high federal courts, upon proving acts of corruption and embezzlement of money, was Salvador Raúl Vásquez Valencia and some members of his city council.
Geography
The municipality is located in the northern part of the State of Mexico.
The town of Santiago Tequixquiac, the municipal seat, has governing jurisdiction over the following communities: La Heredad, San Miguel, Tlapanaloya, El Cenicero, Colonia Wenceslao Labra, Colonia La Esperanza, Palo Grande, Monte Alto, El Crucero, La Arenilla, La Rinconada and La Vega. The municipality has a total area of and borders the municipalities of Apaxco, Hueypoxtla, Zumpango, Huehuetoca and the state of Hidalgo.
The Gran Canal de Desagüe (known as the Xothé River in the Otomi language) is an artificial channel which crosses Tequixquiac. This channel connects with the Tula river and Enthó dam. Other small rivers which connect with Gran Canal are the Río Salado of Hueypoxtla, the Treviño river, and the La Pila river.
The municipal seat is located in a small, narrow valley, but most of the municipality is on a high mesa between the Valley of Mexico and the Mezquital Valley. The highest mountain in Tequixquiac is the Cerro Mesa Ahumada, with an elevation of above sea level, on the border between the municipalities of Huehuetoca and Apaxco.
Flora and fauna There is a diversity in plants and animals of temperate climate (Mexico Valley) and semi-arid climate (Mezquital Valley).Rodríguez Peláez, Maria Elena, Monografía municipal de Tequixquiac, Denominación y toponinimia, Instituto Mexiquense de Cultura, Toluca de Lerdo, 1999. p.p. 44.
Plants native to the municipality include:
Native animals include: cacomistle, skunk, gopher, Virginia opossum, rabbit, Mexican gray squirrel, turkey, colibri, turkey vulture, northern mockingbird, rattlesnake, pine snake, xincoyote (Sceloporus spinosus), red warbler, rufous-crowned sparrow, lesser roadrunner, great horned owl, axolotl, frog, toad, red ant, bee, and others.
In prehistoric times, the area was populated by large mammals such as glyptodonts, mammoths, horses, and bison.
Ecology and environment Tequixquiac is one of the State of Mexico's municipalities with a low environmental impact. Its people have denied any proposed municipal plan for urban development. The town has a large pool of rain water catchment for the Valley of Mexico, the soil is not contaminated by industry.
The people have an attachment to the land and the natural environment. As a semi-rural municipality in proximity to the Mexico City metropolis, Cerro Mesa Ahumada is a well-preserved natural area with many species of flora and fauna that are no longer possible to see in neighboring municipalities.
In addition, Tequixquiac is one of the metropolitan municipalities of Mexico City where the environmental footprint is moderate. The impact of industrial and urban activities is lower than in other municipalities in the state. However, a major environmental problem that residents face is over the Tequixquiac Tunnel, opened during the government of former president Porfirio Díaz. The tunnel has been a locus of infection and waste gases given off by sewage from residential, commercial, industrial, and hospital areas of Mexico City.
Tequixquiac Tunnel causes debate among the locals, the Comición Nacional del Agua (National Water Commission), and different levels of government. Continuing to build the extension of the tunnel on the Gran Canal would bring a million-dollar water project to the area. Wastewater is used to support agriculture, and the land filters the water as it is decanted into the ground. The water also contributes to a number of underground streams vital to the ecological balance of the area. Restricting the water supply for agricultural use would increase land speculation and force ejidatarios to sell their land for housing development. This would leave a great ecological impact on the country, since this region and others in the Midwest serve as buffer areas for rain water filtration, buffer zones between Mexico City and less urbanized land, and regulators for the temperature of the Valley of Mexico.
Communication and transport Many paths and road in Teotlalpan had been built by the Aztec people to control the area, including an old road connecting the mythic Tula Xicocotlán with Texcoco Valley, crossing Tequixquiac. During the Spanish conquest and colonial period, this road was used for merchant traffic including freight of stone, silver, gold, lime, fruits, corn, wood, wine and furnitures. The Spanish built the camino real () from Tepotzotlán to Actopan, connecting with Camino Real de Tierra Adentro, crossing by Coyotepec, Huehuetoca, Tequixquiac, Tlapanaloya, Hueypoxtla, Apaxco, Santa Maria Ajoloapan, Ajacuba, Tezontlale, Ixcuincuilapilco, San Agustín, Tecama, Tepenene and Chicabasco. This Camino Real was connected with others ways named; Camino Real to Tizatuca and Camino Real of San Sebastian Buenavista to Zumpango.
After independence, the first works for the Gran Canal de la Ciudad de México () were started; an English company, Read & Campbell Company, won the contract. The Mexican government with an English company built a railroad from Progreso de Obregón to Tequixquiac to transport workers, tools, material, light energy and merchant products to Mexico City from Progreso de Obregón, Apaxco and Tequixquiac. The first railroad was destroyed during the Mexican Revolution, but other railroad lines to Querétaro City and Mexico City were built.