It has often been pointed out that the institutional reverence accorded Cuauhtemoc, the last Mexica (Aztec) emperor, is the result of Emperor Moctezuma II’s poor showing against the Spanish.

On a visit in 1978 to the old province of Tuspa, we had the privilege of staying with a Nahua family.

The most intriguing repositories of history we encountered during a recent visit to the ancient province of Tuspa (now the municipality  of Tuxpan, some 90 miles south of Guadalajara) were people of Nahua ancestry. And among the most delightful of these were two elderly sisters thought by many townspeople, our Nahua hosts told us, to be brujas (witches).

(The writer and his wife were guests in the town of Tuxpan in 1978. This is part of a series written at that time.)

The old province of Tuspa, as that region of southern Jalisco was designated when Mexico was a colony of Nueva España, contains the ancient valleys and headwaters of the Tepalcatepec and Tuxpan river systems, located at the western end of the Sierra de Michoacan.

In the Spanish Colonial province of Tuspa — “obedient to the royal will of Don Carlos I with the grace of God, King of Castilla, of Leon, of Toledo, of Aragon, of Valencia, of Galisia, of Mayorca, of Murzia, of Iren, of Sevilla, of Granada, of Gibraltar, of the two Cicilias, islands and firm lands of the great ocean, count of Barcelona and of Flanders” — there were very few Spaniards after the Conquistador expeditions of the 1520s had marched through, smashing idols, dismantling temples and scattering local opposing armies.

In the fall of 1978, my wife and I were invited by some Mexican friends to visit their Nahua relatives in the pueblo of Tuspa.