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.

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

Mexican citizens and foreign residents were still reeling under the weight of President Enrique Peña Nieto’s most recent brain storm – a new, amazingly confusing, confused and onerous set of tax laws – when the Republic was hit by a government move surprising economists here and abroad.

(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.

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).

During Enrique Peña Nieto’s successful campaign for president and during the first months of his administration, beginning in December 2012, he vowed that his government would end the close relationship between Mexican and United States security programs, halting the “perp walks” of captured drug lords and their lieutenants before television cameras.