Cuernavaca is the capital and largest city of the state of Morelos in Mexico. The city is located around a 90 min drive south of Mexico City using the Federal Highway 95D.
The name “Cuernavaca” is derived from the Nahuatl phrase “Cuauhnāhuac” and means “surrounded by or close to trees”. The name was Hispanicized to Cuernavaca; Hernán Cortés called it Coadnabaced in his letters to Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor, and Bernal Díaz del Castillo used the name Cuautlavaca in his chronicles. The coat-of-arms of the municipality is based on the pre-Columbian pictograph emblem of the city which depicts a tree trunk (cuahuitl) with three branches, with foliage, and four roots colored red. There is a cut in the trunk in the form of a mouth, from which emerges a speech scroll, probably representing the language Nahuatl and by extension the locative suffix “-nāhuac”, meaning “near”.
Burials dated to c. 1000 BCE have been found in Gualupita, Morelos, in the north of the city.
The first major culture to inhabit this area was the Tlahuica, whose main settlement was where the city of Cuernavaca is today. The Tlahuicas have inhabited this area at least since the 12th century.
The first incursions south into the area by peoples of the Valley of Mexico occurred in the 12th century, when a lord named Xolotl (ruler of Tetzcoco) conquered most of the Valley of Mexico. An allied Chichimeca tribe also moved south into what is now northern Morelos state, making Techintecuitla lord of the Cuahnahuac (as they called the city) area, with the Tlahuicas concentrated in the nearby towns of Yecapixtla and Yautecatle. According to the Tlatelolco Annals, in 1365, the lord of Cuahnahuac, Macuilxochitl, tried to conquer lands as far as the Valley of Mexico, but was met by the lord of Chalco, Tzalcualtitlan, with similar ambitions.
The first Aztec emperor, Acamapichtli, began to expand his empire to the south of the Valley of Mexico and beyond in the 1370s. His successor, Huitzilihuitl, was eager to press on into what is now Morelos state because of the cotton grown there, it was called Tlalnahuatl at that time. He asked to marry the daughter of the ruler of Tlalnahuatl but was rejected. That rejection started a war that ended with an Aztec victory in 1396. Huitziliuitl then married the princess and Moctezuma I was born of the union. Credit for the conquest of Cuernavaca is given to Acamapichtli in the Mendocino Codex, but later writings cite Itzcóatl, or even Moctezuma I, as the conqueror. The conquered dominion, Tlalnahuac, was roughly the size of the modern state of Morelos, and subsequently was renamed as Cuauhnahuac by the Aztecs.
From 1403 to 1426, this province grew in strength, subduing neighboring peoples such as the Coauixcas. Eventually, the province, then ruled by Miquiuix, rebelled against the Aztec Empire. This rebellion was put down by Totoquihuatzin and Netzahualcoyotl in 1433. This area then joined in the conquests of what now are known as Taxco, Tepecuacuilco, and Ocuilán. For tribute purposes, the dominion was divided into two zones, one headed by Cuauhnahuac and the other by Huaxtepec.
