Mindscapes and architectural heritage in rural Mexico

1 Introduction

Cultural life, cognition, and affect are increasingly important factors influencing how places are produced, inhabited, and valued. However, these discussions are often informed by urban, Eurocentric or technological perspectives that overlook rural Indigenous cosmovisions as well as their contributions to landscape and heritage studies. The global discourses typically emphasize material infrastructures, regulation, and design practices, while landscapes and architectures of communities are marginalized.

This article examines how a specifically rural landscape mentality contributes to shaping a heritage built environment in a former pueblo de indios in central Mexico. In Santa Maria de los Reyes Huatlatlauca, Indigenous descendants value space differently. Globalization and economic changes have altered how plazas are occupied, resulting in changes in agricultural, architectural, ritual, and festive practices. In addition to preserving memory, fostering social unity, and preserving culture amidst modern challenges, the community values its everyday spaces. The stone-and-palm houses, chapels, plazas, streets, and farmlands are “habitats of the mind.” In this heritage environment, everyday and ritual practices shape the ex-convent, chapels, homes, plazas, and agricultural spaces as part of what defines and values their territory.

Little attention has been paid to how Indigenous mentalities influence heritage built environments in Latin America. A rich body of literature exists on mentalities, landscape, and heritage in Europe and other regions, but very few studies have examined these dynamics in Latin America, or the linguistic continuity, ritual life, and daily practices of small rural communities. It is difficult to comprehend how Indigenous cosmologies, languages such as Nahuatl, and community-based ritual offices contribute to the formation of mindcapes in heritage settings. These aspects of Indigenous environments remain unexplored, in spite of their potential to reveal shared representations of territory.

The article examines how local landscape mentalities play a role in how heritage built environments are perceived, valued, and used, as well as how Indigenous languages, cosmovision, and local institutions play a role in this process. A further focus of this study is on the effects of migration, economic change, and architectural modernization on mentalities, cultures, and heritage environments. Using a culturally grounded perspective that challenges urban and Eurocentric perspectives, this study shows how mentalities shape and sustain rural Latin American heritage landscapes by providing new insights.

1.1 Historical context

The inhabitants of Huatlatlauca, descendants of local Indigenous groups who participated in the mendicant order conquest and territorial reorganization in the sixteenth century, have experienced significant changes in recent decades due to migration, shifts in productive activities, and globalization's influence. Huatlatlauca's natural and architectural landscapes, where spatial value is linked to daily life, remain strongly linked to the change in how inhabitants engage with, value, and signify their territories. Local actors actively engage with their environments, creating materials that reflect their social relations and contribute to collective identities, changing their practices and values of territory.

Santa Maria de los Reyes Huatlatlauca is not being completely reconstructed here, but a broad timeline is essential for contextual analysis. As it is geographically close to Tecamachalco and Tehuacán, Huatlatlauca is often categorized as Popoloca in a general sense; however, residents acknowledge that the classification is imprecise. In Nahuatl, popoloca means “a person who babbles” because the Popoloca language differs phonetically from Nahuatl. Popolocas inhabited Puebla's southern region in the fifteenth century between Tula's fall and Mexica expansion, where they gained their greatest development and territorial consolidation (Castillo, 2014). Popoloca provincial centers were Tecamachalco, Tehuacán, and Tepexi (Jäcklein, 1978), located 70, 40, and 15 km apart from Huatlatlauca today and owned by different territorial jurisdictions. Despite Huatlatlauca's present-day majority Nahua status, this historical layering of ethnicities highlights territorial complexity analyzed here as overlapping mindscapes.

As related by Ricard (2014), the first mendicant order in this municipality were the Franciscans, around 1,541. The church used to function as the head town and had subject settlements surrounding it, such as neighborhoods or visiting chapels, while also being affiliated with Tecamachalco as a “visita” of the village. After 1,549, when the Augustinians finally acquired the site, Huatlatlauca was considered a minor settlement by scale, though not of little significance (Figure 1).

Physical–political organization was also characterized by territorial syncretism, which facilitated acceptance and rapid adjustment to the new order due to the similarity between Indigenous and Spanish patterns. Huatlatlauca arose from several calpolli (settlements subordinate to a principal town) that were located near a watercourse, such as the Atoyac River. While the calpolli likely occupied the area surrounding the convent, the grouped calpolli became the present-day neighborhoods, each with its own community and religious center.

Convents served two primary purposes: as a refuge for Spanish conquerors, and as fortresses against Indigenous attacks. Thus, the double conquest of military and spiritual was completed through the convent. As a collective organization, a pueblo de indios operated (and continues to operate) as a collective organization, in which each actor contributed to the common good of the neighborhood, locality, and town as a whole, creating attachment and a sense of identity among the inhabitants. A turning point was reached in 1,570 when Franciscan friars and Augustinians decided on civic, ecclesiastical, and customary matters at the municipal seat (Olmedo Muñoz, 2012; Vernadsky, 1945). The mendicant orders acted both as promoters of religion and as administrators of the territory until the Reform Laws separated church and state.

Landscape in Huatlatlauca is the result of centuries of interaction between Nahua indigenous cosmology and European-predominantly Franciscan Catholic-spatial and symbolic frameworks. By preserving its syncretistic cultural identity, the community also preserves its structural condition. The church-atrium spatial complex, the mayordomía system, and the fiesta patronal can only be understood as syncretic assemblages containing indigenous and European agencies. The similarity between Indigenous and Spanish patterns facilitated acceptance and rapid adaptation to this new system of norms through territorial syncretism. Thus Huatlatlauca was formed as a result of several calpoltin (settlements controlled by a principal town), built near a water tributary, the Atoyac River.

Franciscans adapted the pre-existing Indigenous urban structure by identifying centers of the Mexica Empire and autonomous lordships known as altepetls (Rubial García, 2002, p. 23). Each neighborhood had its own chapel, while more distant ones were treated as visiting communities. For evangelization, three types of religious buildings were built: convent complexes, neighborhood chapels, and visita chapels. By blending Indigenous and Spanish patterns, territorial syncretism influenced physical-political organization. These “pueblos de indios” are particularly relevant for analyzing Huatlatlauca's spatial layout, as most sixteenth-century settlements were referred to by this term. Spanish settlements in central Mexico and other regions were called cities and towns, overseeing various altepetls or rural towns, but the title of “city” was more symbolic than functional and could cause confusion if applied to an altepetl.

In Huatlatlauca's spatial value system, natural and architectural landscapes reveal social relations, while narratives about continuity, social cohesion, and culture reinforce continuity and cohesion. A patrimonialization process is often unnoticed due to its manifestations in physical space, architecture, and the environment, shaped by local cosmogonies in the context of contemporary challenges. The territorial structure manifests this agency in space-time dynamics. Streets, plazas, atria, churches, and nature connect individuals, families, neighborhoods, and municipalities. This affective relationship reinforces social structures and everyday life dynamics. To analyze how shared ideas, beliefs, and feelings about territory shape the built environment of rural Indigenous communities, three interrelated conceptual pillars will be used: the mindscapes concept, place attachment and symbolic appropriation.

1.2 Theoretical background

The ways in which people perceive, think, and value the world are a profound historical explanation that transcends events and structures (López-Silvestre, 2003). This tradition emphasizes the mental, affective, and symbolic ways in which communities make sense of their built and natural environments. According to Augustin Berque (1995; 2009), landscape is not just a material arrangement but also a cultural product of a society based on concepts of mediance and proto-landscape. Despite the absence of explicit landscape concepts, societies can relate to territories via an implicit “landscape thought” that organizes perception and practice. Due to rapid changes in the environment, cultural landscape approaches are becoming increasingly relevant, emphasizing the integration of socio-cultural and biophysical factors (Urquijo Torres, 2025). Essentially, landscape mentality functions as a kind of generalized matrix of meaning, linking individual experience with collective identity and territorial organization in order to create a shared, culturally constituted way of appreciating, valuing, and responding to the natural environment.

Using the concept of mindscape, we can examine territories undergoing global environmental and social crises. In mindscape, the subjective, experiential dimension of landscape is distinguished from its physical (matterscape) and normative (powerscape) layers, arguing that the perceiving subject experiences landscape through biological, cultural, and personal processes (Jacobs, 2006). Mindscapes are individual, subjective constructions of landscape experience: the mental, emotional, and cultural layers that make physical environments meaningful. Since landscapes have always already been culturally-charged with the memories, myths, and obsessions of their inhabitants, mindscapes are not in opposition to landscapes, but rather the experiential dimension that activates them (Schama, 1995).

Religious, civic, and epistemic authorities define legitimate landscape meanings, designate sacred and profane sites, and exclude or include voices. Shared memories and cultural connections do not form mindscapes alone. Power, authority, and institutional control also shape them and “powerscape”, shaped by unequal authority structures, contributes to a plural rather than singular community mindscape. These mindscapes are often endorsed by religious institutions, heritage agencies, and local authorities and Heritage conflicts, land use conflicts, religious conflicts, and territorial disputes constantly reorganize mindscapes. However, landscapes are not understood only visually or intellectually, but also through movement, sensory perception, memory, emotion, and daily activities, such as walking, farming, ritual participation, or living, that are referred to as embodiment. Depending on how communities value, regulate, and inhabit landscapes, territorial meanings are influenced by political, religious, and social systems. This leads to connections and disruptions, in which “power (from the actors) operates in chains” (Foucault, 1979, p. 144).

The framework is extended and traced from the landscape to the mindscape, walkscape, and infosphere, showing how embodied cognition, along with hybridisation of natural and digital environments, reshapes the way communities respond to ecological disruptions (Tagliagambe and Taddio 2021). Empirical studies of mindscape have shown that community resilience in territories facing socio-spatial crises can be achieved by leveraging collective memory, belonging, and participation (Villalobos, 2023). Therefore, mindscape is a bridging concept between subjective perception and territorial action. The relationship between individual perception and collective mindscape is not one of simple aggregation. Individual perceptions function socially only when embedded in networks of practice, artifact, and narrative. Hence, the dominant mindscape of a community is always a political achievement that amplifies some voices, materials, and memories while silences or marginalizes others. Despite partial overlap, Huatlatlauca has at least three distinct mindscape configurations that are not reducible to one another: Nahua-language territorial mindscape, syncretic Catholic-indigenous ceremonial mindscape, and generational mindscape expressed through cognitive mapping by children.

Interdisciplinary research has recently reactivated the concept of noosphere and linked it to the anthroposphere, a collective of human-modified environments, such as buildings, infrastructure, agricultural plots, and ritual landscapes. The anthroposphere is conceptualised as a set of locally shared mental, spiritual, and narrative structures through which the community understands and interacts with its territory (Rispoli, 2023). These shared mentalities produce and maintain a built environment known as the anthroposphere (ex-convents, chapels, vernacular houses, plazas, streets, and natural-cultural features). Urban and cultural heritage environments may serve as psychosocial anchors for identity, belonging, and well-being as well as physical infrastructure.

Using a dwelling perspective, indigenous cosmovisions reveal that buildings and landscapes do not emerge from inert matter, but rather emerge as a result of ongoing, relational interactions between humans and their environments (Ingold, 2000). Meanwhile, philosophies such as totemism, naturalism, and analogism offer a framework to understand the relationship communities have with natural phenomena like rivers and mountains. The goal of such agents is to achieve moral significance, thus dissolving conventional Western boundaries between culture and nature (Descola, 2013). Research on Indigenous landscape architecture and spatial practices reinforces this perspective, showing how Indigenous cosmologies can serve as epistemic frameworks rather than mere “beliefs”, thus serving as foundations for sustainable design. By rethinking built environments according to relational ontologies and multispecies entanglements, indigenous knowledge can provide critical insights (Kawiti et al. 2025). In landscape architecture, for example, indigenous knowledge revives senses of belonging, identity, and environmental stewardship (Marques et al. 2018).

Heritage in this paper is understood as a dynamic social process that selects cultural significance for places, practices, and memories. Community-based claims of cultural continuity are woven together with institutionally authorized heritage designations by institutions, religious groups, and specialized bodies. Mentalities materialize in specific spaces based on the emotional and cognitive connections between people and places. Environmental psychology has developed place attachment theory to explain the sense of belonging and connection individuals and groups have to specific places (Scannell and Gifford, 2010). By transforming spaces into meaningful places, people appropriate space symbolically as a dialectical process (Vidal and Pol, 2005). In heritage contexts, there is evidence that place attachment influences sustainable behaviors and community engagement.

Traditional rural landscapes that emphasize their multifunctional nature are identified using environmental, cultural, and socioeconomic considerations (Pan et al., 2025). In UNESCO-listed heritage corridors, both object-related and existential authenticity contribute to strengthening place identity and place dependence (Zhu et al. 2025). It has been shown, for example, that sustainable heritage construction behaviors are mediated by local knowledge and kinship networks in a Chinese heritage village as a result of religion-related place attachments (Cai et al. 2025). Moreover, studies have shown the responsibility of local communities to restore and enhance the value of cultural heritage (Iaione et al. 2022). Therefore, cultural heritage can be used as a resource to address contemporary challenges, as well as to encourage local adaptation and resilience (Donovan et al. 2025; Järvelä 2023).

2 Methodology

2.1 Study area

Santa María de los Reyes Huatlatlauca is a rural municipality within the Mixteca region of Puebla, in central Mexico. The town is historically classified as a former pueblo de indios, and is composed of a municipal seat, a parish church, neighborhood chapels, and dispersed hamlets. This site was chosen for investigation due to its theoretically representative nature. Since it is a community exhibiting active Nahuatl use as well as a living heritage complex anchored in a Franciscan convent, the ongoing process of patrimonialization and tension between traditional community governance and municipal institutional structures make it a worthwhile methodological choice.

The settlement pattern is characterized by a compact historic center, surrounded by smaller communities linked by local roads, ravines, and agricultural plots in the Tentzo hill and Atoyac River landscape. Among the 6,111 residents, 3,327 are women and 2,784 are men, and 53.9% speak an Indigenous language, mostly Nahuatl, reflecting the area's Indigenous identity and cosmovision. Agricultural activities dominate the economy, but recurring flooding and limited employment opportunities have encouraged strong migrations towards northern Mexico and the United States, affecting the built environment and everyday life. In the built landscape, there are vernacular stone houses with palm roofs, modern concrete and brick constructions, and religious architectures (exconvents, parishes, neighborhood chapels) that organize rituals and territories (Figure 2).

2.2 Data collection

Using a qualitative ethnographic approach, this study examines the relationship between landscape mentality and heritage built environments from the perspective of local actors. Observation, open and semistructured interviews, a focus group with children, and photographic and documentary records were used to collect data in two fieldwork campaigns in 2023 and 2024. From 3 July to 31 November 2023, 11 documents, 9 audio recordings, and 778 photographs were collected from the first fieldwork campaign. Open interviews were conducted with six community members, two built heritage specialists from INAH, and one external participant. 41 children from nine localities and barrios of Huatlatlauca participated in a focus group, answering six semistructured questions through drawings and oral explanations about important places and figures in the town. The second fieldwork campaign conducted between 8 April and 7 May 2024 lasted 30 days. A total of 16 documents, 119 photographs, and 15 semistructured interviews with members of the community were produced during this period. In a field notebook, notes were recorded systematically during religious festivities, meetings and everyday activities in the municipal seat and several localities.

The participants were chosen using purposive and snowball sampling to represent a varied range of perspectives, such as age, gender, neighborhood/locality, level of involvement in religious and community roles, and migration paths. Inclusion criteria included: being 18 or older (for interviews with adults), living in the municipality for at least five years (except for specific external key informants), and willing to share perceptions, experiences and perceptions (Table 1).

Table 1. Profile of interview participants.

2.3 Analytical approach

A qualitative, inductive, and thematic approach was followed to analyze the data, consistent with ethnographic methodology. Interview transcripts were read iteratively, along with field notes, documents, drawings, and photographs, to identify recurrent themes and patterns related to perceptions of territory, valuations of the built and natural environment, rituals, and social practices. An iterative process of open coding, axial coding and selective coding was used to move from descriptive labels to more abstract analytical categories. A few of the initial codes included, among others, “important places”, “sacred spaces”, “Ex Convent”, “chapels”, “Tentzo hill”, “market day”, “migration”, “house materials”, “language and naming”, “ritual roles”, and “children's views”. These codes were then grouped into broader categories such as “habitats of the mind”, “heritage built environment”, “Indigenous cosmovision and landscape”, and “community governance of space”.

Landscape heritage mentality was operationalized by linking mental, spiritual, and affective dimensions (beliefs, memories, values) to specific materials and spatial practices. By identifying the spatial elements most frequently represented in focus group drawings (churches, houses, streets, hills) and comparing them with adult narratives, we explored intergenerational changes and continuities. A triangulation of data sources (interviews, observations, documents, visual materials), methods (individual interviews, group discussions, observation) and actors (different generations, genders, roles) enhanced the analytical rigor. Participants provided informal feedback on preliminary interpretations during the second fieldwork campaign (member checking) which strengthened credibility, transferability and dependability.

By emphasizing the lived experiences of those who endow the landscape with meaning, this perspective enriches environmental analysis. Since ethnography operates on three levels, it can record everyday life directly, analyze social phenomena to explain them, and interpret perceptions and meanings. Formal discourses, everyday narratives, and symbolic expressions were captured using open interviews, semistructured interviews, and participant observation. The tools provided a comprehensive view of the community's landscape mentality, emphasizing the importance of inhabitants' experiences and thoughts.

2.4 Ethical considerations

Human research with human participants was conducted according to ethical principles. Specifically, the study protocol, including objectives, methods, data management, and anonymization procedures, has been reviewed and approved by the corresponding institutional committee of the Autonomous University of Aguascalientes where this research was done as part of a PhD in Anthropic Sciences with the register D499-EXP.199994. A detailed explanation of the purpose of the study, the voluntary nature of participation, and the right of withdrawal at any time was provided to participants. Informed consent was obtained before each interview or recorded activity, whether verbally or in writing, depending on local communication practices and literacy levels. Focus groups with children were conducted with consent obtained from parents or legal guardians and assent from the children themselves. The consent is stored in the researcher's files. Our participants agreed to have their names used, but family names were omitted or modified as necessary. Transcripts and audio recordings are stored securely and only accessible to researchers. Images of identifiable persons are used only with explicit permission and blurred when necessary. In this publication, we analyze mindscape configurations using oral testimonies, cognitive mappings, and observational records. An upcoming publication will cover the visual production of children and the perspectives of heritage specialists as part of the same research project.

3 Findings

3.1 Demographic context and early landscape perceptions

The 2020 Population and Housing Census of the National Institute of Statistics and Geography (INEGI) reports 6,111 residents, 3,327 of them women and 2,784 men. 1,658 people, or 27.1% of the total population, are in the age groups 5–19. Young children's presence indicates a large cohort of potential future carriers of local traditions, ritual practices, linguistic knowledge, and spatial valuations that sustain heritage built environments. ​A total of 41 children aged 7 to 14 years, from nine localities and barrios in the municipality participated in a focus group to understand how they relate to built and natural environments.

The results obtained from the focus group conducted with 41 children between the ages of 7 and 14 from different localities and neighborhoods of Huatlatlauca make it possible to clearly identify the elements that structure their perception of the community environment. When asked direct questions about the most important places, figures, and events in their community, the responses revealed a remarkable degree of consistency: the church was recognized as the most significant place after the family home, while the priest, the municipal president, and the patron saint festival were identified as central references of collective life (Figures 3a, b).

Asked to name the most important place after home, children consistently named the church of their locality or barrio. These spaces are not just sacred sites, but also places of joy, festivity, and social encounters where celebrations, games, and collective rituals take place. Religions and their immediate surroundings are inscribed in the local landscape mindset as central references of identity, spirituality and belonging, indicating that a church complex is the core of heritage built environments (Table 2).

Table 2. Main categories emerging from the children's focus group regarding important places and figures.

The consistency of these responses ensures that the focus remains on children's authentic expressions of their lived experiences, emphasizing the value of their direct input and the meaningful insights it provides into their everyday reality. References to churches, parish complexes, and key authorities demonstrate the early formation of a landscape mentality centered on the built heritage environment. As a result of these findings, children's initial perceptions of territory are based on built and institutional nodes that serve as mental habitats. These nodes may change with migration, architecture, and local governance in the future. As children internalize the importance of religious spaces as markers for identity, spirituality, and social cohesion, churches are not only viewed as sacred sites, but also as celebration spaces that strengthen architectural heritage as a living and meaningful aspect of community life.

In both religious and political domains, children recognize prominent local figures such as the priest and the municipal president, symbolically transferring community and power dynamics. Children's descriptions of landscape are interpreted in terms of a theoretical framework constructed before fieldwork. It is important to emphasize the children's own vocabulary and organize interpretations based on emerging patterns. Another important aspect is formal schooling. In Huatlatlauca, the local school system transmits certain versions of local history, geography, and culture. Pedagogical mindscapes can reinforce, but also reframe and contradict landscape narratives in family and community contexts.

Cultural practices and festivals are distributed across generations based on age and sex distribution, which supports the development of heritage preservation strategies that encourage active participation by children, youth, and adults in preserving local traditions. By studying the population pyramid, ranging from 0 to 4 to 85 and older, we can identify how age structure and demographic trends influence preservation and transmission of tangible and intangible heritage.

3.2 Nahuatl language

About 53.9% of Santa Maria de los Reyes Huatlatlauca's population, approximately 3,290 individuals, speak at least one indigenous language, mainly Nahuatl (3,267 persons), indicating deep cultural identity. From a mindscape perspective, indigenous languages not only facilitate communication but also carry historical memory, local knowledge, and worldviews intimately related to territory. In Nahuatl, each word, expression, or story is associated with traditional practices, festivities, rural management, and community organization, resulting in an intangible heritage coexisting with the material heritage of the municipality, including exconvents, chapels, and celebration spaces.

Despite migration and urbanization pressures that could otherwise foster cultural loss, Nahuatl demonstrates intergenerational transmission of knowledge and traditions. Therefore, indigenous languages indicate cultural resistance and territorial attachment: speakers not only acknowledge their origins, but also actively engage in appropriating local landscapes, organizing patronal feasts, carnivals and mayordoms, as well as preserving collective memory. As a result of historical migration dynamics and interactions among different indigenous cultures in the territory, the linguistic distribution reflects the municipality's heterogeneity. Language is linked to continuity and ancestry, according to Rafael, a native of the town:

“Well, because these are our roots, yes, I mean, this is what our ancestors left us. There was a time when everyone spoke Nahuatl, so that leads us to… well, at least I love our ancestral culture. Yes, so my second surname is in Nahuatl… so yes… but I’m telling you that in about 10 years, I think there will be fewer people who speak Nahuatl and so… I think it would be completely lost in some 30–40 years. And in the communities, yes… there are many people who speak Nahuatl, there Nahuatl is still very deeply rooted, more than 50% of people still speak Nahuatl, but not here (in the municipal seat), here maybe 10%–20%.” (personal communication, 2023)

Furthermore, Rafael warns that the language could disappear in the municipal seat within a few decades if current trends continue, whereas it remains “deeply rooted” in surrounding communities. Ultimately, this testimony highlights both Nahuatl's historical significance and fragility of its intergenerational transmission in an age of migration and cultural globalization.

Juan shows Nahuatl's descriptive power and its link to living space. It is, according to him:

“—Nahuatl is a descriptive language… several specialists, anthropologists and so on, right?… They tell you that Nahuatl is one of the most cultivated languages in the world, right?…” (personal communication, 2023)

Juan explains that terms outside the local environment, for instance, whales and sharks, do not have original local names because they were not part of the historical habitat. A closer look at vocabulary shows how it is intimately tied to the immediate environment and to landscape experience, reinforcing how language encodes a situated way of inhabiting space.

The descriptive naming of places, materials, and landscape features in Nahuatl embeds a building ontology that shapes the conception, valuation and reproduction of heritage built environments. Through toponyms, terms for construction materials, designations of hills, ravines, and water bodies, and categories for rituals and domestic spaces, the language provides a grid of meaning that organizes the way inhabitants interact with their surroundings. In the second fieldwork campaign, the research team validated initial toponymic interpretations by interviewing community members and Nahuatl speakers (April–May 2024). This indicates that the local landscape mindset is not simply an abstract set of ideas, but rather a linguistically mediated way of seeing and classifying the environment.

Localities and barrios in Nahuatl codify environmental features, resources, and historical memories, thereby connecting language, territory, and built form. Toponyms illustrate how landscape features (palm groves, hills, watercourses) are incorporated into the language, which in turn guides the siting of houses, chapels, and communal infrastructures. Nahuatl's erosion in the municipal seat raises questions about how future generations will name, interpret, and manage their heritage built environment, and whether alternative linguistic and cognitive frameworks will change local landscape mentalities.

Cultural continuity and landscape description cannot explain the Nahuatl toponyms without recognizing their political dimensions. Nahua place-naming systems were never merely descriptive: heads, mats, and lights are symbols of authority, authority, and power (Carrasco, 1971; Schroeder, 1991). A toponym referencing “the mat” could encode the memory of a chiefly seat or a node of political command, adding an archaeology of power to the toponymic record.

Languages like Nahuatl inform intergenerational knowledge transmission, particularly when migration and urbanization threaten cultural continuity. Nahuatl is a symbol of cultural resistance and territorial attachment, both of which allow speakers to connect with their origins and to participate actively in appropriating and preserving local landscapes. By preserving collective memory, the language serves as a repository of intangible heritage. The decline of Nahuatl speakers, particularly in municipal seats, may harm cultural practices, historical memory, and understanding of the immediate environment shaped by Nahuatl (Table 3).

Table 3. Nahuatl toponyms in Huatlatlauca and their place-meanings.

Literal meanings are derived from Nahuatl etymological dictionaries (Siméon, 1977; de Vargas et al., 1579; Karttunen, 1992) cross-referenced with classical sources.

Asterisks (*) indicate references proposed by community informants without direct lexicographic precedent.

In addition to its linguistic components, Nahuatl encodes a territorial worldview that reinforces the relationship between individuals and their environment. Each word in Nahuatl serves as a record of the natural and built landscape, as well as the cultural practices embedded within them. Huatlatlauca's toponyms reflect this dynamic, as they emerge from a convergence of Indigenous and Catholic dimensions. Thus, Nahuatl preservation is inextricably linked to the community's ability to sustain historical memory, territorial identity, and a sense of belonging. If it declines, the sense of place and heritage of the community would be fragmented as well as linguistic diversity.

3.3 Social collaboration networks and community governance of the heritage built environment

Several committees are responsible for preserving cultural representation, maintaining architectural spaces, and safeguarding movable goods. Besides ensuring continuity of festivities, this organizational structure facilitates patrimonialization by legitimizing and updating inherited practices. Every municipality has a microsystem of organization that regulates ritual and festive life and structures communal territory by distributing responsibilities among residents. Churches create cultural landscapes that define roles, festivals, and devotional practices through articulation of social, political, and religious spheres. Through concrete decisions about maintenance, decoration, circulation, and use, membership in cultural institutions directly impacts the heritage built environment.

Priest, Principales, Mayordomos, Commissioners, Fiscales, Community members are organized in different activities and their corresponding spaces of action like ex-convent and parish complex, neighborhood chapels, streets, plazas, households, Tentzo (Table 4).

Table 4. Schematic diagram of the ritual–territorial governance structure.

Each committee includes the Commissioner of Musicians, who guides and protects the band during processions and patronal feasts. It activates a sense of territorial belonging and resignifies the soundscape, which becomes shared intangible heritage for the community as it traverses different spaces. Corral or Arena Commissioners oversee the installation of the corral for the festivities, ensuring its stability and timely construction. Corrals were traditionally divided into segments, with each family responsible for building its own segment; residents climbed Tentzo hill to cut wooden posts. Through this practice, the mountain and the surrounding landscape become both sources of materials and spaces to be respected as they are continually resignified as spaces.

The Commissioner of Flowers and Alms distributes flowers inside and outside the church and during processions, as well as collecting alms for the principals. Through this act, flowers transform the landscape into symbols of devotion and cultural continuity, reinforcing the link between nature, religion, and territory. The Commissioners of the Festival, in turn, are in charge of requesting the financial contributions needed to celebrate the feast day of the town, so that the festival becomes a collective heritage shared by all residents that transcends individual experience. Community offices direct and orchestrate the use and transformation of churches, atria, streets and open spaces by organizing tasks and flows of people, objects, and resources, making the anthroposphere a field of coordinated collective action.

Regarding the architectural space, the Fiscales (church wardens) supervise the maintenance of the church and safeguard its contents, including custody of the building's key. As the community's symbolic center, the church represents not only a religious space, but also a heritage asset around which social and festive activities are organized. Mayordomos organize patronal festivals, which honor the town's patron saint, or the jubilee, an annual event dedicated to restoring debts, relationships, and goods. A mayordomo is designated for each day of the festival week, with the fifth day devoted to the town, financed through donations collected by the festival commissioner. They provide food, drink, fireworks, flowers, music, offerings and everything needed for attendees, whether locals or visitors. There is a high social status associated with being a Mayordomo, due to the investment that is required to perform these duties. This role also synergizes community patrimonialization, making sure that the celebration remains a living practice as well as a symbol that orders the territory, transforms the social landscape, and projects cultural memory in the future.

Principales serve as the central members of this organizational structure and have experience in decision-making regarding general aspects of community participation. Aside from guiding ritual life, they are guardians of collective memory and patrimonialization processes, since their role extends beyond organizing events to ensuring the transmission of practices and knowledge that sustain the community's identity. Additionally, they select and guide new Mayordomos during specific celebrations throughout the year, maintaining continuity of the social network. During patronal festivities, they carry a banner bearing the image of the patron saint, including a ceremonial staff and an embroidered standard, symbols of their authority and role. As this ritual object traverses the community's paths and spaces, it reinforces the festival's living heritage as it reinforces the community's social and ceremonial landscape.

There is a tradition of respect and invitation between a Principal and a Mayordomo called the “promise”. This involves a Principal visiting a potential Mayordomo and presenting a symbolic gift, typically flowers, sugar cane, or beverages, elements derived from nature and having special significance. In the event the host accepts the gift (the commitment), a candle is lit as a symbol of willingness. In addition to preserving traditional customs, this ritual transforms domestic space into a heritage site, and the territory into a stage for community negotiations, adding to the family's culture. This illustrates how community institutions integrate governance practices with built heritage (houses, altars, streets) through the mediation of mindsets. The community has committees with roles preserving cultural and architectural heritage linked to the natural environment, forming a living patrimonialization process that legitimates and updates inherited practices, structuring communal territory and collective memory.

In both material heritage care and intangible heritage preservation, members of this hierarchical social scale respond to the presiding priest, who plays a central role in decision-making processes. As the official representative, the priest is responsible for preserving immovables and movables, which in Mexico fall under the jurisdiction of the federal government. Hence, the priest acts as an interface between national legal frameworks and community patrimonialization processes, ensuring that the festive and religious landscapes of a region are preserved and maintained. Due to Spanish-Indigenous duality resulting from the viceroyalty period, this social structure served as a foundation for communal organization.

An historical patrimonialization process took place within this framework, generating a hybrid form of local governance still remembered in collective memory. Community service appointments varied depending on the Mixteca area of Puebla, but the concept remained the same. According to Ricard, tepixes and tequilatloque are equivalent to fiscals or mandates, and they were not only responsible for gathering neighborhood residents and taking them to mass and catechism lessons, but also for ensuring marriage legitimacy, repressing illegal practices, and denouncing pagan beliefs (2014, p. 183)​. Together, these roles and relationships comprise a place-based governance system of the local anthroposphere, through which cultural institutions systematically shape heritage built environments.

By coordinating who cares for, decorates, uses and transforms specific buildings and spaces, the community's organizational network ensures landscape mentality is translated into concrete spatial practices. Huatlatlauca's ceremonial landscape also contains exclusionary dynamics that analysis must not ignore. Protestant communities often abstain from participating in Catholic rituals, effectively excluding themselves from the patrimonial narrative. As gatekeepers of heritage validation, “prominent men” (regidores, mayordomos, parish priests) indicate that the community mindscape is not horizontally co-constructed, but rather hierarchically mediated.

3.4 Habitat and meaning (architectural landscape)

Nowadays, Huatlatlauca is a territory with very little daily movement. During weeks without festivals, gatherings, or general assemblies of common interest, the town may appear deserted. Residents appropriate the streets, and the natural use of shared public space becomes clearly visible. The weekly market or plaza day is one of the most important recurring events-along with Sunday mass-and takes place along 20 de Noviembre Avenue and Adolfo López Mateos Street, from “La Paz” Street to “Independencia” Street. The vendors set up their stalls between 3:00 a.m. until around 4:00 or 5:00 p.m. During the market days, residents use the streets in a natural manner to sell their products. In a typical week, the town hall and the parish of Santa Maria are the main sources of activity in Huatlatlauca (Figure 4).

Since the decline of agriculture and the scarcity of local jobs, the civil authority has become one of the principal providers of employment, both directly and indirectly. Throughout the day and night, people enter and leave different offices and departments, and many wait under the double-height arcades where the police maintain a permanent security post. As Rafael pointed out:

Agriculture has been in decline because of scarce rainfall, as is happening now, so people have to migrate… they look for work, job opportunities, which are scarce here, almost nonexistent. Yes, so they have to go look elsewhere, and many have found ways to work very well, things have gone quite well for them wherever they are… (personal communication, 2023)​

The street market and areas around the parish hall and town hall serve as everyday habitats for the mind, where economic transactions, social interactions, and institutional encounters take place. Cultural life periodically reconfigures the anthroposphere, establishing streets and plazas as key mental and social references in local landscape mentalities as market corridors and meeting places. However, Huatlatlauca's commercial landscape is not exclusively created by residents. A seasonal vendor, a visitor to the artisan fair, and a mayor all bring external frames of reference into the landscape, sometimes reinforcing it by emphasizing authenticity, and sometimes disrupting it by introducing market framing (Figure 5).

The presence of mendicant orders established an ideology in society whose remnants are still evident in the urban–architectural layout and social organization of Huatlatlauca, which evolved within the context of Indian towns in the sixteenth century. Together with Indigenous heritage, these elements reveal a profound respect and understanding of the natural landscape, which remains the source of a cosmovision that remains as a symbol for identity today.

Stone houses with double-pitched palm roofs and earth or lime mortars were typical of the local architecture, which provided thermal comfort and was closely related to materials extracted from the nearby landscape, particularly the Tentzo mountain. The use of more durable materials like concrete, fired brick, concrete block, and precast slabs has increased in recent decades, altering original typologies that are now only remnants of the past. Stone houses and palm roofs once dominated the town and gave it a distinctive appearance, while palm, in particular, was used in petates, brooms, and roofing (Plácido, personal communication, 2023)​

Traditional houses are not universally favored by community members. A variety of postures are revealed by the fieldwork: elders who associate these houses with their domestic memories; middle-aged residents who saw them replaced by concrete construction, producing an ambivalent landscape of “progress” and children who experience traditional houses primarily through stories and images. Plácido, for instance, remembers being taught to weave petates by his mother when he was a child. The mats and baskets were initially made from otate reeds, using materials abundantly available in the immediate environment. Maternal teaching was not only a transmission of techniques, but also a connection to the territory. These vernacular houses and artisan practices link domestic spaces, construction techniques, and the natural environment to form habitats of the mind (Figure 6).

However, concrete and block constructions reconfigure the anthroposphere, redefining landscape mentality and identity and posing questions about how architectural modernization affects mental habitats.​​ The collapse of agriculture has forced inhabitants of this region to migrate in search of better livelihood opportunities, primarily to northern Mexican states such as Baja California, Durango, Zacatecas, Chihuahua and Tamaulipas, as well as to the United States. In the case of Hermenegildo, who left his hometown at the age of twelve and now lives in Rio Bravo, Tamaulipas, while maintaining ties to his hometown. He affirms that:

During religious festivals like Epiphany on January 6th or Holy Week, migrants come back cyclically to Huatlatlauca as a meeting point. But the younger generations moved to Puebla and are immersed in the culture and the rhythm of their cities, so they don't come back as much (personal communications, 2023)

Remittances sent by migrants have enabled many families to build new, larger and more “modern” houses, often using concrete blocks and slabs instead of stone and palm. Interviewees remark that these materials are perceived as more durable and socially prestigious, although not necessarily more affordable, and that they visibly transform the town's architectural profile. Meanwhile, the former convent and parish complex remain emblematic of the community, with external recognition reinforcing internal valuation. The coexistence of modern housing and historic religious architecture creates a layered heritage landscape (Figure 7).

From a mindscape standpoint, migration and remittances introduce new aspirations, tastes and notions of comfort and status into the community. Current and future generations may experience and imagine their towns differently as a result of the reconfiguration of the built landscape, potentially shifting which spaces function as primary habitats of the mind. The heritage built environment is shaped not only by inherited forms, but also by emerging forms of cultural life. This “living patrimonialization” is observable in concrete practices: the authors documented in their January 2024 fieldwork how the municipal president and the parish priest, both present alongside representatives from the Secretariat of Culture, enacted in real time the intersection of community and institution heritage processes.

As inhabitants recognize architectural and natural spaces as places of joy, spirituality, and memory, they are engaged in a cyclical process of social configuration with their immediate environment. As a result of the data collected, actors from different localities and neighborhoods perceive and value space and representation similarly, resulting in microsystems that are organized around one universally recognized node: the convent. Throughout this process, spaces are not only physically occupied but also resignedified through collective and individual practices. Consequently, the convent becomes a focal point for community cohesion and memory.

3.5 Minscapes and architectural heritage (the convent and the Tentzo hill)

The former convent functions as an administrator of faith, since only the parish office is able to handle mass requests for weddings, baptisms, graduations, funerals, patron saint celebrations, and thanksgivings. According to informal conversations, each locality only achieved independence from the convent in the early 1960s by establishing its own patronal festivities. This implied the creation of an organization similar to a parish in order to establish order at a collective level, and the same occurred at a civil level. In contemporary architectural spaces dedicated to these functions, this process can also be seen in the diversity of their designs, some of which differ significantly from the original landscape (Figure 8).

In Huatlatlauca, fieldwork highlights how residents maintain ties with the territory through architectural spaces, historical memory, community practices, and natural landscapes. Community members repeatedly mention the former convent as the most important and representative place. Originally built by Franciscans and completed by Augustinians in the sixteenth century, this building has transcended its material condition to become a symbol of community. In interviewees, the convent “represents the community” and is known both within and beyond the region as a symbol of Huatlatlauca, it is not simply a religious complex. Many participants note that this building “sets them apart from other communities” and “gives them prestige”. The convent serves as both a calling card and a nucleus of identity through external recognition. Consequently, architectural heritage is valued not only for its age or aesthetic beauty, but also as a marker of belonging.

The convent has a deep spiritual meaning. In this building, stone, lime, and wood combine to form a material structure as well as a sacred space that is marked by rituals and celebrations. Arches, columns, murals, and ornamentation are valued by residents as a reminder of their ancestors. Its deeply rooted character comes from the fact that “the grandparents built it with local materials”. Stone and lime are not only physical resources, but also symbols of historical continuity. According to interviewees, these materials give the space coolness, solidity, and beauty, yet even more important is an affective connection to a structure raised by their grandparents.

Convent activities legitimize the space as a heritage site. There are Bajadas del Angel (Angel's Descent), Epiphany reenactments, and patronal festivities. By exhibiting ritual representations, the convent becomes more than a passive or frozen building. While traditions extend to the cemetery and streets, interviewees emphasized that the power of collective memory can only be found in the convent. It indicates that patrimonialization is more than a process of material conservation, but also a dynamic that links community and space. Due to the importance of the parish priest within and outside the church, he is also emphasized as the leader of building maintenance entities. He is viewed as an inspiring force, coordinating mayordomos, principals, and neighbors in conservation and care activities. While mayordomos are a valuable human resource, their participation is framed within a hierarchical scheme, where the priest dominates and his word is an emblem of instant obedience.

The Tentzo hill, its surrounding clouds, the convent and its chapels all contribute to this mental landscape, which is not seen as a natural backdrop but as a territory laden with stories. It is said that Tentzo is inhabited by supernatural forces: some claim the devil lives there and certain people went there to exchange their souls for wealth. Some sources state one must ask Tentzo for permission to gather palm leaves. From generation to generation, these stories reinforce the spiritual relationship between the land and the natural world (Figure 9).

Despite being characterized by desert conditions and difficult access points in Puebla's Mixteca region, Huatlatlauca can become green in scattered strokes after only a small amount of rain (increasingly rare nowadays). In the last five decades, the destruction of farmland and livelihood has advanced rapidly, with drought falling like a curse on these “sacred lands”. There is nostalgia among older inhabitants about maize stored at home or in the granary, their parents waking up early to bread and maize atole on their tables (as it takes about two days to mill the corn), plowing with a yoke in the field, and resting on petates woven by their mothers from palm leaves taken from the ancient giant (Tentzo) guarding their dreams and patiently watching over them with its great beard.

Although younger and older generations have grown up in Huatlatlauca, they have never lost sight of the identity instilled since childhood, even when they weren't born there but recognized themselves as Huatlatlaucaians via family memory. Embracing beliefs, traditions, and values, but most importantly, feeling at home is a fundamental aspect of belonging. Traditionally built in stone with double-pitched palm roofs, houses were not only physical spaces; they also served as symbolic spaces within the agricultural and mountainous landscape that produced them.

Social agency and territoriality work together to define and live the landscape heritage. As a result of a festive landscape and domestic architecture, Huatlatlauca residents refer to themselves as travellers, returning to their roots to reinforce their sense of belonging. Several of the traditional performances that are cycled back to town are individual, such as weddings, birthdays, graduations, and funerals, while other are collective, involving the whole town and becoming “obligatory” home visits. A heritage landscape represents the actors’ cosmovision, directly connected to their environment, in a way that is representative and meaningful. Storytelling, myths, tradition, and art create their identity, giving nature, rivers, hills, and supernatural animals divine attributes, and defining their existence. As Placido explains:

There were once palm artisans in Tentzo; today, fewer people do this craft due to its lengthy production process and low sale price, largely caused by the introduction of new materials for everyday, domestic, and commercial use, including plastic (personal communication, 2024).

In his childhood, Plácido learned to weave petates from his mother upon his return from school. These were initially simple mats, without patterns or colors, and chiquihuites (baskets) made of otate reeds, all using materials readily available nearby. Besides transmitting techniques, this maternal teaching also connected her to the territory, since Tentzo resources were used. Each woven piece represents a form of patrimonialization: it not only preserves artisanal skills, but it also recollects the memory of a landscape rich in significance. With manual labor and innovation, the chiquihuite and petate serve as material extensions of Huatlatlauca's cosmovision in which nature and culture are inseparable.

Civil architecture is particularly sensitive to landscape changes. As new materials have become more durable, original typologies are now only remnants of the distant past. In spite of the fact that very few people still work palm. Plácido notes that palm today is more abundant than before. In his childhood, this resource was essential. Mountain Tentzo provided raw materials for family livelihoods and was sacred and utilitarian. As artisanal work is poorly paid and consumption patterns have changed, palm has lost its centrality today; although still abundant, it is no longer valued the same way.

In Daisy's opinion (personal communication, 2024), Huatlatlauca's architecture has a distinct identity due to its traditional stone houses and palm roofs that give it a unique, functional, and fresh appearance. Huatlatlauca's stone architecture is not just durable and cool, but also emotional and historical. Architectural elements integrate with symbolism, enrich community appropriation and space recognition, and serve as a link to collective memory, territorial history, and community identity.

There is a strong historical foundation for the Huatlatlauca's architectural heritage and mindscape together, which is largely based on collective memory and oral history. Inherited symbols are also re-signified, expressed in bodily–spatial and socio-cultural languages, within a collective creation that anchors to territory while revealing identity traits. Reaffirming and reasserting diverse ways of life through representations attached to objects, in this case, architectural spaces. The mentality that unfolds in spaces and in the environment reflects a unique form of existence and aspirations of every inhabitant. Heritage and mindscapes become appropriation processes, reflecting both the sense that these spaces belong to them and the recognition that they are also a part of them. Adaptations of the landscape are enacted by actors outwardly, transferring intimacy to the environment, and even reflected in social organization, which creates a dependency. Thus, the construction articulates the connection between individual and collective, making group belonging possible in their heritage-based context.

4 Discussion and conclusion

Ethnography is a critical method for understanding social actors, their discourses, and their connection to everyday practices. By integrating approach, method, and text, ethnography reaches local realities and amplifies voices that are not included in official narratives (Guber, 2001). Through practices, discourses, and spatial transformations, inhabitants of a territory, such as Huatlatlauca, create and transmit mental valuations. By revealing “unauthorized” or subaltern discourses, the landscape becomes an identity marker rather than a backdrop. Based on this approach, “landscape mentality” (Berque, 1995) emphasizes how the environment is a cultural product shaped by shared ideas and values across social groups. Inhabitants' rooted memories recreate spaces tied to social, work, family, and religious activities, reflecting their individual or shared mentalities, as reflected in buildings, streets, and natural elements.

Space does not exist without bodies that define it (Muntañola Thornberg, 2001). Despite geopolitical borders that limit space within political parameters, identity narratives rooted in affectivity and memory confer a sense of belonging beyond physical limits. A noteworthy example of this is the Tentzo hill, which has gained animist significance through centuries. Testimonies and collective practices reinforce community cohesion due to mindsets around Tentzo hill, ancestral knowledge, and good living dynamics. The triad of matter, actor, and practice underscores how territorial narratives are constructed through agency, shaped by personal and collective experiences within culturally constructed spaces (Barabas, 2004). Ethnographic fieldwork, therefore, demonstrates the role of ancestrality and history in reaffirming identity through narratives spanning at least 500 years.

Symbolic recognition of Huatlatlauca is reinforced by childhood memories and migrants returning home cyclically, where nature and daily life are interwoven to create a landscape imbued with meaning. Landscapes are recognized as individuals' and collective identities through practice and ancestral memory. The streets and plazas are transformed into sacred spaces with practices like processions and patronal feasts. This new definition of heritage landscapes transcends physical forms. Mythical narratives, such as Tentzo's duck that created the great water channel or the hill guardian's story about selling his soul for sheep, reinforce the patrimonialization of memory. Stories connect actors with landscape, and stone houses or palm roofs preserve memory and belonging, transforming physical spaces into symbolic anchors.

In Huatlatlauca, humans and non-humans coexist and interact. By weaving the natural with the sacred and mythical, landscape mentalities (Berque, 1995) strengthen the spiritual connection with the mindscape. Tentzo hill, its clouds, and the convent with its chapels are central references in everyday cartography for the residents. In spite of changing landscapes as new materials replace old ones in construction, Tentzo remains a symbol of myth, danger, and moral order, as well as a mental, spiritual, and narrative place where natural elements are treated like agents and interlocutors. Houses, chapels, and stories co-create cosmological and spiritual habitats for the mind that organize the landscape, challenging Eurocentric definitions of the built environment.

Children's focus group drawings placed churches and the parish at the center of their world indicate that these architectures are internalized early. This mentality is based on the concept of mentalities as “ways of seeing and thinking” (López Silvestre, 2003) that organize how the environment is perceived and acted upon. As a mindscape in the town, the exconvent and its atrium combine historical depth, spirituality, and prestige. Taking landscape as a cultural product (Berque, 1995, 2009), Huatlatlauca's heritage landscape consists of more than just its buildings and natural features. With ritual calendars, linguistic categories, and memories, mindscapes assist in maintaining, transforming, and contesting the built and natural environment.

In the heritage architecture of Huatlatlauca, a proto-landscape reflects residents' mentality through places, traditions, and emotional ties that describe culture and memory. Stories and practices transmitted from generation to generation preserve and transform space with symbolic weight, fostering “symbolic identification” (Vidal Moranta, 2005). This appropriation leads to ecological responsibility, place attachment, identity, and co-responsibility across the lifespan (Pol, 2002; Vidal Moranta, 2005). As with heritage governance models, Huatlatlauca's architectural heritage can be understood as community-based cultural governance, rather than a top-down process. Roles like fiscales, mayordomos, and principales regulate responsibilities for maintaining and transforming spaces, defining legitimate uses, and adjudicating conflicts. By coordinating care for buildings, organizing rituals, and balancing cultural life with environmental dynamics, this governance network shapes the mindscape.

This paper proposes that community mindscapes should be replaced with stratified and overlapping mindscapes. At Huatlatlauca, Nahua-language territorial, syncretic Catholic-Indigenous ceremonial, and generational mindscapes coexist as registers of landscape experiences activated in diverse social contexts. The multi-scale model has implications for patrimonialization policies, since addressing one layer of mindscape systematically excludes the others.

These findings have five important implications for Mexico's heritage and territorial policies. First, it is necessary to support community institutions like the mayordoms and fiscals as partners in the restoration and tourism process (INAH). Second, Nahuatl's importance as a cognitive infrastructure requires the integration of language policy into heritage planning through bilingual education and revitalization initiatives. Third, to sustain cultural and environmental ties, it is imperative that techniques like palm weaving and stone construction are valued through training and fair-market support. Fourth, tourism initiatives must enhance connections between people, heritage, and nature, rather than commodify spaces such as the former convent and market. Fifth, policy development should consider mentalities, languages, and governance as central aspects of the human condition.

The local community often perceives cultural continuity as an intrinsic good and cultural change as an intrinsic loss. Analytically rigorous positions acknowledge that continuity can reproduce social hierarchies, gender exclusions, and racialized power structures, while change can be agentive, emancipatory, and self-determined. Future research should examine which community members benefit from the dominant patrimonialization narratives as well as those that are constrained by them, and if alternative or subaltern mindscapes exist that remain unknown to institutional heritage recognition.

The scope and methodology of this study are limited. The ethnographic design, while capturing complex everyday relations with the heritage environment, faces challenges such as potential selection bias, limited representation of critical groups such as young adults or women with restricted public roles, and the use of retrospective, context-dependent narratives. By combining ethnography with surveys, spatial analysis, or physiological indicators, further research can examine perceptions, spatial practices, or mental health outcomes. Despite these limitations, the case of Huatlatlauca illustrates the significant role Indigenous rural contexts play in expanding the mindscape agenda beyond urban and Eurocentric frameworks. A future study could compare landscape mentalities across regions, explore links between mental health and wellbeing, or examine how digital technologies interact with local noospheres to create hybrid habitats.

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Footnotes

Edited by: Jesús Rodrigo-Comino, University of Granada, Spain

Reviewed by: Gustavo Sandoval, College of Michoacan, Mexico

Mariana Petry Cabral, Federal University of Minas Gerais, Brazil