Huetamo is a municipality in the southeastern corner of the Mexican state of Michoacán, in a region known as "Tierra Caliente" (meaning hot land).
The French invaded Mexico in 1862, taking control of many large and wealthy haciendas in the Tierra Caliente region, such as Zirandaro, and Comburindio.
As a result, archeologists began a salvage project in 2015 and 2016 in order to preserve the area affected by the dam's construction, as well as the surrounding irrigation zone.
The Middle Balsas region had not been extensively studied prior to this and as a result, the pre-Hispanic history of Huetamo was largely unknown.
Based on radiocarbon dating of excavated materials from 10 of the sites around the dam construction project, Englehardt et al. (2020) has proposed four distinct phases of the region.