The area has culturally been Mazahua since the pre-Hispanic period, with this indigenous group's traditions strongest in a number of smaller communities in the municipality.

On the south side of the church, there is a large chapel decorated in white and gold in Neoclassical style called the Santísimo.

It also contains food stands which sell local and regional specialties such as barbacoa, mole, quelites (a name for various types of edible greens), and dishes which contains local specialty ingredients such as wild mushrooms, escamoles, maguey flowers, ant eggs and “cupiches” (a kind of butterfly larvae).

[2][5] As municipal seat, the town of Jocotitlán is the governing authority for about eighty other named communities, which together cover a territory of 276.77 km².

[4] The name Jocotitlán is from Nahuatl and means “among the sour fruit trees.”[1][4] The Aztec glyph for the municipal contains an image of the god Otonteuctli.

[4] By the Classic period (200 to 600 CE), there were sedentary agricultural villages in the area, which had contact with Teotihuacan, and whose inhabitants spoke a language of the Oto-mazhaua family.

[3] During the beginning of the Mexican War of Independence, Miguel Hidalgo y Costilla and his army passed through the municipality on his way to Mexico City.

The parish priest of Jocotitlán, José Ignacio Muñiz y Acosta issued the formal edit excommunicating Hidalgo.

In the latter part of the century, there was a push to provide education, telegraph and telephone to the area, along with a number of public works.

At the end of the century, it was the fourth most populous municipality in its district and participated in the World's Fair in Chicago, exhibiting its cereals production, along with others from the State of Mexico.

In 1913, a merchant and city official by the name of León Paniagua managed to get the town spared from an attack by a rebel group looking for sack the area.

The rest of the 20th century is dominated by economic change with the introduction of technology and industrialization as well as the urbanization of the municipal seat.

[4] In the 1960s, a company named IUSA bought much of the former hacienda of Pasteje, as part of a move of its operations away from Mexico City.

The company set wages lower than the national average, but also opened schools and training courses to workers.

This area is in the northwest of the state, in the Ixtlahuaca Valley,[4] which is formed by small mountain chains that belong to the Sierra Madre Occidental, with some formations as a result of being on the Trans-Mexican Volcanic Belt.

The most prominent feature of the volcano is a horseshoe-shaped escarpment open to the northeast that formed as a result of gravitational failure of the summit during the early Holocene.

The resulting debris-avalanche deposit covers an eighty km2 area to the northeast,[9] although much of soils all around contain volcanic residues.

Wildlife includes rabbits, coyotes, bobcats, skunks, opossum, armadillos, squirrels, bats and foxes.

Since its establishment, it has contributed to the economic development of the Atlacomulco region by allowing access to higher education in the sciences and technology.

The campus covers twenty hectares with several classroom buildings, an engineering method laboratory, a library, and various sporting facilities.

These began as technical training programs when the industrial park was first established in the 1960s, which the included classes to get diplomas for primary and middle school levels.

Principle crops include corn, wheat, barley, animal feed, peas, potatoes and beans.

[4] In 2003, a company called Bionatur Ivernaderos Biologicos established a greenhouse facility on 200 hectares in the Pasteje Industrial Park to grow tomatoes.

[7] The industrial complex has been attracting migration to the area, mostly settling in the town of Jocotitlán and the community of Santiago Yeche.

[7] Near the complex, a shopping center called Plaza Mariana was built to sell merchandise to workers, and offer them credit, which could be deducted directly from their salaries.

[4] The municipality has a number of minor tourist attractions such as the Xocotepetl Volcano, the colonial look of the town center, and the Jesus Nazareno church which its important atrium cross.

In Jocotitlan and Mavaró, there are knit items, with woolen textiles found in Coajomulco, Casandeje, Citendeje, San Miguel Tenochtitlán and Mavoro, especially blankets, wraps and huipils.

In Santiago Yeche, Endare, Los Reyes and San Miguel Tenochtitlán the Passion is recreated with live actors.

Since 2002, the operation of the park has been in the hands of a local Mazahua community, most of which lives in the nearby village of San Félix.

[8][17] The park extends over twenty seven hectares and is centered on a lake called San Félix, which was created by a dam.