Nezahualcóyotl

Ciudad Nezahualcóyotl, more commonly Neza, is a city and the municipal seat of the municipality of Nezahualcóyotl in the state of Mexico, adjacent to the east side of Mexico City. It is named after Nezahualcóyotl, the Acolhua poet and king of nearby Texcoco, whose name means fasting coyote in Nahuatl, and its heraldry includes an Aztec glyph showing the head of a coyote. Until the 20th century the land it occupies was under Lake Texcoco and uninhabited. The lake was drained in the early 20th century, and the new land was eventually sold into private hands, but public services such as potable water, electricity and sewerage were lacking until the area was made an independent municipality in 1963. Today it is a sprawling city of over one million people, many of them poor migrants from other parts of Mexico. Its climate is temperate, with a fairly cold winter and rain mostly between June and October.