San Pedro Atocpan

San Pedro Atocpan is one of the twelve original villages of Milpa Alta, in the borough's northwest corner at about 2,440 m, squeezed between the Cuauhtzin volcano and Teuhtli mountain. Its Nahuatl name is usually given as "on fertile land", and it was a farming village until mole took over. Today close to nine in ten residents make or sell it, mostly in family workshops rather than factories, and the village turns out an outsized share of the mole eaten in Mexico City and across the country: 28,000 to 30,000 tonnes a year.

The boom is recent. A few generations ago only four barrios, Panchimalco, Ocotitla, Nuztla and Tula, made mole, and only for local fiestas. In the 1940s one family walked two kilos down to sell at La Merced market; paving of the main road and the arrival of electricity in 1947 made grinding and hauling much easier, and by the mid-1970s the village was producing 8 to 10 tonnes a day. The house speciality is mole almendrado, with 26 to 28 ingredients on a base of mulato, pasilla and ancho chiles.

At the heart of the village is the Franciscan parish of San Pedro Apóstol, begun around 1570 and dedicated on 28 August 1680, with the old friary to the south and a doorway dated 1777; it has been a national monument since 1933. Plaza San Martín, the main square, has a bandstand ringed by restaurants and the chapel of San Martín Caballero, whose portal bears the date 1560. Higher up, the sanctuary of the Señor de las Misericordias, finished in 1977, houses a Black Christ said to have been made of corn stalk in the 16th century, and looks out over the village and the valley.

The big dates are the Señor de las Misericordias fiesta in May, Saint Peter's day on 29 June and above all the Feria Nacional del Mole, held every October since the late 1970s, when some 2,600 people serve around 400,000 plates, enchiladas de mole above all. The 49th edition runs from 3 to 25 October 2026 at the fairground at km 17.5 of the Xochimilco-Oaxtepec road.