Coatepec

History

Before the Spanish arrived, Totonac and Nahua communities farmed these volcanic slopes, growing maize, beans, squash and chile. The name is Nahuatl for "on the hill of the snakes". After the fall of Tenochtitlan the area came under Spanish control during the 1520s, and the town of San Jerónimo de Coatepec was formally established around 1560, when scattered Indigenous settlements were gathered into one place for administration and evangelization. Its street grid dates from that time.

Coatepec sat close to the royal road between the port of Veracruz and Mexico City, and muleteers became a fixture of local life. From the late 1500s sugar haciendas transformed the landscape. The largest, La Orduña, was bought in 1593 by the merchant Francisco de Orduña and ran several water-powered mills. The work was done by enslaved Africans, seasonal Indigenous laborers and free workers of mixed descent, and that mix shaped the town's food, festivals and traditions. Sugar, raw piloncillo and cane liquor went to markets across New Spain, and molasses gave rise to a local sweets trade.

Coffee later took the place of sugar as the main crop and gave Coatepec the nickname it carries today, the coffee capital. It was among the earlier towns to be named a Pueblo Mágico, in 2006.