Cerritos

In Cerritos nearly everyone speaks Otomí, in the Mezquital Valley variety, and there are two indigenous-education schools: the Angélica Castro de la Fuente kindergarten and the Teodomiro Manzano primary. INEGI counted 224 residents in 2020 in 53 homes, at 2,246 metres and about 13 km southwest of Cardonal, the municipal seat. The climate is temperate and sub-humid with summer rain and about 14 °C on average; Pueblos América's weather record notes a 4.3 cm snowfall in March 1987.

Life is farming and herding. People grow maize, pine nuts, beans, prickly pear, purslane, lechuguilla and cardón cactus, and raise goats and sheep, along with chickens, geese, pigs, turkeys and rabbits. Many young people leave to work in Mexico City, Pachuca or the United States. The cooking is that of the Mezquital: barbacoa, escamoles, chileatole, pulque and aguamiel; Wikipedia adds that wildcat and hare were also eaten once, though they have nearly dropped out of the diet.

Cardonal municipality takes its name from the cardón cacti and, before that, from the Otomí word bojal, "black earth". A little over 2 km west of Cerritos is the village of Santuario (Santuario Mapethé), with some 840 residents, and Cerro Santuario (2,865 m) rises about 3.4 km to the northwest.