El Alberto

El Alberto is in the south of the municipality of Ixmiquilpan, at 1,782 metres, on hill and plateau terrain with a semi-dry temperate climate. It was settled by Hñähñu (Otomí) people along the Tula River, in an arid landscape of dry-land vegetation. INEGI counted 767 people in 2020. In 1900 there were 620; the series peaked at 1,307 in 1995, and in 2005 the census recorded just 540.

The local primary economy was always precarious, and a large share of its people migrated without papers to the United States. Reports from 2006 and 2007 on the village tell what that left: pickups with Nevada and Arizona plates, new three-storey block houses, many of them empty, and fewer and fewer children who speak Hñähñu. In the community every resident owes a year of unpaid community service every eight years, and local crafts are said to include sponges and bags woven from maguey fibre.

To stop the village emptying out, and even to encourage those who left to return, community members created Parque EcoAlberto, which the village itself runs. Its two areas, the balneario and the Gran Cañón, 3 km north on the Tula River, and the Caminata Nocturna that links them have their own page; here the story is the village behind it.

The park says it is 8.5 km from Ixmiquilpan, along the Ixmiquilpan–Cantinela road.