El Durazno

El Durazno lies at 2,409 metres, in the municipality of San Agustín Tlaxiaca, on hilly terrain with a semi-dry temperate climate. Wikipedia places it in the Mezquital Valley region and in Pachuca's metropolitan area. In 2020 it counted 767 inhabitants, 1.97% of the municipality: 388 men and 379 women.

INEGI's series shows that the growth is recent. In 1940 there were 284 people, and the 1960 census marked the low, 190. From there it rose to 498 in 1980, hovered around 430 to 490 through the nineties and the first half of the 2000s, then jumped: 668 in 2010 and 767 in 2020. In six decades it quadrupled.

What gives the place character is water. Nearby is the El Durazno dam, which Wikipedia lists among the works that regulate the Chicavasco river, also called the Actopan: it rises at 2,950 metres in the Sierra de Pachuca, about 9 km north of the capital, and at 2,370 metres it passes this dam. Further down it cuts through the El Mexe range and the Actopan Valley, where it mixes with sewage and is used for irrigation, and finally joins the Tula River about 3 km from Ixmiquilpan. A photo of the dam taken about 1.6 km from the village is the one that illustrates this page.

In the municipality, whose Nahuatl name translates as "among the trees of the ball game", the main crops are barley (nearly 4,000 hectares in 2015) and pulque maguey (1,350), and pirul and mesquite trees are common.