El Saucillo

El Saucillo occupies hills at 2,164 metres in the Hidalgo part of the Mezquital Valley, southwest of Huichapan. It has 625 inhabitants, 1.32% of the municipality's population, and shares its name with the El Saucillo hacienda, one of the estates of the old province of Xilotepec named in the history of the nearby aqueduct.

The climate is temperate and semi-dry, and the land belongs to the Tecozautla river sub-basin of the Moctezuma basin. Prickly-pear thickets, scrub with garambullo cactus and pirul (pepper) trees dominate the municipality, with patches of dark oak woodland; among the animals it lists are bobcat, hare, hawk and eagle. About 1.9 km to the north stands the Acueducto El Saucillo, which has its own page under Huichapan; the ravine it spans is called Arroyo Hondo.

Huichapan, the seat, holds what INEGI catalogues for the municipality: the Tercer Orden chapel (1563), the Guadalupe chapel (1692), the Calvario (1751-1754), a municipal palace in pink quarry stone built between 1887 and 1889, and a monolithic cross carved in pink stone. Otomi is the main indigenous language, and local work includes ixtle fibre (rugs, sashes), pottery and marble; the table offers mutton barbacoa, mixiotes, carnitas and cheese, with cocadas and walnut palanquetas for dessert, and the carnavalito (tequila, orange juice and cinnamon) or mamey pulque to drink.