Huehuetla

Huehuetla stands at 424 metres in the Sierra de Tenango and is the seat of a 214 km² municipality that borders Veracruz and Puebla. The Huehuetla or Pantepec river runs through town and flows into the Tuxpanicatlán. The climate is semi-warm and humid, averaging 21 °C with 2,422 mm of rain a year. Not to be confused with Huehuetla, Puebla, in a different sierra.

The name comes from Nahuatl weweh, old, and -tlan, place of abundance: place of elders. In pre-Hispanic times the area answered to the Señorío de Tutotepec; the Spanish took it around 1521 and the town is believed to have been founded in 1640. Decree no. 21 of 26 April 1827 granted it a town council, and in 1891 it moved from the Tulancingo district to that of Tenango de Doria.

The seat has 2,993 residents, 13% of the municipality, and 954 of them speak an Indigenous language: mostly Tepehua, in the variety known as Huehuetla Tepehua, and to a lesser extent Otomí. Huehuetla is one of the three main Tepehua centres, with Pisa Flores in Hidalgo and Tlachichilco in Veracruz. Families grow maize, beans and chile, as well as coffee and sugar cane; the municipality supplies a large share of Hidalgo's coffee. In 2005 about 80 women in Huehuetla still wore traditional dress: a white blouse with machine embroidery, a white pleated skirt about 4 metres wide and a gauze quechquemitl.

The municipality's most important tianguis is Huehuetla's, held on Sundays.