San Juan Michimaloya

Michimaloya comes from Nahuatl Mich-malo-yan: michin is 'fish', malo comes from malli, 'captive', and the ending -yan marks a place; together, 'fishery' or 'place where fish are caught'. The locality, whose full name is San Juan Michimaloya, belongs to the municipality of Tula de Allende, in the Mezquital Valley, and sits on rolling terrain at 2,072 metres. Water in the area drains to the Tula river sub-basin.

The climate is temperate sub-humid, with summer rain and less humidity than other temperate zones. In 2020 it had 1,264 inhabitants, 1.10% of the municipality, and the census shows slow growth: 470 people in 1900, 289 in 1910, 606 in 1980, 961 in 1990 and 1,242 in 2010.

The place belongs to the Tula metropolitan area, along with the rest of Tula municipality, a city whose economy runs on cement, oil refining and power generation. As a rural locality it has no sites built for visitors; the interest lies in a name that preserves the memory of a fishing spot and in the open Mezquital landscape of hills and fields, a few kilometres from the city of Tula and its Toltec ruins.