Santa María Xoxoteco

Xoxoteco comes from Nahuatl, and Wikipedia gives two readings: xoxo, "green", plus the locative -teco, "green place" or "beside the greenery"; or xoxouhqui (blue), tetl (stone) and co, "place of blue stone". The village stands at 1,379 metres in the Sierra Baja, within the Sierra Madre Oriental and its Huasteca Karst subprovince. Its climate is semi-dry temperate, and its runoff belongs to the Metztitlán River subbasin.

The same source puts it 1.5 km from Metzquititlán, the municipal seat, and 90 km from Pachuca. Another entry, on the church, places it 2.5 km east of Metzquititlán; treat both numbers as rough guides. People live mainly from farming and livestock. The censuses show a very steady community: 617 residents in 1900, between 543 and 649 at every count of the 20th century, and 677 in 2020 (334 men, 343 women), 7.16% of the municipality.

Most visitors come for the 16th-century chapel, found in 1976 under a coat of paint and famous for its murals; that chapel has its own page under Metztitlán, so it is enough here to note that it stands inside the village, a plain nave topped by a bell gable. Beyond the church, the neighbouring seat is proud of its Clock Tower, about 25 metres tall, begun in 1975 with a clock donated by then-governor Matías Rodríguez and a bronze eagle on top, and of a Plaza Constitución decreed in 1850.