Ciudad Ixtepec

Ciudad Ixtepec is a small, flat city on the northern edge of the Isthmus plain, about 20 km north of Juchitán and 40 km north-east of Tehuantepec, at around 40 m above sea level. The 2020 census counted 26,015 people in the town and 28,082 in the municipality. Its name comes from Nahuatl and is usually read as "face of the hill"; the place was long known as Villa de San Jerónimo Doctor, and took the name Ciudad Ixtepec in 1935. Like its neighbours it is largely Zapotec, and it keeps the Isthmus customs of velas, mayordomías and neighbourhood fiestas.

Ixtepec was probably founded as a Zapotec village in the 16th century and stayed agricultural until the railway arrived. Its first station opened in 1894 with the Tehuantepec Railway, and in the early 20th century the line turned the town into a rail hub. Passenger trains stopped in 2000, but freight trains kept running, and for two decades Central American migrants climbed aboard them here; the priest Alejandro Solalinde founded the Hermanos en el Camino shelter in the town to receive them. Locally, black clay is dug for pottery and adobe, and there is brickmaking, small-scale farming and garment making.

The railway is now Ixtepec's reason to visit. Passenger service returned on 22 December 2023 with the Interoceanic Train, and the station is the junction between Line Z, which runs from Coatzacoalcos on the Gulf to Salina Cruz on the Pacific, and Line K, whose first stretch to Tonalá in Chiapas opened on 21 November 2025. The town also has the Isthmus's airport, a civil and military field, and the Casa de la Cultura shows objects and photographs from local history. Ixtepec celebrates its patron, San Jerónimo Doctor, from 20 September to 4 October, and its barrios hold fiestas from 1 to 19 May.