San Pedro Pochutla

San Pedro Pochutla, usually just called Pochutla, is the commercial centre of the eastern Oaxaca coast and the seat of the municipality and district of the same name. It sits about 150 m above sea level, roughly 10 km inland from Puerto Ángel, at the point where Federal Highway 175 from Oaxaca city meets coastal Highway 200. The 2020 census counted 14,071 people in the town. Few travellers stay long, but almost everyone heading for Puerto Ángel, Zipolite, San Agustinillo or Mazunte passes through, because this is where the long-distance buses stop.

The name comes from the Nahuatl Pochotlan, "place of ceiba trees". Zapotec settlers arrived around the 8th century, and before the conquest the area belonged to the Mixtec lordship of Tututepec; the local language, Pochutec, was a relative of Nahuatl that is now extinct. The Spanish first called the town Huehuetán and drained the lake on which much of it now stands, because of malaria and yellow fever. In 1833 government forces defeated conservative rebels under General Valentín Canalizo near Rancho Soledad, and Pochutla was given city status in 2003. The parish church was begun in 1840 and only finished in 1957, and the municipal palace dates from 1873; murals of the coast's beaches decorate the church's outer walls.

Pochutla is a working town rather than a resort. Coffee grown in the hills behind it is the main crop, followed by coconut and mango, and commerce and tourism services employ much of the population. The best day to come is Monday, when a large open-air tianguis fills the centre with farmers and traders from the coast and the sierra selling fruit, coffee, cheese, bread, grilled fish and clay pots. The patron saint's fiesta of San Pedro on 29 June brings masked dancers, calendas, fireworks and "castles". Local cooking includes iguana tamales and venison in yellow mole, and on the hills of El Vigía, El Espino and El Cometa residents point out old walls linked by tradition to fights with pirates.