San Baltazar Chichicápam

The name is Nahuatl: chichic, bitter, and apan, river, so "bitter river", and the town still has that river, called Río de la Amargura on Commons, running between ahuehuete trees with huge exposed roots. San Baltazar is King Balthazar, the community's patron. Chichicápam is the seat of its own municipality in the Ocotlán district, at 1,553 metres above sea level in the south of the Central Valleys, and it counted 2,552 residents in 2020. The census peak was 3,309 in 1990; in 1900 there were 1,375.

Mezcal is the economy of many households here. A 2023 study in the INIFAP journal Revista Mexicana de Ciencias Agrícolas surveyed ten palenques in the community and found output of 2,000 to 15,000 litres a year per palenque, made from Agave angustifolia (espadín), A. marmorata (tepextate) and A. potatorum (tobalá), and sometimes blends. Mesquite and oak firewood cook the piñas, and producers use about 9 kg of espadín per litre; the scarcer tobalá takes 16.7 kg per litre. The Del Maguey brand makes its Chichicapa at a García family palenque with a pit oven, a horse-drawn tahona and copper stills. Mezcaleros such as Fortunato Hernández receive visitors for tastings, and Berta Vásquez is credited with teaching many of the local maestros.

The town also has a reservoir, from which sunrises over the water are photographed, and the bitter river runs through walls of tree roots. The patron-saint celebrations centre on King Balthazar, but we found no published dates.