San José Tenango

Tenango is the seat of a municipality with a huge number of localities and few people in each: the 2020 census counts 141 localities and 18,102 residents, yet the seat itself has only 1,254. It lies in the Teotitlan district, in the north of the Cañada region, in the Sierra de Flores Magón, and the municipality was created on December 26, 1925. Its neighbours include Huautla de Jiménez, San Bartolomé Ayautla and San Pedro Ixcatlán.

The sierra around Tenango is among the wettest in Oaxaca: INEGI records 3,500 to 5,000 mm of rain a year, with a humid semi-warm climate and rain in every season. More than three quarters of the land is jungle and another 12 percent is forest, on limestone, and nearly all of it is unsuited to cropping. Mazatec is the dominant language: in 2005 INEGI counted over 15,700 speakers of indigenous languages in the municipality.

Local culture shows in daily life. Handwork includes embroidery, huipiles and woven blankets, masks of bark or wood fibre, and carpentry for chairs and tables; the table brings guasmole and sour atole, and the music is wind bands. Local photographs on Wikimedia Commons show palm crosses made for Holy Week, Day of the Dead with candles lighting the way, and men breaking stone for gravel. Among the municipality's localities, Cerro Palmera, Aguacatitla and Cerro Central each have more than 450 residents.