San Miguel Suchixtepec

The name Suchixtepec comes from Nahuatl and is read as "on the flowery face of the hill" (xochitl, flower; ixtli, face; tepetl, hill). The town is recorded as founded around 1600 and stands at 2,584 m in the Sierra Madre del Sur, in the Miahuatlán district, with San Miguel Arcángel as its patron. It is the seat of a 107.17 km² municipality with 15 localities and 2,932 inhabitants in 2020.

The town itself had 1,781 people in that census, against 1,417 in 1950; the peak was 1,798 in 2010. Ninety percent identify as indigenous and 48% speak an indigenous language. Services are better than in many mountain seats: two in three homes had a mobile phone and almost half had internet in 2020. Small paraje hamlets such as Barrio Santa Lucía and La Luz del Sol lie around it, along with larger localities such as Loma Morillo (427 people) and, just outside the municipality, San Mateo Río Hondo, nearly 6 km west.

The terrain is mountainous and the climate temperate to semi-warm and humid: 16 to 18 °C on average, lows of 6 to 8 °C and 1,200 to 1,500 mm of rain a year. The San Miguel river, part of the Copalita basin, runs through the municipality. Cerro San Lorenzo (2,475 m) and Cerro Samialtepec (2,987 m) stand near the village. No lodging is registered in the village itself; cabins lie about 8 to 14 km away.