San Pedro y San Pablo Ayutla

Ayutla, also called Ayutla Mixe, is the seat of the municipality of San Pedro y San Pablo Ayutla, in the Mixe district of Oaxaca's Sierra Norte. It lies at about 2,040 m among pine-oak forest, the 2010 census counted 2,134 residents in the town, and the municipality covers roughly 108 km². Logging is the main economic activity.

Mixe tradition says the community's ancestors reached the hill now called Cerro de la Cruz, led by an image and a light, and founded the town there centuries before the Spanish arrived. Dominican missionaries from Villa Alta began building churches in the region from 1555, Ayutla's among them, and since 21 December 1964 the town has been the seat of the Prelature of Mixes. Behind it rises Zempoaltépetl, the mountain of twenty peaks (Ipxyukp in Mixe), tied to the deity Cong and the legendary ruler Kondoy.

Music is part of daily life: two wind bands, the Municipal and the Alborada Mixe, have about 40 members each. At Day of the Dead the town keeps a week of its own: late in October families set up altars, on 1 November they visit relatives with chicken broth, tamales, tepache and mezcal, and for eight days bands play at the church and cemetery. A 2026 travel write-up also mentions a Sunday Mixe market.