Santa María la Asunción

This town is so small that the whole municipality covers just 7.6 km², entirely surrounded by Huautla de Jiménez (north, west and south) and Huautepec (east). Santa María la Asunción sits at 1,668 m in the Sierra Mazateca, with a damp temperate climate and 2,000 to 3,000 mm of rain a year, and in 2020 the municipality counted 3,259 people: 1,558 in the seat, 1,204 in Llano de Agua, 466 in San Agustín Nuevo and 31 in La Raya. It is governed by customary law and almost everyone speaks Mazatec.

The population peaked at 1,880 in 1990; in 1900 it was 825, and since then the seat has swung between about 1,000 and 1,900. The craft speciality is embroidery of shirts and of the typical huipiles of the Mazatec region, and manta-cloth trousers are sewn too. Local cooking comes from the hills: stewed rabbit, armadillo and temazate deer, quintoniles greens, mushrooms and champiñones, with sour atole and cane spirit to drink. The brass band plays the Son Mazateco, "La flor de naranja", "Flor de calabaza" and "Flor de Liz".

The municipality has one Catholic church and a bandstand counted among its monuments. About 2 km away there are archaeological tombs and caves whose underground chambers open onto the river; they have not been explored and are not an organised visit. Nearly a third of the land is farmed and more than half is forest.