Santiago Yolomécatl

The name is Nahuatl for "heart of the rope": yolotl, heart, and mecatl, cord. The town sits at roughly 2,140 metres in the rolling, gullied hills of the Mixteca Alta, and its centre runs right up to the boundary with San Pedro y San Pablo Teposcolula, the main town of the area. Saint James the Apostle is the patron, hence the Santiago in the name. Before the Spanish arrived the land was known as Iniyoo.

The population has barely shifted in a century: 1,754 people in 1900, a low of 1,052 in 1980, then a slow climb to 1,879 in 2010 and 1,740 in 2020. The municipality has 13 localities and the seat holds most of its people. The climate is temperate and sub-humid, 14 to 18 degrees C on average with 700 to 900 mm of rain a year, nearly all of it in summer, so winter mornings are cold even under a clear sky. Much of the land is grass and woodland, with fields on the gentler slopes.

Three dated buildings are what the town keeps on show: the Catholic church of 1678, the town hall of 1710 and a monumental tower from 1928. Fiesta music is brass band, and the local table runs to barbacoa, mole, tamales and pozole, with mezcal and beer to go with them. One local oddity: only about 4% of residents speak an indigenous language, far fewer than in many neighbouring Mixtec towns.

This is a stop for people already in Teposcolula who want to see a Mixtec village with no tour groups and no tourist signs: you can walk it in a short while, ask for the church and carry on. We found no published hotels or restaurants in the village itself, so base yourself in Teposcolula.