Ahuacatlán

Three out of four people in Ahuacatlán identify as Indigenous, and four in ten speak a native language; across the municipality, Nahuatl is by far the most common. The name comes from ahuacatl and tlan and translates as "place where avocados abound". The 2020 census counted 1,512 people, 808 women and 704 men, somewhat fewer than the 1,873 recorded in 2005. Homes are spread at roughly 2,075 m, about 5 km in a straight line east of the town of Zacapoaxtla.

This is a land of near-constant rain. The annual mean is around 12.7 °C and rainfall is well above 2,000 mm, with more than 300 wet days a year, so mist is part of the scenery. One of the municipality's year-round rivers is itself called Ahuacatlán and flows alongside the Apulco, Huichautla, Hueyateno and Ochiatenco toward the Tecolutla basin. Almost half the municipal land is still forest and about a third is farmed. Zacapoaxtla covers some 177.5 km² of the Sierra Norte, between 900 and 2,800 m, bordering Cuetzalan, Nauzontla, Tlatlauquitepec, Zaragoza, Zautla, Xochiapulco and Xochitlán.

Daily life looks toward the municipal seat. The village has no registered lodging; for food, the nearest stalls and fondas are in Tatoxcac and central Zacapoaxtla, about 4 km away. There you can see the 16th-century parish of San Pedro Apóstol and the monument to the Zacapoaxtlas. Local crafts include embroidered shirts, palm chiquihuite baskets, decorated wax for patron-saint fiestas and palm-and-tinfoil arrangements for Saint Raymond's day. Highland cooking means tlacoyos, molotes, squash-blossom quesadillas and mole aguado, or chilpozonte, with sweets of fig, quince, coconut, gaznate, palanqueta and pepitoria. Mind the signal: in 2020 only 5% of homes had internet, though over 80% had a mobile phone.