Ahuacatlán

Few communities in Puebla keep their language like this one: in 2020, 97% of Ahuacatlán's people identified as Indigenous and over 83% spoke a native language. In Huauchinango, Nahuatl is the most widely spoken, with almost 25,000 speakers in the municipality. That year's census counted 1,748 people, 937 women and 811 men, slightly down from 1,860 in 2010. The village sits at 1,739 m, about 6.4 km in a straight line southeast of the town of Huauchinango, and its name, from ahuacatl and tlan, means "place where avocados abound".

It rains here practically all year. Nearly the whole municipality has a humid temperate climate with rain in any month, the village averages around 15 °C and rainfall is close to 2,000 mm. Water from this part of the sierra feeds the Tecolutla and Cazones basins, through streams such as the Necaxa, Totolapa and Zempoala. Forest covers about 41% of the municipal land and farming a third. Huauchinango measures 251 km², ranges from 600 to 2,700 m, borders Acaxochitlán in Hidalgo to the west and is organised into 26 auxiliary boards.

There are no hotels in the village; the nearest are in Huauchinango, 8 or 9 km away, and fondas and food stalls are found there and in neighbouring Cuacuila and Xaltepec. In 2020 fewer than 2% of households owned a car and only 2.4% had internet, so shared transport and mobile phones matter in daily life. The area's textile tradition is rich: blouses embroidered in satin and running stitch, sashes, wrap skirts, quechquemitl capes and ponchos from backstrap or treadle looms, jonote-stick baskets and amate bark paper. On the table: chiltepin-spiced or smoked chicken, mole poblano with rice, ant salsa and pine-nut jamoncillo; at fiestas the Xochipitlamas dance is performed to the violin.