Calipan

Calipan, "house on high" in Nahuatl, is a town in the municipality of Coxcatlán, in the southern Tehuacán valley, about 32 km from Tehuacán and 160 km from the state capital. It had 4,238 people in 2020 and stands at about 1,120 m. Since 1938 it has been a junta auxiliar of Coxcatlán.

Its history is the history of sugar. According to the Relación de Coxcatlán, around 1814 Spaniards founded the Arriego hacienda here, on land of Popoloca maize farmers; the hacienda grew cane and turned it into panela in a steam-driven mill. In 1908 the Faguaga family set up a hacienda making panela and cane liquor, and in 1909 Governor Mucio Martínez seized it. During the Revolution, on 20 November 1913, Melesio Cabanzo's forces looted it, and in 1917 it ceased to exist as a hacienda when its company store closed. That year the Mestre Ghigliazza family bought it, and in 1921 they brought in new machinery and began producing sugar. The mill drew workers from Ajalpan, Zinacatepec and Coxcatlán, and the town grew fast.

In 2007 disputes between cane growers and the company put the mill's future in doubt, but in the 2008 harvest it began producing organic sugar for export, the first mill in Mexico certified to do so, with most of the fields certified. In 2018 a second plant, Energética de Vigo, which locals call la alcoholera, the distillery, opened on the edge of town.