Camocuautla

Camotl, sweet potato; cuauhtli, forest; tlan, abundance: Camocuautla means "in the forest of sweet potatoes", and the forest still rules, covering more than half its municipality. The village is the seat of that municipality of just 16.16 km², a mere 0.05% of the state's area, and had 1,672 residents in 2020. It lies at 708 m on the slopes of the Sierra Norte, 21 km in a straight line from Zozocolco, 63 km from Poza Rica and 121 km from the city of Puebla.

The territory straddles two worlds: to the north, the drop toward the Gulf; to the south, the Sierra de Puebla, with peaks such as Cerro Taxco and Cerro Nepocualco. Its neighbours are Hermenegildo Galeana to the north, Amixtlán and Tepango de Rodríguez to the east, Zongozotla to the south, and Coatepec, Hueytlalpan and Zapotitlán de Méndez to the west. It is very wet, semi-warm country with rain in every month, 2,000 to 2,500 mm a year, and average temperatures of 18 to 22 °C. Its streams, among them the San Pedro and the Tapayula, feed the Laxaxalpan and then the Tecolutla. Forest and pasture cover almost everything; farming barely reaches 7%.

This is a Totonac-speaking village: in 2010, 1,847 of the municipality's 2,476 residents spoke the language. The parish church, dedicated to the Immaculate Conception (Purísima Concepción), dates from the 17th century, and its patronal feast falls on 8 December; the calendar continues with the Holy Cross on 3 May, Saint Peter on 29 June, the Day of the Dead and the Virgin of Guadalupe on 12 December, plus Holy Week. Craftspeople carve wood, and the kitchen offers mole poblano, tamales and smoked, pressed chicken.