Chicahuaxtla

On 6 August 2016 the remnants of Hurricane Earl dumped a downpour on Puebla's Sierra Norte that hit Chicahuaxtla hard: the river running through the village burst its banks and one of the surrounding hills gave way. Today it is the second most populous place in Tlaola municipality, with 2,725 residents in 2020, behind only Xaltepuxtla and well ahead of the municipal seat itself. It sits at 1,206 metres, wedged between mountains, just about 2 km west of central Tlaola. The road through the village links it east to the seat and west to federal highway 130, the route that connects Huauchinango, Nuevo Necaxa and Xicotepec.

Tlaola covers just over 108 km² in the northwest of the state and borders Zihuateutla, Jopala, Tlapacoya, Ahuacatlán, Chiconcuautla and Huauchinango. It is semi-warm and very wet: mean temperatures sit between 16 and 20 °C, and 2,400 to 2,600 mm of rain falls with no dry month. Almost 89 % of the land drains to the Necaxa river and the rest to the Laxaxalpan, both part of the Tecolutla basin. Streams that flow all year include the Acala or Tlapayocan, the Acatlán, the Nexapa, El Salto, the Salto de Cuamila, the Tecpatlan and the Zempoala. A little over half the land is farmed and a third is still forest, with oak woods among the little original vegetation left.

Indigenous languages are very much alive here: in the mid-2000s more than 10,500 people spoke an Indigenous language, mainly Nahuatl and Totonac, in a municipality that had 20,433 inhabitants in 2020. The municipal seat has the parish church of San Pedro, built in the 16th century, a short trip from Chicahuaxtla. Local cooking centres on mole poblano, bean tamales and chileatole, and to drink there is coffee and chocolate made with water. Other communities in the municipality, such as Tlaltepango and Xochinanacatlán, lie farther east.