Chigmecatitlán

A palm angel just over an inch tall is woven here in under an hour; a 12-centimetre Catrina takes about nine, and a nativity scene of a couple of dozen pieces can take twenty days. Chigmecatitlán's miniatures began in the mid-1960s, when the Gallardo Osorio family started shrinking palm weaving to a tiny scale, and today some fifty families, nearly all related, make them, each in its own style; there are at least two hundred kinds of rattle alone. Palm is cut in March or April and again at the end of the year, when it barely rains, and to save time some weavers use plastic raffia. You buy straight from the home workshops, and bargaining is expected.

The town, seat of a municipality of only 28 km², one of the smallest in the state, sits at 1,527 metres on the Mesa de Santa Catarina. Below it to the north, the Atoyac River marks the boundary and runs through a canyon that drops from 1,400 to under 1,200 metres, separating the Tepexi plains from the Atlixco valley. The climate is warm to semi-warm, averaging 20 to 24 °C, with 600 to 1,000 mm of summer rain; nearly two thirds of the land is farmed and about 28% remains low tropical forest. In 2020 the town had 1,215 residents, and Mixtec is spoken in the municipality, along with some Nahuatl and Zapotec.

The name, Nahuatl in origin, translates as "dog among the vines", though the town is mostly Mixtec and probably of pre-Hispanic origin. Its church went up in the 16th century as a chapel dependent on Zacapala, and in 1776 it became a parish of its own. In 1837 it was raised from village to municipality within the Tepexi district, and in 1921 it became Puebla's municipality number 56. Every 8 December the town's founding is celebrated by hanging a canvas of the Virgin of Guadalupe in a mesquite tree. Food includes mole poblano, pipián and tamales, with guava and tejocote preserves, ate, mezcal, chocolate and atole; besides palm, toys and traditional dolls are made.