Chipilo (Ixtacamaxtitlán)

Don't mix it up: this Chipilo, also listed by INEGI as Cuatexmola, is a hamlet of 65 people (2020) high in the sierra of Ixtacamaxtitlán, at about 2,810 m, not the well-known Venetian-founded town in San Gregorio Atzompa. Huamantla in Tlaxcala is about 22 km away.

Ixtacamaxtitlán is Puebla's fifth-largest municipality, about 581 km², and most of its boundary runs along Tlaxcala. Its name has several readings: "facing Iztacamaxtli", the white Camaxtli, a deity linked to Venus, after a white crag where the town was founded; "near the white sash"; or "flat land facing the jaws", for the hills around it. 92% of the land is steep-sided volcanic sierra, with canyons; nine tenths drains to the Apulco River and on to the Tecolutla, the rest into the closed Totolzingo basin.

The climate is temperate and sub-humid, cold on the heights: averages run 10 to 18 °C and lows drop to 2 to 4 °C. Most rain falls from May to September. More than two fifths of the municipality is forest. Local cooking features turkey mole, barbacoa and escamoles (ant larvae), called chiquerey here, with aguardiente and mezcal; people work clay, rope fibre and wool. The parish church of San Francisco de Asís in the seat dates from the 16th century.