Coahuixco

In the south of Coahuixco's municipality the range peaks at Cerro Hilillo, about 3,100 metres, and Cerro Arenas, 3,000, which appear to be part of the rim of the Los Humeros caldera: a volcano with a crater 15 to 21 km across whose last eruption was some 20,000 years ago and which still vents a little steam and leaves sulphur deposits. Those summits are the regional watershed: on one side water flows toward the Gulf through the Apulco and Joloapan; on the other it drains onto the Llanos de San Juan toward Lake Totolzingo. The photo shows Cerro de Chignautla, the municipality's other big mountain mass, cloaked in forest and often in cloud.

Coahuixco lies about 2.5 km west of Chignautla, the municipal seat, and some 8 km from Teziutlán, inside the metropolitan area the two municipalities form. It sits at 2,141 metres and had 3,127 residents in 2020, about 560 more than in 2010; most are Catholic and around four hundred are Protestant. Its name is explained by cuauitl, tree, and ixtli, surface or face: "above the trees" or "on the wooded surface", and the landscape lives up to it, since nearly four in ten hectares of the municipality are forest and as much again grassland; only an eighth is farmed.

The climate is cool and wet, averaging 13 to 15 °C with 600 to 1,600 mm of rain depending on the slope; some corners get rain all year. The Caja de Agua and Ateta streams feed the Joloapan, and the Viga Ancha joins the Apulco. Chignautla, "place of the nine rivers", has a 16th-century church of San Mateo at its seat. More than three thousand people in the municipality speak an Indigenous language, mostly Nahuatl. Craftspeople carve wood; at the table there is smoked chicken, mole poblano, pipián and tamales, fruit preserves, coffee, chocolate and fruit wine, and festivals are played with wind bands.