Cuyoaco

Cuyoaco lies where the Llanos de San Juan, a high basin with no outlet whose lowest point holds the Totolcingo lagoon, begins to climb toward the Sierra Norte. Flat farmland stretches south of town, while the hills to the north carry pine, fir and oak. The Nahuatl name is read as "hollow up high". The town had 1,906 residents in 2020.

Nahua people founded it before the Spanish conquest. By 1579 it was a corregimiento under San Juan de los Llanos, today's Libres, and in 1837 the departmental board of Puebla made Santa María Cuyoaco a municipality of the Los Llanos district. The church of Santa María de la Natividad goes back to the 16th century and became a parish on 17 June 1773. Francisco de Paula Verea, bishop of Linares and later of Tlaxcala (Puebla), died here in 1884.

Above the town rises Cerro de Cristo Rey, topped by a statue of Christ and home to what locals call the "giant's footprint" (pie de gigante). The biggest feast is 8 September for the Virgin of the Nativity, with negritos and huehues dances during the novena; 18 August honours the Virgen del Rayo, and on San Juan's day (24 June) people lay carpets of wild flowers outside their houses. Local food includes pit-roasted lamb barbacoa, mixiote and pulque.