Escape de Lagunillas

West of Chietla, close to the Morelos state line, Escape de Lagunillas is the third-largest community in the municipality: it had 4,613 residents in 2020, behind only Atencingo and the municipal seat. It is a junta auxiliar, meaning residents elect an auxiliary president and four councillors for three-year terms.

The village lies at about 1,021 m in the Matamoros valley, a broad, hot plain where the summer rains pause for a few weeks during the so-called mid-summer drought. Almost the whole municipality drains into the Nexapa river, a tributary of the Atoyac. Sugar cane rules much of Chietla, but the federal encyclopedia of municipalities describes Escape de Lagunillas as living from farming and mining.

The population jumped in the mid-20th century, from 421 in 1940 to 1,781 in 1960 and 4,350 in 1980. Since then it has hovered between four thousand and 4,600, with a dip in 2010, when the census counted 4,072.

The biggest day of the year is 12 December, the feast of the Virgin of Guadalupe. In the municipal seat, about 10 km away, Saint Augustine (28 August) and Saint Francis (4 October) are celebrated with Tecuanis, Vaqueros and Santiagos dances; the seat also has the 16th-century church of San Francisco and thermal-water swimming pools open all year.