Ixtepec

Ixtepec is the seat of the municipality of the same name in Puebla's Sierra Norte. The place name is Nahuatl, from ixtli, face or surface, tepetl, hill, and co, on: "on the face of the hill". It lies at roughly 1,070 m above sea level and counted 3,230 inhabitants in 2020. The municipality covers barely 10 km², the second smallest in the state, with fewer than 6,000 people.

Its population is mostly Indigenous, of Totonac origin, according to a study published by INAH. That work describes a local custom: the procession of the Virgin rotates among Ixtepec's ten sections, so each section organises it roughly once every ten years. It also recalls that priests once banned the Virgin from carrying a small jar in the procession, calling it superstition.

Ixtepec belongs to the Totonac and Nahua sierra of northern Puebla, along with villages such as Caxhuacan, Huehuetla and Tuzamapan. The village has a campus of the Benito Juárez Universities for Well-being. For travellers, the Pueblo Mágico of Cuetzalan is roughly 13 km off as the crow flies.