Metlaltoyuca

Metlaltoyuca sits at the northern tip of Puebla, where the Sierra Norte is already dropping towards the Veracruz coastal plain. The town occupies a flat mesa, the Mesa de Metlaltoyuca or de Coroneles, which rises about 100 m above the surrounding land; the seat is at 326 m, in the west of Francisco Z. Mena municipality, and covers about 2.5 km². It is hot all year: the mean is 23.5 °C, with some 1,670 mm of rain, mostly in summer. The municipality has the highest average temperature in the state.

In 2020 there were 4,324 residents in 1,304 occupied homes. The Nahuatl name translates as "place full of little metates". The area was Totonac; in the 16th century it answered to Texcoco, in 1522 Spanish encomenderos took it, in 1534 it passed to the Crown and became a corregimiento of Huauchinango. The municipality was created in 1910 and named after General Francisco Z. Mena of León, Guanajuato, who fought the French at Puebla on 5 May 1862 and 2 April 1867.

A kilometre from town are the remains of a stone enclosure attributed to the Totonacs. They are no new find: in the 19th century the engineers Ramón Almaraz and Antonio García Cubas travelled to the "ruins of Metlaltoyuca" and drew a map of that part of the Huauchinango sierra, and Almaraz's commission submitted a report on the lands of the area to the Ministry of Development (Fomento).

The parish church is dedicated to San Isidro Labrador, whose feast on 15 May is celebrated like that of the Virgin of Guadalupe on 12 December: processions, fireworks, brass bands, Quetzalines, Voladores, Tejedores and Huehues dances, jaripeos and charreadas. The cooking here is already Huastec: mole huasteco, beef barbacoa, pipián and tamales, with local aged cheese and cream, jamoncillo and piloncillo. To drink there is cacao and a drink made from jobo, a local tropical fruit, and leatherwork is made in town.