San Felipe Ayutla

With 3,459 residents in 2020, Ayutla is a sizeable community in the municipality of Izúcar de Matamoros, Puebla's sixth-largest municipality by area. The village sits at 1,197 metres, lower than the average of the Matamoros valley, the plain that slopes down from the foot of the Sierra Nevada and is crossed by the Nexapa River, a tributary of the Atoyac. Ten years earlier, in 2010, the census had counted 3,162 people, with more women (1,700) than men (1,462).

This is hot country: the municipality records average temperatures between 18 and 26 degrees and 700 to 900 millimetres of rain, nearly all in summer, and more than half its area is still low tropical forest. What keeps the local economy going, according to the municipal description, is sugar cane, watered by aqueducts and canals that share out the valley's water. To the south the land breaks up into the foothills of the Sierra Mixteca, with hills such as Tecolhuixtle, Cerro Grande and Tlacote, where lime is quarried.

Much of Ayutla's life turns towards the municipal seat a few kilometres away, with its churches, market and a fountain carved by hand from a single block of stone that INEGI lists among its monuments. Regional cooking features traditional mole, green pipián made with squash seeds, bean tamales and pozole, and sweets such as alegría, palanqueta and pumpkin-seed jamoncillo. Brass bands, made up mostly of farmers who learn by ear, play at the festivals.