San Hipólito Xochiltenango

Xochiltenango translates as "at the wall of flowers", from xochitl, flower, tenamitl, wall, and co, at; its patron is Saint Hippolytus. It is one of the larger places in the municipality of Tepeaca, with 10,624 people in 2020, at about 2,140 m and some 36 km in a straight line from Puebla city.

Tepeaca was a leading town in colonial times: Hernán Cortés founded the town of Segura de la Frontera here on 4 September 1520, and its seat keeps the 16th-century Franciscan convent and church, the Rollo, a tower also from the 16th century, the so-called house of Hernán Cortés and the house of the Viceroys. Every Friday, Tepeaca's market draws traders from Puebla, Tlaxcala, Hidalgo and Morelos, with many wholesale buyers.

The municipality is farmland: almost 60% is cultivated and the rest is split between built-up land, grassland, some woodland and scrub. The climate is temperate and sub-humid, averaging 12 to 18 °C with 600 to 900 mm of rain, and its streams drain to the Atoyac through the Balcón del Diablo sub-basin. In Tepeaca people forge iron into staircases, doors, machetes and decorated benches; they eat carnitas, cueritos, pork crackling and cecina, and for All Saints they make figures of glazed pumpkin-seed candy. Patron-saint festivals are played by brass bands.