San José

Gunpowder, garment work and the cornfield: those three things are how much of Xiutetelco makes a living, and San José, with 2,016 residents in 2020, is one of its larger villages. It sits at 1,921 metres in the northeastern highlands of Puebla, just 6 km from Teziutlán and about 53 km from Xalapa; the state capital is some 125 km away. Its patron is Joseph of Nazareth, the carpenter. The photo shows pyrotechnic toritos from the municipality, bull-shaped frames loaded with rockets and set alight at fiestas.

The main income still comes from the land, but many working-age people travel down to Teziutlán every day to sew clothes in the assembly plants, and making fireworks is another very common source of money in the municipality. Brass bands play at the festivals. Local cooking includes mole poblano, pipián tamales, smoked chicken and pressed chicharrón, fruit preserves, and to drink there is coffee, chocolate, atole and fruit wines. The municipality is also home to 328 speakers of Indigenous languages, mainly Nahuatl and Totonac.

The municipality's political history has a building at its centre. Around 1780, when the seat had about 30 houses, residents met in a home near the present town hall site; Eleodoro Pérez donated the land and a hall was built with carved stone columns and floors, a tiled roof and seven arches across the front, a job that took a year and a half. In 1958, under municipal president Rufino Martínez Navel and with help from governor Faustino M. Ortega, the facade was rebuilt and the tiles replaced with a concrete slab; between 1978 and 1981, under Bernardo Matus Morales, it was enlarged and two more arches were added.