San Miguel Papaxtla

Cerro Tecajete, a 2,460 m cinder cone visible from much of the Puebla valley, has San Miguel Papaxtla at its feet: the village wraps around its south-east side. Papaxtla comes from the Nahuatl papachtli, plural of pachtli, Spanish moss, and tlan, place of plenty: "where Spanish moss abounds"; its patron is Saint Michael the Archangel. It had 1,567 people in 2020 and stands at about 2,240 m.

The village's story is bound up with the hill. Around the 1940s or 1950s, people from Papaxtla bought it and began digging out tezontle, the red volcanic stone used in building. Today there are three quarries, on the north-west, north and east slopes. Because the local council largely follows traditional self-government, the municipality has little control over the quarrying, which has caused environmental damage and at least one death. Even so, Tecajete holds the municipality's only woodland, and villagers use it for walks and grazing; a short, steep path climbs to the crater and its two peaks.

Papaxtla belongs to San Jerónimo Tecuanipan, a municipality of about 40 km² between Cholula and the foothills of the Sierra Nevada, founded in 1895.