San Miguel Xaltepec

Sand, hill and a place suffix: xalli, tepetl and co give Xaltepec, rendered as "in the sandy ground of the hill", while the Christian name honours the archangel Michael, its patron. With 10,470 people counted in 2020, this village is larger than many municipal seats in Puebla, even though it belongs to Palmar de Bravo. It sits 2,170 metres up in the east of the state, about 65 km in a straight line east of the capital and almost equally far from Tehuacán (52 km) and Orizaba (53 km).

Palmar de Bravo had 50,226 inhabitants in 2020 spread over 363 km², a territory rising from 2,100 to 2,900 metres and grouped in the Ciudad Serdán region. Its neighbours are Quecholac to the northwest, Chalchicomula de Sesma to the northeast, Esperanza to the east, Cañada Morelos to the southeast, Tlacotepec de Benito Juárez to the south, Yehualtepec to the southwest and Tecamachalco to the west. The municipal seat keeps the church of San Agustín, built in the late 16th century. The municipality's water splits between two great slopes: nearly three quarters drains toward the Papaloapan and the rest toward the Atoyac and the Balsas.

The climate here is mostly semi-dry and temperate, with mean temperatures of 12 to 18 °C and only 300 to 700 mm of rain a year, so cornfields alternate with scrubland; around 62% of the land is farmed and almost a third is still scrub, with small patches of forest. Local trades include palm weaving and making ixtle ropes. Regional cooking runs to barbacoa in mixiote, chiles en nogada and mole poblano, pumpkin sweets for dessert, and pulque or fruit infusions to drink.