San Pedro Zacachimalpa

A shield made of grass is the image the name preserves: zacatl (grass), chimalli (shield) and pan (on) give Zacachimalpa, "on the shield of grass", and Saint Peter the Apostle is its patron, honoured in the church shown in the photo. Although it belongs to the municipality of Puebla, it is far from the bustle of the historic centre: it lies about 12 km in a straight line south of the cathedral, at 2,122 metres, and it is officially an urban locality, with 4,712 inhabitants and 1,169 occupied homes in 2020.

Its surroundings are the rural and semi-urban south of the capital municipality, where city neighbourhoods give way to plots and low hills. Very close, some two kilometres to the north, stands the church of Santo Tomás Chautla, and a short distance away lies Africam Safari, the wildlife park founded in 1972 by Carlos Camacho Espíritu, toured by private car or park buses and located about 17 km from the city. The same part of the municipality holds the Manuel Ávila Camacho reservoir, known as Valsequillo, Puebla's main body of water.

The municipality of Puebla has a temperate, subhumid climate, averaging 10 to 16 °C with 400 to 900 mm of rain depending on the area; over 42% of its surface is now built up, while about a quarter is farmed and the rest is split between grassland and forest. Its main streams are the Atoyac and the Alseseca. From Zacachimalpa, the capital's centre offers Talavera pottery, onyx carvings and a nationally famous kitchen: mole poblano, chiles en nogada, green and red pipián, chalupas, cemitas and tripe mole.