Santa Cruz Alpuyeca

Although it belongs to Cuautinchán, Santa Cruz Alpuyeca is closer to the state capital than to its own municipal seat: Puebla city is about 14 km away in a straight line, while the town of Cuautinchán is around 15 km off along a dirt road. The same road continues north toward Casa Blanca and Amozoc de Mota. The village occupies the northwest corner of the municipality at 2,201 metres, and the 2020 census recorded 630 inhabitants. On 6 December 2019 a storehouse holding fireworks exploded here; four people died and seven were injured.

Cuautinchán is part of the Puebla metropolitan area and covers about 161 km² in the centre of the state, between Amozoc to the north, Acajete to the northwest, Tepeaca to the east, Tecali de Herrera to the south and southeast, Tzicatlacoyan to the southwest and the municipality of Puebla to the west. Its terrain ranges from 2,000 to 2,560 metres: the Sierra de Amozoc crosses the north, with pine and oak forest; the Valsequillo depression opens to the southwest and the Tepeaca valley in the centre and east. There are no big rivers apart from a short stretch of the Atoyac in the southeast; streams come down from the sierra that only run in the rainy season. More than half the land is rain-fed farmland and another third is grassland for cattle. Averages are around 14 to 18 °C, with 700 to 900 mm of rain.

The municipality's great building is the Franciscan former convent in the seat, Renaissance in style and finished in 1593: it is 143.70 m long and 80 m wide, 20 m high with a 27 m dome, and its façade recalls 16th-century Florentine churches. Cuautinchán's craftspeople carve marble and onyx into figures and ornaments. The local cooking includes chickpeas, alberjón peas, purslane in sauce, barbacoa, mole poblano and tlanipa tamales, with pot beans cooked with a small lump of tequesquite to soften them and handmade tortillas; people drink chocolate and atole, and brass bands play at the patron-saint feasts.