Santa Inés Ahuatempan

Santa Inés Ahuatempan is the seat of the municipality of the same name in Puebla's Mixteca, about 100 km from Puebla city. The name comes from the Nahuatl ahuatl, oak, tentli, edge, and pan, in: "at the edge of the oak wood". The town stands at about 1,800 m and had 4,426 people in 2020. It was founded on 20 January 1605, when the area's scattered inhabitants were gathered on donated land, and became a free municipality in 1895.

The municipality, about 283 km², straddles two regions: the plains of Tepexi de Rodríguez to the north and the Sierra de Acatlán to the south. Down its middle, north to south, runs the Mesa Carbajal, a tableland more than 10 km long and 2 km wide at about 1,900 m, the highest ground in the territory. From it the land drops sharply toward the Atoyac, Acatlán and Carnero rivers, past hills such as El Metate, El Tecorral, Loma Toro, Ometolonte and La Víbora, and mesas such as Cuesta Blanca and Moctezuma Chichica.

There are no big rivers, but many streams run off the mesa: to the north and west they feed the Atoyac; to the south-west they are dammed in the Boqueroncito reservoir in Tehuitzingo; and to the south they form the source of the Acatlán River, first called the Santa Inés and then El Chivo. The municipality borders Zacapala, Tepexi de Rodríguez, Acatlán, Xayacatlán de Bravo, Totoltepec de Guerrero, San Jerónimo Xayacatlán, Cuayuca de Andrade and Tehuitzingo.