Santa María Coatepec

From Santa María Coatepec, Pico de Orizaba fills the horizon, as the photo taken in the village shows. Coatepec has been translated as "the wooded hill", and its patron is the Virgin Mary. With 5,570 people in 2020, it is the second-largest place in San Salvador el Seco after the seat, at about 2,500 m on the plateau of east-central Puebla.

The municipality, about 221 km² between 2,300 and 3,000 m, borders Oriental, San Nicolás Buenos Aires, Aljojuca, San Juan Atenco, General Felipe Ángeles, Mazapiltepec and San José Chiapa. The climate is mild and fairly dry: averages run 13 to 15 °C and rain 300 to 900 mm. It has no permanent rivers; almost all of it drains into the closed Totolzingo basin. Two thirds is farmed and a fifth is grassland.

Stone is the local trade. Masons here carve black cantera and volcanic rock into molcajetes, metlapiles, millstones, fountains and grave monuments. Local food features carnitas with handmade tortillas, cacahuacintle corn biscuits and sweets of chilacayote squash and xemezcal, maguey heart cooked in an earth oven; drinks are pulque, aguardiente and pinole atole. The municipality has four brass bands of its own, and Paso Puente has a monument to Venustiano Carranza.