Santa María Coyomeapan

From Tehuacán, the road to Coyomeapan runs through Coxcatlán and then climbs into the high mountains of southeastern Puebla, almost on the Oaxaca border. Up there, at 2,027 metres and about 46 km in a straight line from Tehuacán, is Santa María Coyomeapan, the municipal seat, which had 1,288 inhabitants in 2020. It is a small town of houses packed onto the hillside; at its centre the parish church, dedicated to the Virgin Mary, faces the town hall, which has stood for about a century. All around, mist often settles over forested hills and fields climbing the slopes.

The whole municipality is Indigenous country: most of its people are Nahua, and in 2010 more than 10,000 spoke a native language, mainly Nahuatl and also Mazatec. Farming is the main livelihood, and since 2000 more and more workers have left for the United States. Hands in the sierra weave wool into cotones and embroidered nahuas, and also work palm and cane. Wind bands play at religious fiestas, and the kitchen offers mole de caderas or backbone mole, mutton and goat broth, totopos, tlaxcales, fresh-corn memelas and tamales and chileatole; to drink there is atole, chocolate, aguardiente, mezcal and pulque.

Coyomeapan belongs to the Sierra Madre del Sur, in the Sierras Orientales, and its terrain ranges from about 400 to 3,200 metres, mostly limestone. That huge drop explains the mix of climates, from humid temperate to hot, with average temperatures of 12 to 26 °C and rainfall anywhere from 500 to 4,100 mm a year depending on the slope. Almost 60% of the land is forest, with patches of tropical woodland; its waters drain to the Papaloapan basin through the Petlapa and Salado rivers and the Tilapa stream. It borders Zoquitlán, San Sebastián Tlacotepec, Coxcatlán and the state of Oaxaca.