Santa María Ixtiyucan

The name says it all: Ixtiyucan is built from ixtli, face or valley, yutl, quality, and can, place, and means "flat place". And indeed the town fills an open plain in eastern Puebla at 2,417 metres, with grid-plan streets and farmland to the horizon. Its patron is Saint Mary. A curious fact: with 8,707 inhabitants in 2020, Ixtiyucan is bigger than Nopalucan de la Granja, the municipal seat, which lies about 3 km to the north in a straight line and counted 7,699.

The municipality carries a long history for such a quiet place. The first settlements date back to around 9000 BC; in 1531 Nopalucan joined the first corregimiento of Tlaxcala, in 1535 it was granted in encomienda and by 1600 it came under the alcaldía mayor of Tepeaca. The church of Santiago Apóstol went up in the seat between 1691 and 1711, and María Antonia Bretón, wife of Guadalupe Victoria, was born there in 1814. Ignacio Zaragoza wrote letters to Benito Juárez from a local headquarters in 1862, and two years later Maximilian and Carlota rested in the old parish house. The seat's surname recalls Juan de la Granja, promoter of the country's first telegraph line, which linked Nopalucan with Mexico City.

Nopalucan means "place of the nopal patch", and the cooking lives up to it: nopal quesadillas, dried peas with nopales, mole poblano, sweets of nopal, tejocote, capulín and squash, and prickly-pear water to drink; the area is also known for good bakers. The traditional dress, of satin trimmed with sequins and ribbon, is printed with the Virgin of Solitude among nopal plants. Over 84% of the municipality is farmed and hardly any forest remains. Average temperatures run 12 to 16 °C with 500 to 900 mm of rain, and nearly all the land drains toward the Totolzingo lagoon. Carnival and religious fiestas are played on violin and by bands.