Santa María Texmelucan

Santa María Texmelucan lies on the lower slopes of Iztaccíhuatl, at about 2,480 m, hence its name: Tezmolocan, "place full of little oaks". After the Spanish arrived it was called Santa María Nativitas, and in time it took back the name Texmelucan, also used by the Spanish settlement of San Martín, today's neighbouring city. It had 4,251 people in 2020 and belongs to the municipality of Tlahuapan; it also has an indigenous population.

The village festival is the Nativity of the Virgin, on 8 and 9 September, with mass, a fair on the square and a firework castle, and residents offer visitors mole, rice and sometimes carnitas. At Holy Week a procession carries the images around the whole village for about 12 hours, from 8 pm until 10 am the next day.

Tlahuapan borders the State of Mexico and Tlaxcala, on the slopes of the Sierra Nevada between 2,300 and 3,500 m. It is cold, averaging 8 to 16 °C, and four in ten hectares are forest; almost all its streams rise on the eastern side of the range and flow to the Atoyac. Local cooking is known for trout prepared many ways, alongside broad-bean soup, bean or tlanipa tamales and tamaloyota; drinks are pulque, fruit wine and cider. Craftspeople make crackle-glazed pottery, toys and Christmas decorations.