Santiago Acatlán

Acatlán comes from the Nahuatl acatl, reed, and tlan, place: the spot where reeds grew. The name of Saint James the Greater was set before the indigenous one, and he is still the village's patron. Today it is one of the largest communities in the municipality of Tepeaca, with 9,201 people counted in 2020, sitting at 2,287 metres above the valley, about 29 km in a straight line from Puebla city and a few kilometres from the municipal seat, whose convent and market are its everyday point of reference.

The land around it is farmland: nearly six in ten hectares of the municipality are cultivated, while built-up areas take about 14% and the rest is split between pasture, some woodland and scrub. Average temperatures range from 12 to 18 °C, and 600 to 900 mm of rain falls each year, nearly all of it in summer. Water drains toward the Atoyac, within the great Balsas basin. Tepeaca borders Acajete and Nopalucan to the north, Acatzingo, Los Reyes de Juárez and Cuapiaxtla de Madero to the east, Santo Tomás Hueyotlipan and Mixtla to the south, and Tecali de Herrera and Cuautinchán to the west.

The nearby seat holds the area's heritage: the 16th-century Franciscan convent complex, the Rollo raised in the same period, the parish of the Niño Doctor, and the houses known as Hernán Cortés's and the Viceroys'. The trade that sets the municipality apart is ironwork: smiths forge staircases, doors, windows, machetes and park benches decorated with iron figures. In the kitchen, carnitas, cueritos, chicharrón, cecina, barbacoa and mole poblano lead the way; for dessert there are buñuelos, pumpkin and fig sweets and seed jamoncillo, and for All Saints' figures are moulded from glazed pumpkin-seed candy. People drink pulque, chocolate and masa atole, and brass bands and orchestras play at the patron-saint festivities.