Tecomatlán

Every year Tecomatlán hosts the Espartaqueada Nacional Cultural y Deportiva, a kind of olympics of sport and the arts run by the Antorchista Movement. For decades the municipality has been governed through collective participation coordinated by that organisation, which holds it up as a model of development in one of the country's poorest regions; the monumental arch in the photo, at the entrance to town, is part of that image. The town had 3,706 people in 2020 and lies at 920 metres in the south of the state, some 104 km in a straight line south of the capital.

The name comes from Nahuatl and refers to the tecomate: a tree with round, hard-shelled fruits 15 to 30 cm across that are hollowed out to store water and keep it cool. Another reading translates it as "place of stone pots", from tecómitl. The municipality covers about 181 km², borders Piaxtla, Tulcingo, Chila de la Sal and Axutla, and even has a detached piece by the Oaxaca line, cut off from the rest by Piaxtla and Tulcingo. It belongs to the Puebla Mixteca Baja, in the Acatlán valley, where the Acatlán and Mixteco rivers run between the foothills of the sierras.

It is hot here: averages run from 20 to 26 °C, rainfall is 800 to 1,000 mm and almost the whole territory is very hot and semi-arid. Seven in ten hectares are low deciduous forest, which drops its leaves in the dry season and greens up with the rains; only about a quarter is farmed. The baroque parish church in the town is the municipality's most notable monument. On the table there is mole poblano and goat barbacoa, and the town's brass band provides the music at festivals.