Tepeyoloc

Tepeyoloc sits right where the landscape changes: some 11 km from the seat of Coxcatlán, at the start of the Sierra Negra, the barrel-cactus and agave scrub of the Tehuacán valley gives way to pine and oak forest. So its plant life mixes both worlds, with orchids among the pines. The community, 463 people in 2020, stands at about 2,385 m. Rabbits, flying squirrels, coyotes, deer, armadillos and eagles live in the hills.

People live off the land: onions, avocados, maize, beans, broad beans, peas, apples, peaches, passion fruit, pears and nopal. Much of it is eaten at home, and the rest is sold at the markets of Ajalpan, Zoquitlán and Coxcatlán. Women embroider by hand; several men work as builders or taco cooks, and in season some go to Sonora to pick asparagus and grapes.

Coxcatlán is a key name in the history of maize. In a cave at the foot of a ravine, about 10 km south-east of the seat, beneath a cliff some 200 m long, the archaeologist Richard MacNeish found cobs from around 5000 BC, among the oldest remains of the crop. The municipality is part of the Tehuacán-Cuicatlán Biosphere Reserve, Nahuatl, Mazatec, Popoloca and other languages are spoken there, and local cooking includes goat-hip or backbone mole, tlaxcales and fruit preserves.