Texcalapa de Juárez

Texcalapa takes its name from the Nahuatl texcalla, crag or cliff, and pan, on top: "on the crag". The "de Juárez" honours Benito Juárez. It is a village in the municipality of Petlalcingo, in Puebla's southern corner where the state meets Oaxaca; at about 1,245 m, it had 1,640 residents in 2020. Tehuacán is about 77 km away in a straight line, and Teposcolula, in the Oaxacan Mixteca, about 81 km.

Petlalcingo belongs to the Puebla Mixteca and covers some 234 km² between 1,200 and 2,000 m. To the north lies part of the small alluvial valley of Acatlán, shared with Acatlán de Osorio and the two Xayacatláns, while the rest is taken up by the hills of the Sierra Mixteca, such as Calahuate, Xicúi and Santa Rosa. The Petlalcingo River flows down to the Acatlán, which in turn is part of the Atoyac–Balsas basin; streams such as the Camotlán, El Pescado, Piedra Azul and Tlacoacingo only run in the rainy season. It borders Chila to the south and Oaxacan municipalities such as Huajuapan de León and Tequixtepec to the east and southwest.

It is hot, fairly dry country: 21 to 23 °C on average and 700 to 900 mm of rain a year, with low tropical forest over more than a third of the land, plus grassland and scrub; less than a third is farmed. Its most typical craft is weaving apache palm (Brahea dulcis) into sleeping mats, hats, bags, small cases, baskets, chiquihuites and tablecloths; ixtle fibre and timber are also worked. The kitchen offers goat barbacoa, mint mole, bean and tlanipa tamales and pipián, with pumpkin-seed jamoncillos, frothy chocolate, granillo atole and aguardiente. In the municipal seat the church of Santiago Apóstol stands out with its broad atrium, and the municipality has two brass bands.