Totoltepec de Guerrero

On the second Friday of Lent this village of 949 people (2020 census) receives thousands of pilgrims arriving on foot, by bicycle or by truck from central and southern Puebla, Veracruz, Mexico City and the State of Mexico. They come for the Señor de la Salud, a wooden crucified Christ about 1.75 m tall that arrived in the 17th century, whose feast outweighs that of the patron, the Immaculate Conception, on 8 December. The date belongs to a regional chain: Tepexi de Rodríguez celebrates on the first Friday of Lent, Totoltepec on the second, San Jerónimo Xayacatlán on the fourth and Tejalpa on the fifth.

The name, from totol, tepetl and co, means "on the hill of the birds" and was already in use before the Conquest; afterwards the village was Santa María Totoltepec. The municipality dates from 1870 and took the surname Guerrero in 1921. There was a vicariate here from 1747, and the parish was first canonically erected on 13 August 1765, with Xayacatlán, Tonahuixtla and Chichihualtepec among its villages; in 1864 the parish seat moved to San Jerónimo Xayacatlán. The neighbourhoods keep their own feasts: Saint Anthony on 13 June, Saint John on the 24th, Saint Christopher on 25 July and Saint Michael on 29 September.

The seat lies at 1,361 m in a 148 km² municipality bordering Oaxaca. The Acatlán river, part of the Balsas basin, crosses it from northeast to southwest, fed by streams such as the Chichihualtepec, Cacalote and Gavilán. The climate is mostly semi-warm and subhumid, averaging 16 to 24 °C, and almost half the land is tropical dry forest, with grassland and scrub; less than a tenth is farmed. People weave palm hats and baskets, and brass bands play at the festivals. The kitchen offers goat mole, mutton and goat barbacoa, enfrijoladas and comal tortillas, with pinole of native maize, palanquetas, mezcal and cane spirit.