Villa Ávila Camacho (La Ceiba)

Villa Ávila Camacho, also known as La Ceiba, is a town in the municipality of Xicotepec in northern Puebla, near Poza Rica in Veracruz. It stands at about 230 m, in the warm lowlands at the foot of the Sierra Norte, and had 9,688 people in 2020, making it one of the municipality's most populous places. The Pueblo Mágico of Xicotepec de Juárez, the municipal seat, is about 13 km away.

Its official name comes from a ceremony on 10 August 1954. That day the whole village turned out at the entrance to La Ceiba to welcome Governor Rafael Ávila Camacho and his entourage of congressmen, judges and mayors from the region. Along the way from the highway to the square the new drinking-water system was opened, and at a public session of the state legislature a decree was approved raising the settlement's rank and giving it the surname of the generals Manuel, Maximino and Rafael Ávila Camacho; a commemorative plaque was then unveiled at the local town hall. Even so, people still call it La Ceiba, after the great tree seen in old photos of the village.

The municipality of Xicotepec, "place of bumblebees", was settled by the Otomí around 300 BC and by Totonacs from El Tajín in the 5th century; later the Toltecs, Chichimecs and Acolhuas ruled it before the Aztecs.