Zongozotla

In 1865, during the French Intervention, the Austro-Hungarian Legion marched into Zongozotla without a fight, pitched camp here and used the hilltop as a base for attacks on Republican positions across the sierra. When the war ended some of those soldiers stayed on in the region, a few for a while and others for good. The town is far older than that episode: the municipal archive of Tetela de Ocampo records its founding in 1709. The name is Nahuatl and refers to cozol, the resin of the ocote pine, so it is usually rendered as "place where ocote pine abounds". The town had 4,229 residents in 2020 and sits at 1,123 m on a ridge of the Sierra Norte de Puebla.

People in Zongozotla speak mainly Totonac, as well as Nahuatl; the municipality had more than 3,700 speakers of an Indigenous language. Two buildings anchor the centre: the parish church of the Most Holy Virgin of the Conception, built in the 16th century, and the town hall, recognisable by the long row of arches along its front. Local dress is still seen: women in a skirt and white blouse crossed by a red band, men in cotton-cloth trousers and shirt, palm hat, strap sandals and a machete at the belt. The music at fiestas is huapango.

This is wet mountain country: about 78% of the municipality is still forest and nearly all the rest is grassland, with only 4% farmed. Rain is heavy, 1,900 to 2,100 mm a year spread across every season, and average temperatures run from 16 to 22 °C, warmer lower down. Water drains toward the Zempoala river and the Tecolutla basin; the Ayoco and Laxaxalpan streams flow year-round. Households weave ixtle fibre, palm and wool. The kitchen offers mole poblano and pork or chicken tamales, and to drink there are spirits fermented with quince root and wine made from wild blackberries.