Tamuín

Tamuín is the seat of its municipality on the flat eastern lowlands of the Huasteca Potosina, about 20 metres above sea level, with around 16,600 residents. The Tampaón River runs through the municipality and, downstream, meets the Moctezuma to become the Pánuco, which flows on to Tampico and the Gulf. The name has been spelled many ways over the centuries (Tamuche, Tam-Ohin, Tamuyn, Tamohi), and nobody agrees on its meaning either: place of the catán fish, place of mosquitoes, or place of the book of knowledge.

The first Spanish land grant in the Potosí Huasteca was made here, and by 1585 Tamuín had a Franciscan guardian, which means it had a friary. In 1831 an army engineer steamed up the Pánuco from Tampico all the way to Tamuín, the first steamboat locals had ever seen. The old village, El Choyal, stood further south; today's town was laid out in 1892 at La Cofradía on land carved from the El Limón hacienda.

The town now lives on cattle and industry: meat packers, a cement works, two power stations and the Nestlé powdered-milk plant opened in the 1960s. Visitors come for what lies around it: the Huastec archaeological sites of Tamtoc and Tamohi (El Consuelo), the Sierra del Abra-Tanchipa, a biosphere reserve since 1994, and the sulphur-spring baths at Taninul near the Ciudad Valles line. Local cooking means catán, a gar-like river fish from the Tampaón, alongside Huastec cecina and enchiladas, washed down with jobo-fruit wine.