Nanacamilpa

Nanacamilpa, officially Ciudad de Nanacamilpa, is the seat of the municipality of Nanacamilpa de Mariano Arista, at the far western edge of Tlaxcala, against the Puebla border and about 130 km from Mexico City. It sits at 2,720 metres on a plateau surrounded by pine and sacred-fir forest. The 2020 census counted 13,401 people in the town and 18,686 in the municipality. The name comes from the Nahuatl nanacamilpan, usually translated as "field over the mushrooms", and wild mushrooms are still part of the local cooking.

The town grew out of a hacienda: the Spanish Crown granted the land to Juan de Villerías and the Hacienda de Nanacamilpa was founded in 1581; the municipality was created in 1858. In the mid-19th century the hacienda belonged to General Mariano Arista, President of Mexico, whose name the municipality carries. Like the neighbouring estates of Sanctórum, Calpulalpan and Españita it lived off the maguey, and the arrival of the Interoceanic Railway at the end of the 19th century boosted shipments of pulque to the capital. In the Revolution, Zapatista forces looted the station in November 1912, and on 10 April 1914 residents beat off an attack by firing from their rooftops. Afterwards General Domingo Arenas settled here to hand land to the peasants; he had the road to the station built by communal labour, laid out streets and a large square and put up the arcades on Calle Juárez. The hacienda's land was divided around 1920.

The centre today is the square, the arcades and the 19th-century church of San José, whose four-stage tower was added later, with a round three-stage tower on its left side. Around the town stand 19th-century hacienda buildings such as Ixtafiayuca, San Cayetano and Santa Cruz Tepozontitla, the last with "Tepozontitla mayo 24 de 1894" on its façade and still producing pulque. A small plant in the municipality cans pulque for export. The main festival is San José on 19 March, after a nine-day novena; producers set up a pulque exhibition on the square and hand out plain and flavoured pulque, which is why it is also called the pulque fair. At carnival, Moors-and-Christians dancers perform with a brass band.

What brings most visitors is the Firefly Sanctuary, in the fir forests the municipality shares with Españita and Calpulalpan. The Sendero de la Luciérnaga trail was set up with the San José ejido, which has more than 700 families and about 2,600 hectares of forest, and there are ecotourism centres such as Piedra Canteada and Villas del Bosque Santa Clara, known for its trout. Local dishes include mutton barbacoa in mixiote, mushroom soup, maguey worms and pork crackling in green mole, and potters still make cazuelas, pots, bowls and molcajetes.