Terrenate

San Nicolás Terrenate is the seat of Terrenate municipality in the far northeast of Tlaxcala, the highest part of the state: the town sits at 2,680 metres, and to the north rise the forested La Caldera hills on the border with Puebla. It had 5,643 people at the 2020 census. It lives from farming, maize, beans, broad beans, potatoes, wheat and barley, plus livestock, and the municipality sends many migrants to the United States.

There are two explanations for the name. One reads it as a Spanish-Nahuatl hybrid, "land the colour of masa"; the other derives it from Otomí Tir näthe, "where the water runs", since the original people here were Otomí. Parish tradition gives the town's old name as Tlallicitlalli, "land of stars". The area was settled between AD 100 and 650, with sites at Los Ameles and the La Candelaria hacienda. Haciendas appear in a census of 1712, when Terrenate belonged to the district of Huamantla, and it became a municipality in 1862. Gerzayn Ugarte, private secretary to President Venustiano Carranza who was with him at Tlaxcalantongo in 1920, was born here. In 1995 the villages that now form the municipalities of Emiliano Zapata and Lázaro Cárdenas were split off from Terrenate.

The parish church of San Nicolás de Tolentino was founded by the Augustinians; its records begin in 1655. It is a plain stone church with walls a metre thick, a barrel vault and two towers capped with tiled cupolas. The north tower is a rebuild: the original collapsed after an accidental fireworks explosion on 12 December 1961, during mass. Tradition says the saint's image was found on a hill about 5 km away, at a spot called La Ermita, where it is carried in procession twice a year. The fiesta runs twelve days from 31 August and peaks on 10 September, when the image tours streets laid with sand and sawdust carpets, pilgrims arrive with the Guadalupan torch carried on foot from the Basilica of Guadalupe, fireworks go up and the negritos dance to a single violin. At carnival, dancers go out in masks, palm hats with paper flowers and bells on their legs.

Several former farming and pulque haciendas surround the town. San Pedro Tenexac, from the 18th and 19th centuries, is a historic monument declared by INAH and has been a set for films and telenovelas; others include Concepción La Noria, with mural painting, San Diego Baquedano, with a crenellated granary and towers, and San Francisco Teometitla. Some restored haciendas offer lodging, meals, horse riding and balloon flights. The municipality also includes San José Villarreal, at 3,080 m and known for its potatoes.