Actopan

Actopan is a small town and municipal seat in the warm valley of the Actopan river, about 50 km east-southeast of Xalapa, on the way down from the capital to the Gulf coast. The town had 4,607 people at the 2020 census and the municipality, which stretches from the foothills of the Sierra de Chiconquiaco to the coast, 41,762. It is best known as one of the main mango-growing areas of Veracruz and of Mexico; sugar cane, maize and cattle are the other mainstays. The name comes from Nahuatl and is usually translated along the lines of "on damp ground" or "on fertile land".

People have lived in this river basin for a very long time. Remains from the Middle Preclassic, between the 9th and 6th centuries BC, have been found at places such as El Trapiche and Chalahuite, and the earlier settlement of Actopan, at Ranchito de las Ánimas, was a Totonac town between AD 600 and 900 before its people moved up to the defensible Cerro de los Otates. The old road from the coast to the highlands ran through here, and in 1519 Hernán Cortés's men used it on their way inland from Villa Rica. The municipality also contains Quiahuiztlán, the Totonac hilltop city on Cerro de los Metates near the coast, with about 78 tombs built like miniature temples, and the ruins of the first Villa Rica de la Vera Cruz founded by the Spaniards in 1519.

The town centre is a plaza with a garden, coloured town letters and the yellow parish church, where the feast of Saint Francis of Assisi on 4 October is celebrated with the Danza de la Conquista, also called the dance of La Malinche. In late May Actopan holds its Feria del Mango to mark the harvest, with stalls selling mangoes and mango sauces, jams and liqueurs, horse parades, floats, rides and concerts; in 2026 it ran from 28 to 31 May. Upriver is El Descabezadero, where the Actopan river bursts out of the rock and which is used for river rafting, and the village of Coyolillo in the same municipality is known for its carnival the week before Ash Wednesday.