Colatlán

Colatlán is a Nahua village of the Lower Huasteca in the municipality of Ixhuatlán de Madero, at about 300 metres and some 20 km northwest of the municipal seat. It has 1,586 residents (2020) and lies on Federal Highway 127, the road from Álamo to Huejutla in Hidalgo. The name reads as "place of scorpions", from cólotl, scorpion, and tlan; another interpretation takes cólotl as a metaphor for punishment and renders it "where the yoke is". Census numbers have risen and fallen: 2,874 people in 1970, down to 1,344 in 1990; a separate community, Barrio Abajo Colatlán, now sits next to the village.

The place matters to archaeology. Among other finds, a fragment of a stone yoke was found here and is now on display at the Xalapa Anthropology Museum. It is also a place of letters: Juan Hernández Ramírez, poet and storyteller in Nahuatl and Spanish, was born in Colatlán in 1951; he wrote Chikome xochitl (Seven Flower) and Tlatlatok tetl (Burning Stone) and helped translate Veracruz's state constitution into Nahuatl.

The festive year is long. There is a carnival in February or March; the patron feast of the Sacred Heart of Jesus runs from 24 to 26 June; the Day of the Dead takes 30 October to 2 November, and from 26 to 30 December, after the posadas, comes the so-called cascada de huapangos, a run of huapango music and dance. Food includes mole, meatballs, barbacoa and zacahuil, the Huasteca's giant tamal, and embroidery is still practised.