Corral Nuevo

After the city of Acayucan itself, Corral Nuevo is one of the biggest communities in the municipality, with 3,352 residents in 2020. It lies on Federal Highway 180, the Gulf coast road, about 34 km northwest of the municipal seat, where the hot Sotavento plains start rising toward the southern foothills of the Tuxtla Mountains.

The area's historical weight lies just outside the village: Laguna de los Cerros, which archaeologists rank with San Lorenzo, La Venta and Tres Zapotes as one of the four principal Olmec centres. The name refers to the nearly one hundred mounds scattered over the land, laid out as long parallel rows flanking rectangular plazas. It was occupied for close to two thousand years: the Olmecs settled around 1400-1200 BCE, and by about 1000 BCE the site covered nearly 300 hectares with 47 satellite hamlets within 5 km, although most of the mounds you see today date from the Classic period (250-900 CE). Unlike the other three great centres, no colossal heads have turned up here, but roughly two dozen carved stone monuments have. Alfonso Medellín Zenil studied the site in 1960, and Ann Cyphers excavated it in the late 1990s.

The climate is hot, averaging about 26 °C across the municipality. Local cooking runs to fresh-corn tamales, crab chilpachole and beef broth with choschogo, washed down with popo, a frothy drink of cacao, rice and cocolmeca root. The region's big feast is Saint Martin's in Acayucan, from 11 to 26 November.