Coyolillo

In Coyolillo, as Lent approaches, parents shout at their children to run: the bull is loose in the streets, a masked figure in a fringed cape, a patchwork suit and a hat decked with paper flowers, who snorts, rings his cowbell and charges at anyone in his path. He is the central character of the carnival of this Afro-Mexican community in Actopan, a week-long, non-religious celebration held in February or March that ends before Ash Wednesday. Alongside the bulls come men dressed as women, young people and all sorts of masked dancers; the carved wooden masks show animals such as bulls and goats, men and devils. One of the best-known carvers, Octavio López Zaragoza, has been making them for more than forty years, and during the festival many families open their homes and serve chiles rellenos to visitors.

The village, home to 2,394 people in 2020, sits at about 660 metres in the Actopan river basin, 9 km northwest of the municipal seat, on the site of a former hacienda called Santa Rosa de Coyolillo. Its people descend from sugar-cane cutters of African origin, recorded as pardos in the second half of the 18th century. The carnival, more than a century and a half old, is one of the oldest in the Actopan valley along with those of Almolonga, Alto Tío Diego and Blanca Espuma, and its leaps and chases have been compared with the African Gule Wamkulu dance. Coyolillo also keeps a tradition of improvised verse, known as the dedicada or versada and the versos de cuelga.

Outside carnival time people farm, in a municipality of sugar cane, maize and mangoes, and honour their patron saint, Isidore the Farmer. Local cooking includes mole, plantain torta, squash, sweet potato, malanga and erizo.