El Fresno

Climbing from Xalapa towards the mountains, El Fresno sits at 1,772 metres on the road from Jilotepec to Tlacolulan, about 4 km short of Tlacolulan itself, the municipal seat. The climate is mild and damp, with plenty of rain in summer and early autumn and some more in winter.

It has grown fast: 377 people in 1990, 655 in 2000, 969 in 2010 and 1,111 in 2020, which makes it one of the main localities of the municipality along with Etlantepec, Huichila and Arellano.

The municipality's roots run deep. Tlacolulan, Nahuatl for 'place of the scribes', was the seat of a pre-Hispanic altepetl; in 1957 archaeologist Alfonso Medellín Zenil recovered pieces here that are now in the Xalapa Museum of Anthropology, among them a stone palma carved with two hands. After the conquest the people of the mountain hamlets were gathered into the valley of the present seat, and in colonial times the area lived off timber, lime and trade between the Actopan basin and the Perote valley.

Tlacolulan honours the Virgin of Candelaria on 2 February and its patron, the Nativity of Mary, on 8 and 9 September, while nearby Huichila performs the Santiaguitos dance. Mountain cooking here means mole, beef barbacoa, stuffed chiles, hot chocolate and pavo enflorado.