Ignacio de la Llave

Out on the Sotavento plains of Veracruz, Ignacio de la Llave heads a municipality that shares its name. It lies about 65 km by road from the port of Veracruz and only 27 m above sea level. The town had 4,654 inhabitants at the last census. The climate is hot and humid, averaging 24 to 28 °C with summer rains, and the Blanco river and a web of streams feeding the Papaloapan system cross the municipality. It is cattle and sugarcane country, and brass bands play at every festival.

The area belongs to the Mixtequilla, the plain between the Blanco and Papaloapan rivers where a distinct Classic-period culture, neither Olmec nor Totonac, once flourished. Under Spanish rule the land was taken up by the hacienda of Santa María de la O Cuyucuenda, which grew cotton and tobacco and brought Mixtec families from Oaxaca to work it; enslaved Africans were also sent to haciendas across the region. Until 1868 the territory answered to Tlalixcoyan. That year a decree grouped the hamlets of Moyotla, Zapotal, Mistequilla and Zapote into the town of San Cristóbal de la Llave, renamed Ignacio de la Llave from 1 January 1933 after the liberal general and governor born in Orizaba in 1818, whose name the state itself also carries. It became a villa in 1942.

The municipality's great treasure is El Zapotal, the remains of a Totonac town that thrived between about AD 600 and 900. Archaeologists found a monumental offering to the god of death there: an unfired clay figure of Mictlantecuhtli, which remains on site, and an ossuary with hundreds of figurines, including smiling faces and Cihuateteo women, now shown at the Xalapa Museum of Anthropology. In town, a statue of General Llave greets arrivals and the main square has busts of Hidalgo and of local benefactor Julio A. Tejeda. The carnival in March brings horse races, ribbon tournaments and mojigangas, and the Sacred Heart is honoured on 22 August.