Jamapa

The town of Jamapa, seat of the municipality named after it, lies on the Sotavento coastal plain at an altitude of just 10 metres and about 25 km by road from downtown Veracruz, within the port's metropolitan area. Its Nahuatl name, Xam-a-pan, means "in the river of adobes" and is shared with the river that rises on the glaciers of the Pico de Orizaba and crosses the municipality before reaching the sea at Boca del Río. It is hot here, around 25.5 °C on average, with heavy rain in June and September.

People of the so-called Remojadas culture lived in the area. Around 1550 the site was the Hacienda de Santa María Jamapa, a cattle estate under Medellín worked largely by enslaved Africans; today's population descends from that mix of Indigenous, Spanish and African people. The municipality was created by decree on 17 February 1870, when its boundary with Medellín was set. The hacienda grew to 9,625 hectares of maize, rice, fruit, rubber and cattle, and in 1921 a presidential resolution handed 1,755 hectares to 125 of the town's farmers.

Cattle still shape local life, with a livestock fair, and the countryside around holds lagoons such as El Apompal, El Perol and La Maromera. The carnival runs from 12 to 18 May and since 2008 has included the Encuentro Xamapan, a week of culture, tradition and sport. On 8 December the patron, the Purísima Concepción, is honoured with horse races, a ribbon-tilting contest on horseback, dances and cockfights, and there is also a Mole Fair. The town keeps a community museum, the Museo Comunitario de Jamapa, run without government funding. To eat: tamales, mole and atole de coyol, made from the nut of the coyol palm.