La Granja

La Granja exists because of a crossroads. On Federal Highway 145, the road from Tierra Blanca to Sayula de Alemán, this is where the turn-off for Temazcal branches away, and a short walk away runs the railway's Line G, the trunk line across the lower Papaloapan basin. Beside the tracks there is an industrial yard for railway equipment, and maps still show the abandoned bed of another line, the GE.

With 669 residents in 2020, almost exactly as many as in 2010, it ranks tenth among the 289 localities of Tres Valles municipality, about 17 km from the municipal seat. The land is flat and low, roughly 41 metres above sea level, and the heat is steady, with an annual average around 25 °C. The village has a health centre, grocery shops, a kindergarten, the Niño Artillero primary school, the Carlos Cruz Palma telesecundaria and a telebachillerato high school. Nine households in ten own a mobile phone, but only one in four has internet.

The whole municipality was born with the railway: Tres Valles began around 1900 as camp number seven for the workers building the Veracruz al Pacífico line. Today it lives mainly from sugarcane, and also grows rice, maize, beans, pineapple and sorghum, with large mango orchards. In the town of Tres Valles, Christ the King is celebrated on 20 November with a fair, and from late March to early April there is a livestock, farm and industry expo. Local cooking runs to lamb and beef barbacoa and rabbit adobo, and the music you will hear most is son jarocho.