Las Remojadas

The name of this village in Soledad de Doblado turns up in museums in Mexico and abroad. Las Remojadas gave its name to a culture, an archaeological site and a style of clay figurines that flourished on the Gulf Coast of central Veracruz from roughly 100 BC to AD 800, and that are counted as part of Classic Veracruz. Archaeologist Alfonso Medellín Zenil dug here in 1949 and 1950, and the site has seen little research since.

Remojadas produced thousands of hollow ceramic figures: gods, rulers, ordinary people, dogs and deer, many of them doubling as whistles, flutes or ocarinas. The best known are the sonrientes, smiling faces of an almost triangular shape, sometimes with the tongue poking out; there are also little animals on wheels, one of the few uses of the wheel in the ancient Americas. Idols, stone yokes, axes and smiling heads have been found in the municipality at Las Remojadas and on the Fortín and Estrella hills, and many pieces are on show at the Xalapa Museum of Anthropology.

Today it is a village on the Sotavento plain, 44 metres above sea level, home to 1,012 people in 2020, against just 28 in 1900. The municipality celebrates the Virgin of Candelaria on 2 February with dances and a fair, and its kitchen is known for garlic river prawns, green mole, fruit preserves and rabbit or iguana in adobo.