Monte Blanco

Monte Blanco is one of the seven congregations of Fortín municipality, north of the town of Fortín de las Flores on the road that climbs towards Huatusco and Coscomatepec. About 7,400 people live here under an agente municipal, and the main church is the parish of the Preciosa Sangre de Cristo (Precious Blood of Christ).

The village grew up beside the Monte Blanco hacienda, one of the first estates the Spanish set up in the area after Gonzalo de Sandoval's conquest in 1521. The municipal history dates it to 1618, the year the town of Córdoba was founded, and describes it as a coffee, orange and tobacco farm. In 1816, during the War of Independence, insurgent general Guadalupe Victoria made it his headquarters, Nicolás Bravo also stayed there, and a small fort was built on top of the Monte Blanco hill as a refuge from the royalist garrisons of Orizaba and Córdoba, left under the command of Colonel Melchor Múzquiz. By the late 1800s the land belonged to the Braniff family's hacienda, together with Santa Lucía Potrerillo.

From 1907 to 1953 Monte Blanco was a stop on the "Huatusquito", the narrow-gauge branch line from Córdoba to Coscomatepec worked by small English steam engines, until the new highway made it redundant. In 1930 the congregation moved from Córdoba to the newly created municipality of Fortín. What remains of the hacienda today is its chapel and ruins, which can be visited.