Santiago Tuxtla

Santiago Tuxtla is a small colonial city in the Los Tuxtlas region of southern Veracruz, about 12 km west of San Andrés Tuxtla. It had 15,733 people at the 2020 census, and its municipality, mostly farmland and pasture on the slopes of the extinct El Vigía volcano and the San Juan river plain, had 57,085. Corn, sugar cane and beans are the main crops. The municipality is also the heartland of the western Olmec world: the site of Tres Zapotes and the boulders of El Vigía that supplied basalt for colossal heads are both within its limits.

"Tuxtla" comes from Nahuatl and means "place of the rabbit". Hernán Cortés reached the area in 1522 and set up a sugar mill, and Santiago Tuxtla itself was founded in 1525; from 1531 it was part of the private lands of Cortés as Marqués del Valle, and the museum notes he built the first wine press on the continent here. The present main plaza was laid out in 1881, and the tower and parish clock were inaugurated in 1890. The modern municipality dates from 1932, the seat was designated a city in 1950, and in 1974 it was declared a colonial city.

The centre is Parque Juárez, a large square with two Olmec colossal heads: the La Cobata head, found in 1970 on El Vigía and the largest known, at about 3.4 m high and an estimated 40 tons, and Tres Zapotes Monument Q, or the Nestepe head, moved here in 1951. Facing the square is the Museo Tuxteco, founded in 1961 and run by INAH since 1975, in the arcaded municipal palace of 1880; it has about 300 archaeological pieces, including a clay Cihuateteo from El Zapotal, plus a gallery on the colonial era. The town's big festival is for Santiago (Saint James) from 22 to 30 July, peaking on the 25th, with the dances of Negros, Cristianos, Toros de Petate and Líceres, horse races and a state fandango contest. At Christmas, families carry images of the Christ Child through the streets in the Acarreo del Niño Dios on 24 and 31 December.