Soteapan

Besides Spanish, the language you hear in Soteapan is Sierra Popoluca, a Mixe-Zoquean tongue its speakers call nuntajɨɨyi, also known as Soteapan Zoque. In 2020 it had 36,113 speakers across this municipality, Hueyapan de Ocampo and Tatahuicapan de Juárez, and its closest relatives are Ayapanec in Tabasco and the Popoluca of Texistepec. Some Nahua families live in the municipality too.

The town sits 439 metres above sea level on the southern side of the Sierra de Santa Marta, the volcanic range at the eastern end of the Los Tuxtlas region, and is the seat of a 528 km² municipality that runs north to the Gulf of Mexico. Much of that land lies inside the Los Tuxtlas Biosphere Reserve. It is hot, averaging about 24 °C, with heavy rain in summer and early autumn. The town itself had 5,285 people in 2020; Buena Vista, Ocozotepec and Morelos are the other big villages. Small farms and cattle are the main living, and the municipality is rated as having very high marginalisation.

In colonial times Soteapan belonged to Coatzacoalcos; it became a municipality of its own in 1831. After the Acayucan rebellion of September 1906, an early spark of the Mexican Revolution, some of the defeated rebels took refuge in the Soteapan hills, where indigenous villagers helped them, and kept up a guerrilla war until 1911. The calendar has San José on 18 and 19 March, the patron San Pedro from 28 to 30 June, and the Virgin of Guadalupe in December. About 3 km south of town is the Soteapan waterfall, reached down a staircase past smaller cascades, with pools for swimming and a lookout.