Tihuatlán

Tihuatlán is the seat of the municipality of the same name in northern Veracruz, about 24 km by road from Poza Rica and 35 km from Tuxpan. The town counted 15,305 people at the census, and parts of the wider municipality, home to more than 80,000, have merged into the Poza Rica metropolitan area. It sits only about 60 m above sea level on the first low hills of the Huasteca, watered by the Cazones and Tontepec rivers. Locals call it the "golden gate" of the Veracruz Huasteca, because the municipality lies right on the line between Huastec and Totonac country; Totonac is still the main Indigenous language spoken here.

Two Nahuatl readings of the name circulate: "place where women abound", or, in the municipality's own version, Teo Cihua-tlán, "place of the divine woman". It was already a pre-Hispanic settlement in the province of Tuxpan. Its colonial founding is dated to 1598, when Rodrigo Zárate set it up on the viceroy's orders, and in the 18th century it belonged to the parish of Temapache under the alcaldía mayor of Huauchinango. It became a free municipality on 30 September 1920, got electricity in 1955 and was raised to the rank of villa in October 1963.

Across Veracruz the town is known as the furniture capital, and cedar workshops and furniture showrooms line its streets alongside potters. A concrete Christ more than 30 m tall, inaugurated in 2007, stands on the hill above town and has a page of its own. Down below, the centre has the domed municipal park, the church of San Francisco de Asís, a mural on local identity and a string of public sculptures, while the public library holds a small museum of pre-Hispanic objects and copies of codices. Food follows Huastec tradition: zacahuil, caldo macho, enchiladas and dishes cooked empascalado, in a ground-seed pascal sauce.