Tlaxcalantongo

Tlaxcalantongo is a small coffee-growing village in the hills east of Xicotepec, and it would be just another Sierra Norte ranching and farming community if not for one night in May 1920. President Venustiano Carranza, cut off by the rebels of the Plan de Agua Prieta while trying to move his government from Mexico City to Veracruz, was crossing the Sierra Norte de Puebla on horseback with a dwindling escort.

General Rodolfo Herrero assured him the village was safe, and Carranza's party stopped there on the afternoon of May 20. Herrero had changed sides. Before dawn on May 21 the huts were attacked, and Carranza died in the shooting, in circumstances that historians still debate. His body was carried to Xicotepec, where the autopsy was done and where it lay for three days; that house is now the Casa Carranza museum in the pueblo.

Today a monument in Tlaxcalantongo remembers the president, and the village, home to Otomí as well as mestizo families, lives mostly from coffee and farming. It makes a good pairing with the museum in Xicotepec for anyone interested in the Mexican Revolution.