Zongolica

I came to Zongolica on a Tuesday, which turned out to be the right day — market morning, the streets already filling up before eight with women in embroidered huipiles carrying baskets of quelites and fresh chiles. I had taken a shared van from Orizaba, winding up into the sierra through fog that didn’t lift until noon. My first impression of the town proper was that it felt purposeful rather than picturesque — a functioning market town that happens to sit at the edge of something remarkable.

A Language Still Very Much Alive

The Sierra de Zongolica is one of the strongholds of Nahuatl in Veracruz, and spending even two days here recalibrates your assumptions about what language survival actually looks like. In the village of Mixtla de Altamirano, about forty minutes further into the sierra, I sat outside a comedor eating a bowl of mole de olla — proper highland mole with xoconostle and tender beef — while three women at the next table spoke Nahuatl the entire meal without switching once. The schoolteacher I met on the road told me that in her community the children grow up speaking Nahuatl at home first; Spanish comes later, at school. That is not what the statistics on indigenous language decline had prepared me to hear. The market in Zongolica itself mixes both languages seamlessly, vendors shifting mid-sentence depending on who they are addressing.

Backstrap Looms and What They Actually Require

The weaving here is not artisanal in the boutique sense. In the villages around Zongolica — Tehuipango, Atlahuilco, Reyes Metzontla — women weave on backstrap looms as part of the daily rhythm of the household, producing quechquémitl and servilletas with geometric patterns that carry specific regional meaning. I watched a woman in Tehuipango work a section of deep red cloth with a steadiness that made clear she had been doing this since childhood. The threads are tension-controlled entirely by her own body weight. When I asked if she sold pieces, she said yes, but that a good quechquémitl takes her two weeks and she prices it accordingly. I paid accordingly. It sits folded on my shelf in Puerto Escondido and I think about those two weeks every time I look at it.

The Sierra Itself

The landscape is not dramatic in the way that Veracruz’s volcanic peaks are dramatic — it works on you more quietly. Cloud forest covers the upper ridges, the air is cool and smells of pine and wet earth, and the valleys hold mist until midday most mornings. There are waterfalls accessible from the villages if you are willing to walk muddy trails and ask locally for directions, which you will need to do because nothing is signed. The light in the late afternoon, when it finally breaks through, turns the whole valley a particular greenish gold that I have not seen anywhere else in Veracruz.

Getting There

Shared vans to Zongolica leave from the Orizaba bus station throughout the morning, taking about an hour and a half through increasingly steep terrain. Orizaba is well connected by ADO from Veracruz city, Puebla, and Mexico City. From Zongolica, colectivos run irregularly to the surrounding villages — Tuesday market day is the most reliable moment to catch onward transport.