Tehuacán, Puebla, Mexico

🇲🇽 Tehuacán is the second largest city in the Mexican state of Puebla, nestled in the south-east of the valley of Tehuacán, bordering the states of Oaxaca and Veracruz.

Originally a Native American settlement, it became officially a city in the Viceroyalty of New Spain in 1660.

Tehuacan is known for hosting many diverse festivals that celebrate traditions and costumes earned through the years from the ancient natives. One of the most recognised festival in the last 15 years is the Festival Internacional de Tehuacán 1660 which celebrates the artistic and cultural backgrounds of the city.

In the late nineteenth century, the city was well known for its mineral springs. In fact, Peñafiel (now owned by Cadbury Schweppes), a well-known soft drinks manufacturer, extracts water from these wells for use in their products. Tehuacán also has an important cluster of poultry producers, making the city and its surroundings one of the most important egg-producing regions in Mexico.

Tehuacán is located in the south-eastern part of Mexico. Northern bordering cities are Tepanco de López, Santiago Miahuatlán, Vicente Guerrero y Nicolás Bravo; Eastern Vicente Guerrero, San Antonio Cañada y Ajalpan; Southern San Gabriel Chilac, Zapotitlán, San Antonio Texcala y Altepexi; and Western Zapotitlán, San Martín Atexcal, Juan N. Méndez y Tepanco de López.

The city of Tehuacan has a population of 248,716 with a geographical weather of 19 degrees Celsius most of the year. Tehuacan is an important territory known as the Tehuacan Valley with a diverse ecosystem.

Another important geographical factor to consider about the region of Oaxaca and Tehuacan valley is the telluric area where the city is located. Tehucan is surrounded by the Neovolcanic Axis that covers the states of Nayarit, Jalisco, Colima, Michoacán, Guanajuato, Querétaro, México, Hidalgo, Morelos, Tlaxcala, Puebla and Veracruz. This Axis connects the main active volcanoes of the region and because of this volcanic activity the city presents continuous movements of Earth, specially during summer and spring seasons. Tehuacan Valley presents a high diversity of plant and animal species, especially the Tehuacan-Cuicatlán Biosphere Reserve located 30 minutes south-west from Tehuacan, that belongs to the city and protects 200 Cactus species, most of them endangered types.

Economy The main economic activity in the Tehuacán valley is poultry production. The municipality is the second largest producer of table eggs in the country with over 25 million layers housed plus a significant production of broilers for chicken meat. Companies that dominate the industry include El Calvario, Mr. Egg, Huevo Tehuacán, PATSA and IMSA.

After the NAFTA agreement had been signed, Tehuacán saw a flood of textile maquiladoras established in the city and surrounding areas. These textile factories principally put together blue jeans for export to companies such as The Gap, Guess, Old Navy, and JC Penney. At the height of the maquila (short for maquiladora) boom, there were an estimated number of more than 700 maquilas in town, including those that were operating from homes, often in secret. While this situation created a negative unemployment (zero unemployment) and the maquilas sought workers as far away as Orizaba and Córdoba in the neighboring state of Veracruz, it also created an urban and environmental nightmare. In one decade, Tehuacán went from being a town of 150,000 inhabitants to a city of 360,000. Although many maquilas have closed today, in 2007 there were still over 700 of them found in Tehuacán.

Tourist Industry Tehuacan offers a diversity of attractions, from outside activities to historical places and museums that keep years of history not just from the region but from ancient times and establishment of the Mexican Republic.

The most popular places to visit are: Peñafiel and Garci Crespo Natural Springs Underground galleries that are the production facilities for the famous mineral water known as “Agua Tehuacan”. This is part of a natural process as a result of snow melting from the volcanoes which contain a high level of minerals, making it bubbly.

The Ex-Convent of San Francisco is a 16th-century monastic complex that was used as the house of one of the most renowned schools of Latin in the New Spain. The architecture and history printed on its walls painting shows the transition from one period of history to another.

The Museum of Mineralogy is a museum that has a private collection from Don Miguel Romero, one of the most recognised figures from Tehuacan city that donated important art and scientific pieces such as moonstones, fossil minerals and meteorites given as presents and others found in the Tehuacan Valley region during diverse explorations through the times.

The Cactus Botanical Garden is located 30 minutes away from the city at the south area of the Tehuacan Valley and it preserves more than 200 cactus species in all the area, making it the biggest diversity ecosystem around the world.