San Juan Cacahuatepec
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San Juan Cacahuatepec is one of the 570 municipalities in the state of Oaxaca, Mexico. In 2005 the city had an estimated population of 7,514.
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[edit] History
Upon investigating the history concerning both the founding and orgins of the town of San Juan Cacahuatepec, it is found that official documents do not exist, therefore other sources of information are used: the oral stories passed down by the local elderly. The area's elderly say that their ancestors told that before the Spanish conquest this area was a stronghold of a Mixteco tribe king that then dominated the region.
In this place there still exists a historical Mixteco landmark consisting of a hill made of large rocks that today is found inside Cacahuatepec town. In this hill there is a structure formerly used as a school and, nowadays, as military barracks. On the hill there was a large boulder that stood larger and higher than the others. When the area was populated by Mixteco native people, the hill was known by the name of Yucoshiva which in the Amuzgo dialect means 'Hill of the Stone' (from Yuco: hill and Shiva: stone), since on the said hill existed a great rock that stood out from the others.
A short distance south of the landmark Yucoshiva is a town whose ancient name has been forgotten but is now known as Pueblo Viejo. The main work of its inhabitants was the cocoa (theobroma cacao) growing, and the cocoa orchards were in what is today known as the town of Cacahuatepec.
The foundation was originated by the arrival of aboriginal families, according to versions, from Ixcapa, Tlacoachixtlahuaca, Guerrero, that were dedicated to cocoa growing, later on more families arrived coming from Maguey, Mártires de Tacubaya and neighbouring towns, that increased the population. With the great production of cocoa the mestizos then known as mestizos de razón arrived and by then already the place was known as Cacahuatepec, that is a Mixteco word that means "cocoa hill" — Cacahuatl (cocoa), Tepetl (hill). In these fertile soils agriculture also bloomed, cultivating tobacco, peanuts, maize, beans, watermelons, sesame, etc., existing some varieties of fruit trees like mango, papaya, orange, lemon trees, all these in small scale, which are not worked properly, causing this the arrival of more inhabitants racially mixed in their majority.
Like in most of the catholic towns, they took as patron Saint John the Baptist (San Juan Bautista), of where its Catholic-Mixteco merged name becomes San Juan Bautista Cacahuatepec. This zone is also well-known as La Mixteca Baja (Low Mixteca) and as Costa Chica (Small Coast). Mixteca, because it belongs to the "mixteco knot" of the Sierra Madre mountain range and because of being its first inhabitants of pure Mixteco origins. Costa Chica, as was evoked by the immortal Álvaro Carrillo in his songs, is due to its proximity to the Costa Grande (Big Coast) whose beaches of natural beauty are known world-wide, like Acapulco, Puerto Escondido, and others no less beautiful that still keep their privacy, locking up a wonderful tropical world as Chacahua, El Faro (the Lighthouse) (Punta Maldonado, Cuajinicuilapa, Gro. township - note of Pedro Francisco Celis Mendoza -), Corralero etc.,
This is San Juan Bautista Cacahuatepec Villa Juárez, built on a rough land with adobe houses and walls with roofs of old tiles, dumb witnesses of the pass of the Revolution and its personages along with it. It is told an anecdote of Don Porfirio Díaz at his time of revolutionary, who passed by this town chasing another revolutionary named Salado, whom he reached in Ixcapa, Oaxaca, place where he received his first war wound. There were other less known revolutionaries but not less revolutionary that inspired in the local trovadores popular corridos that are still heard in these times.
[edit] Communications
In order to arriving at San Juan Bautista Cacahuatepec, it was done years ago by means of dirt roads or horseshoe trails. Later on, along with its progress, breaches were opened. In times of its agrarian splendor the town was reached by airplanes, which as well carried away the great production of tobacco, and it was not until the time when the C. Alfonso Pérez Gazga governed the state of Oaxaca, born at Pinotepa but great costeño, concerned about the progress of the coast, that this way the highway bearing his name was constructed and that goes from Pinotepa Nacional, Oaxaca, to the State Capital. This highway links the following towns having as departure point Pinotepa Nacional, happening through Ixcapa, Cacahuatepec, Amuzgos, Zacatepec, Mesones, Putla, Tlaxiaco, Nochixtlán and the State Capital. Nowadays the Pinotepa-Putla section is being paved, hoping that it will be a reality, because we consider it just and necessary, since all the production in agriculture, fruitgrowing and livestock, goes to Acapulco, Guerrero, favouring its commerce instead of that of the Oaxaca state capital that needs it so much, as well as Cacahuatepec and neighbouring towns need the commerce of the state, and also agrarian technical assistance that is the base of the progress of our towns, since their agriculture is steadily becoming impoverished with the so primitive technique that they use at the present time such as razing and burning scrubland and sowing with enduyos (steel points).
[edit] Agriculture
Its irrigation system is governed by mother nature, just waiting for the rain season, yet the greater amount of water being lost, which ends at sea without much profit. In spite of the aforesaid a good production of maize, beans, sesame, watermelon, papaya, mango in its different varieties, lemon, tamarind, orange, etc., is obtained, the last ones being poorly farmed since most of the fruits are spoilt on the ground favouring the spread of plagues.
[edit] Source
- Excerpt from Chapter II of the collective thesis to obtain the degree of Birth Surgeon Doctor by Antonio Rosales Álvarez and Jorge Eduardo Fonseca Solano, Estudio de la Comunidad de San Juan Bautista Cacahuatepec, Oaxaca at the Autonomous University of Puebla - School of Medicine - 1976)
- Taken from the Official Site of the Ayuntamiento de San Juan Cacahuatepec
