Perote is a city and municipality in the Mexican state of Veracruz. It serves as the municipal seat for the surrounding municipality of the same name, which borders on Las Vigas de Ramírez, Acajete, Xico and Tlalnelhuayocan, and the state of Puebla. It is on Federal Highway 140.
Its climate is regular cold and dry with an annual average temperature of 12 Celsius.
Perote's fortress of San Carlos once served as a prison. Guadalupe Victoria died there.
Also in Perote is the Cofre de Perote shield volcano (the Nahuatl name of which was "Naucampatepetl", which means in "four times lord").
This town is the home of a sizable Spanish community which immigrated here in the 1930s. Because of this, it is known for Spanish-style cured meats and sausage such as jamón serrano (serrano ham), botifarra (Catalán sausage), and Spanish chorizo sausage.[1]
There is speculation by Mexican health officials that a collection of Smithfield Foods pig farms in the community of La Gloria which belongs to the municipality of Perote may be linked with the 2009 swine flu outbreak. [2]