San Juan Cotzocon is a town and

municipality A municipality is usually a single administrative division having municipal corporation, corporate status and powers of self-government or jurisdiction as granted by national and regional laws to which it is subordinate. The term ''municipality' ...

Oaxaca Oaxaca, officially the Free and Sovereign State of Oaxaca, is one of the 32 states that compose the political divisions of Mexico, Federative Entities of the Mexico, United Mexican States. It is divided into municipalities of Oaxaca, 570 munici ...

in south-western

Mexico Mexico, officially the United Mexican States, is a country in North America. It is the northernmost country in Latin America, and borders the United States to the north, and Guatemala and Belize to the southeast; while having maritime boundar ...

. It is part of the

Sierra Mixe The Sierra Mixe or Mixes District is a district in the east of the Sierra Norte Region of the Mexican state of Oaxaca. It comprises 17 municipalities A municipality is usually a single administrative division having municipal corporation, corp ...

district within the

Sierra Norte de Oaxaca La Sierra Norte de Oaxaca is a heavily wooded region in the state of Oaxaca, Mexico. It is 62 km from the city of Oaxaca on Federal highway 175, heading east towards Tuxtepec. The region is divided into three districts: Ixtlán, which ha ...

Region.

Name

The name "Cotzocón" or "Cozogón" means "Dark Mountain".

Geography

The municipality covers an area of 945.4 km². The territory is rugged, with grazing and cultivation of coffee and corn practiced only the lower irregular plains. The Chiquito River runs through the northern part, a tributary of the Rio Grande. The climate is warm and humid, with rain almost all year round. The forested areas contain pine, cedar, and ceiba.

Population

As of 2005, the municipality had 5,030 households with a total population of 22,478 of whom 10,712 spoke an indigenous language. The main town is now María Lombardo de Caso, located at a height of 140 meters above sea level. Although in a Mixe area, many of the people in this town are

Mazatec The Mazatec are an Indigenous people of Mexico who inhabit the Sierra Mazateca in the state of Oaxaca and some communities in the adjacent states of Puebla and Veracruz. Some researchers have theorized that the Mazatec, along with Popoloca spea ...

Chinantec The Chinantec or Chinantecan languages constitute a branch of the Oto-Manguean family. Though traditionally considered a single language, ''Ethnologue'' lists 14 partially mutually unintelligible varieties of Chinantec. The languages are spoken b ...

who moved here after being displaced by the

Miguel Alemán Dam The Miguel Alemán Dam is on the Tonto River in the Papaloapan Region of Oaxaca state in southern Mexico, just upstream from the town of Temascal, Oaxaca, forming the Miguel Alemán Lake with an area of 47,800 hectares. The dam operates in conju ...

in the 1960s. In the 1950s the remote municipality, accessible only via dirt track, drew visitors from the USA investigating use of hallucinogenic

psilocybin mushroom Psilocybin mushrooms, or psilocybin-containing mushrooms, commonly known as magic mushrooms or as shrooms, are a type of hallucinogenic mushroom and a polyphyletic informal group of fungi that contain the prodrug psilocybin, which turns into t ...

s in the traditional Mixe ceremonies.

Economy

The main economic activity is coffee cultivation, followed by livestock raising. Some of the Mixe women of the village of San Juan Cotzocon use back strap looms to weave traditional

huipil ''Huipil'' (Nahuatl: ''huīpīlli'' ; Ch'orti': ''b’ujk''; Chuj: ''nip'') is the most common traditional garment worn by indigenous women from central Mexico to Central America. It is a loose-fitting tunic, generally made from two or three ...

, rebosos, napkins, table cloths and other textile crafts. The

Union of Indigenous Communities of the Isthmus Region Union commonly refers to: * Trade union, an organization of workers * Union (set theory), in mathematics, a fundamental operation on sets Union may also refer to: Arts and entertainment Music * Union (band), an American rock group ** ''Uni ...

, a cooperative founded in 1982, assists in production and distribution of the local products, notably coffee, under a fair trade label.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:San Juan Cotzocon Municipalities of Oaxaca