When, on the way, after hours of road in lace whose bitumen is degraded with the wire of the kilometers, after having passed from innumerable villages, Tlilapan, Tequila, Tlaltenango, Tlaquipulca, Tzocualo, one asks finally if Tehuipango is still far, a peasant known as: “Follow the road until the end, when it is transformed into dirt track, you will find Tehuipango, afterwards, it does not have there more nothing. ” Tehuipango, in the State de Veracruz, known for its oil wells, is a quasi forgotten place of Mexico. Lost in a splendid landscape dominated by the peak of Orizaba, the volcano highest of the country (5 700 m), whose summit, at that time of the year, is snow-covered, the municipality of 20.400 inhabitants has the unhappy privilege to appear in the bottom of the list of the Program of the United Nations for development (UNDP). For the international organization, the index of human development of Tehuipango, which takes into account not only the income per capita but also the access to drinking water, education or health, is level of Malawi, one of the poorest countries of Africa.

Here, in this area of the mountains of Zongolica, one is in country nahua (one of the forty ethnic groups of the country), and the majority of the natives, especially the old men, speak only nahuatl. Tehuipango does not make departures from the rule. On the way, one crosses them in traditional costume, drawing an ass bending under wood faggots or malicious plastic cans filled with water; with the turning of a turn, women wash the linen under a cascade; two small schoolgirls in blue uniform say that they make one hour and half of walk per day to go to the school. They belong to the 30% of young people who speak Spanish and who go to the segundaria, the college. Their parents can neither read nor to write.

Insulation. Tehuipango gathers 55 communities, distributed on a hundred square kilometres in the mountains. The chief town, where the town hall is, is relatively vain. The church, the market, some small trade held by women. Iron stems leave the roofs. One renovates, one increases. Trucks avoid goats. It is market day. For two years, the families which live here have had electricity, the drinking water, some the telephone. But that to say those which are insulated in the mountain. Over there, there is neither light nor drinking water. Even less mains drainage. The houses are out of wood, and the winter is harder there than elsewhere. Taking into account the dispersion of the population, certain communities are at more than 5 km of a road.
· · · · · · · · ·
Misfits. In Tehuipango, the inequalities are more shouting that everywhere in the country. Wedged and populated natives who are the misfits of the mode. Oil? The State de Veracruz in A but does nothing but extract it. No refinery has been built for more than fifty years. The black gold is sent to the United States, and Mexico imports the majority of its gasoline and its gas. The richness of the State does not profit with the people.

Mexico is cut into two. The difference in standard of living between the States of north and the south goes from simple to the double. Between the cities, it can go until triple. If the municipalities were classified like countries, that of Benito Juárez, in Distrito Federal, would appear in the sides of Italy, Tehuipango in the State de Veracruz, Metlatonoc in that of Guerrero, Coicoyan of mow Flores in the State d' Oaxaca could be compared with sub-Saharan Africa. Veracruz takes part more this inequality on a national scale: with the centre even of the State the best cohabit and the worst indicators of income, of health and education. For its misfortune, Tehuipango appears in the bottom of the scale.