Totonac Peoples

The Totonac are an indigenous Mesoamerican people of the Gulf Coast region of Veracruz and northern Puebla, Mexico, whose ancestors are credited by most archaeologists with building the monumental ceremonial city of El Tajin, occupied from roughly the ninth to the thirteenth centuries and known for its stepped Pyramid of the Niches and extensive ballcourt complex. Totonac communities remain living today, numbering several hundred thousand speakers of Totonacan languages, and continue several ritual practices scholars trace to the pre-Hispanic period alongside Catholic devotion, most visibly the Danza de los Voladores (Dance of the Flyers), in which participants descend from a tall pole suspended by ropes tied at the ankle, a rite understood as an appeal for agricultural fertility and rain and recognized by UNESCO as intangible cultural heritage.