Catemaco is a tourist destination, with its main attractions being the lake, remnants of the region's rainforest and a tradition of sorcery/witchcraft that has its roots in the pre-colonial period and is mostly practiced by men.

[1] Along the lake, the city has a 1.5 km breakwater/boardwalk, which is frequently crowded with both visitors and vendors, especially those selling charms and a local freshwater snail called tegogolo.

Veneration of this version of the Virgin Mary, the patroness of the municipality, began in the early colonial period, as a substitute for the local worship of Chalchiuhtlicue, the goddess of water and fishermen.

[1] It is rivaled in devotion only by a shrine on an island in Lake Catemaco called El Tegal, where the Virgin Mary is said to have appeared.

[2] The Casa de los Tesoros is a large gift shop, which offers bagels, bizcochos and Mexican handcrafts and folk art.

[2][5] The history of magical practices here extends back to the pre-Hispanic period and may have survived because of its relative isolation,[3][6] but Lake Catemaco is said to emit a kind of energy, along with the Mono Blanco Mountain that rises above it.

The belief in magical practices has attracted people from all walks of life, from waiters and taxi drivers to national-level politicians.

Veracruz governor Fidel Herrera Beltrán even pushed for a national school for sorcery in Catemaco, without success and is a regular at the annual event.

More recently this large public black mass has been replaced by private ceremonies held separately by each of the main brujos in the grounds of their own property.

The event was founded in the 1970s by former brujo mayor Gonzalo Aguirre and today attracts around 200 shamans, healers (curanderos), herbalists, psychics and fortune tellers.

[8] In the early pre Hispanic period, the area was dominated by the Olmecs,[4] but the name is derived from Nahuatl, meaning "place of the burned houses".