The municipality of San Pedro Ixcatlán is a municipality of the district of Tuxtepec belonging to the Mexican state of Oaxaca. It has a population of 11,829 inhabitants and an extension of 170 km², although a good part of these lands are under the waters of the Miguel Aleman reservoir. Its population density is 69.58 inhabitants per km². The Mazatecs, the predominant ethnic group of San Pedro Ixcatlán, call themselves, in their language, shuta nima, which means "farmers, poor, humble, ordinary people." However, the rest of the world names them with a word that most likely comes from the language of the Aztec empire, Nahuatl: mazatl-, deer, and the suffix of gentilicio -tecatl would form "Mazateco","people of the deer".
The etymology of the term Ixcatlán also comes from Nahuatl and means "together or between cotton" or "place where there is cotton". The term ixcatl means "cotton" and the ending -tlan is translated as "together or between". It is relevant for this determination that the area where San Pedro is located is a cotton producer since before the conquest. There is another hypothesis that translates the term ixcatl as ram or sheep, meaning then ixcatlán "together or between rams." But in that part of America there was not, before the conquest, animals that produced wool.