The organ of Santa María Pápalo fell apart after the 1973 earthquake, even though it was no longer playable. The case was damaged and no longer exists, but the pipes were saved and are nearly complete. The windchest was retrieved from a wood pile next to the church. The construction is unusual and reveals characteristics of Puebla organ construction, including rectangular trackers and a rectangular cross punched into a bardón pipe and painted on the first pallet.

The construction of the divided registers is unique. The four existing sliders of the windchest are long, thin, and unbroken rather than cut in half. They extend across the width of the case. The pipes were arranged in a single line in pyramid form (diatonically), with the largest pipe in the middle. The sliders were paired, with the first corresponding to the left-hand register with perforations for 21 bass pipes, followed by the slider for the right-hand register with perforations for 24 treble pipes. This meant that each rank of pipes was divided by two independent sliders in sequence, rather than by one slider cut in half. In Pápalo, the slider corresponding to the right-hand pipes was controlled from its protruding tab on the left side of the case; alternatively, the left-hand pipes were controlled from the right (three tabs remain).  This arrangement did not affect the organ’s sound since each stop could be engaged separately or together. The last two registers appear to have been joined together, creating a mixture of the docena and the quincena.

This small, remote Cuicatec-speaking community seems to have had a rich musical life as of the mid-19th century. Discovered in the choir loft were the frame of a table clavichord, one of seven in Mexico; boxes full of music manuscripts for band and voice; and a collection of band instruments imported from France starting in the 1860s, which included several bassoons which were perhaps used to reinforce the bass line of the organ.