Chankom

Chankom (often written Chan Kom) is a small Maya village and the seat of the municipality of the same name, about 40 km southwest of Valladolid and roughly 125–135 km east of Mérida. The name is usually translated from Maya as "little ravine" or "little hollow". The 2020 census counted 772 people in the village and 4,686 in the whole municipality, which is mostly farmland and low forest with 22 registered cenotes.

Archaeological remains show the area was lived in before the Spanish arrived, though it was empty by the time of the conquest. A colonial settlement grew up, but the Caste War emptied it again in the mid-19th century, and people only came back around 1890. Chankom was a ranchería under Valladolid until it became its own municipality in 1935. Between 1931 and 1948 the American anthropologists Robert and Margaret Park Redfield and Alfonso Villa Rojas, who taught at the local school, spent long periods here. Their books, starting with "Chan Kom: A Maya Village" and followed by "A Village that Chose Progress: Chan Kom Revisited" (1950), made this village one of the most studied Maya communities in the world. From 1986 the anthropologist Alicia Re Cruz followed the village again, looking at how migration to Cancún and tourism changed it.

Today Chankom is a quiet farming village with a central park and church. There are no tourist services, but the surrounding municipality has small archaeological sites (Ticimul, X-Cocail, Cosil and Kochilá) and cenotes such as Nicté-Há, Kochilá and Muchucuxcáh. The best time to come is the fiesta of San Diego, the patron saint, held from 9 to 13 November. It is an easy side trip from Valladolid or from Chichén Itzá, which is in the neighbouring municipality of Tinum.