Cheumán

Cheumán is a small subcomisaría of Mérida municipality, about 15 km from the city centre on the northern edge of the municipality, just west of the stone-carving village of Dzityá. Its Maya name is usually translated as 'place where things are bought'. At the 2020 census it had 218 inhabitants, a number that has moved between about 160 and 300 for more than a century.

Like most villages around Mérida, Cheumán grew up around a hacienda. In 1853 it was still a ranch, and that year it was acquired, together with the neighbouring properties of Balché, Ulilá and San Antonio Yaxché, by members of the Peón family, Augusto Luis Peón and Manuel José Peón y Maldonado. The estate prospered in the henequen boom of the late 19th and early 20th centuries and, like many large haciendas, paid its workers in its own tokens (fichas); the ones from Cheumán carry the name of A. L. Peón and are now sought by coin collectors.

Today the old hacienda buildings, with their arcaded fronts, still stand at the edge of the village next to a main park. There are no visitor services, so Cheumán is best seen as a short stop on a drive around the northern comisarías. On the road between Cheumán and Dzityá is the Chen Ha cenote, an open oval pool of about 10 by 6 metres and up to 4 metres deep that local families use for swimming, and Dzityá's carving workshops are only a few minutes away.