Chichí Suárez

Chichí Suárez is a former comisaría of Mérida, about 9 km from the city centre, just east of the Periférico ring road in the northeast of the city. It had 700 inhabitants at the 1980 census; since then it has been absorbed by the city and is counted as one of Mérida's colonias. The name mixes Maya and Spanish: chichí means grandmother in Maya, and Suárez is the surname of a 20th-century owner of the hacienda around which the village grew.

Hacienda Chichí Suárez is one of the oldest estates in Yucatán. It was founded in the 16th century by the conquistador Alonso de Rosado. In 1626 Catarina de Andrade sold it to Juan de Montejo Maldonado, grandson of Francisco de Montejo the Younger, the founder of Mérida, and in 1640 it passed to Antonio de Figueroa y Silva, governor of Yucatán, whose coat of arms still decorates the interior walls. A 17th-century deed describes two stone houses with thatched roofs, a church, a well and animal troughs. In 1919 another governor, Olegario Molina, bought the property, then called Santa María Chichí; in 1948 Víctor Suárez Molina acquired it and gave it its present name, and in 1953 he sold it to Omar G. Díaz y Díaz. In 1951 the hacienda was a location for the film Deseada, starring Dolores del Río.

The buildings are neoclassical, with a long corridor of arches on slender columns; parts have been restored and others are in ruins. The hacienda is private and is rented for parties, tours and photo sessions; from the street, on the corner of Calle 35 and Calle 14, you see its long ochre walls lined with palms and the stone gate posts of the entrance. Nearby are the village's small church, the comisaría building and a shady park.