Chicxulub Pueblo

Chicxulub Pueblo is the seat of the municipality of the same name, a farming town of 4,463 people (2020 census) about 20 kilometers north-east of Mérida. It is not the beach town: Chicxulub Puerto, on the coast to the north, belongs to the municipality of Progreso, and the two are often confused. The Maya name is usually glossed as "place of the fastened horn" or, more playfully, "devil's flea", from chi'ik (flea, or to fasten) and xulub (horn, or devil).

The name travelled far. The buried Chicxulub impact structure, the crater left by the asteroid linked to the extinction of the dinosaurs, is named after this area, and the municipality lies directly onshore of the crater's center. There is nothing to see of the crater here, though; the memorial plaque and dinosaur statues that visitors photograph are in Chicxulub Puerto.

The town's own story is quieter. The land belonged to the Ceh Pech chieftainship before the conquest, and no pre-Hispanic remains have been found in the town itself, though the municipality has the archaeological sites of Chakán and Lactún. By 1549 Spaniards and Maya were living here, with Julián Doncel as encomendero. After independence Chicxulub fell under the Partido de la Costa, ruled from Izamal, then under Tixkokob, and in 1918 it became a municipality. The town grew from about 1,000 people in 1900 to its present size.

Like its neighbours, Chicxulub lived on henequen, and the countryside around it is dotted with former haciendas, among them Lactún, San José Chakán, Santa María Ontiveros and San Juan Xcotún, most now ruined or nearly empty. Today maize, tomato and chile, pig and cattle farming, and jobs in nearby Mérida keep the town going, and leatherwork is its traditional craft. The main sight is the church of Santiago, built in the 17th century, facing the plaza and the arcaded municipal hall.