Chucmichén

Chucmichén, also written Chumichén, is a hamlet of a few dozen people (43 in the 2020 census) in the municipality of Temax, built around a 19th-century hacienda. It lies about 9 km north-northeast of the town of Temax and about 78 km east-northeast of Mérida in a straight line, in the far eastern corner of Yucatán's old henequen zone.

The hacienda was begun around 1850 as a cattle ranch for Nicolás de la Cámara y Castillo (1823–1866), a descendant of the conquistador Juan de la Cámara, who had received the encomienda of Sinanché in the 16th century. Nicolás owned several estates around Temax, among them Santa Ana, Xkalak, San Antonio Cámara and Chucmichén. After his death, his eldest son Raymundo Cámara Luján (1850–1919), one of the great henequen industrialists of the Porfiriato and father-in-law of vice-president José María Pino Suárez, turned Chucmichén into a henequen plantation in the 1880s. At its height the estate covered 4,289 hectares of henequen; together with San Antonio Cámara he controlled 7,812 hectares. In the 1920s three Maya stone sculptures were found on the land and sent by train to Mérida. They were shown in the archaeological garden at the Ermita de Santa Isabel and are now stored by the Palacio Cantón regional museum; in Temax people still remember one of them, a standing figure with a skull pendant, as "El Rey".

With the agrarian reform of 1937, 2,389 hectares were expropriated for the ejido and about 2,000 remained with the Cámara Vales heirs around the old casco. In the early 21st century the main house was restored and the estate turned into a private residential development, with pools, a clubhouse, a chapel and a 12.5-hectare green area with a kayak lake, a cenote and trails. The development is private. In the hamlet itself stand a small stone church with an open belfry, an arched red gateway and the hacienda's old chimney.