Dzemul

Dzemul is a small town in the old henequen zone of northern Yucatán, the seat of a municipality that reaches up to the Gulf coast. It had 3,467 people in the 2020 census and lies about 45 kilometers from Mérida and roughly 13 kilometers north-east of Motul. The Maya name, Tse' múul, is usually read as "place of the imposing (or ruined) hill". The municipality's coastal strip holds the Maya port of Xcambó and the salt flats of Xtampú.

In pre-Hispanic times the area belonged to the province of Ceh Pech, and after the conquest it was held in encomienda. In 1825 Dzemul was placed in the Partido de la Costa, governed from Izamal, and in 1867 it passed to the partido of Motul. Around 1900, at the height of the henequen boom, important haciendas worked its land, among them San Eduardo, San Diego, San Antonio and Constancia; San Eduardo and San Diego Guerra survive as tiny hamlets. Two governors of Yucatán, Víctor Cervera Pacheco and Ivonne Ortega Pacheco, come from the municipality.

The pride of the town is its parish church, dedicated to Santa Ana and believed to date from the 17th century. Its stone façade is carved with floral and geometric reliefs and framed by two tall towers, and it is said to be the only church on the peninsula with two caminos de ronda, the narrow raised walkways around the building; a recent catalogue of the peninsula's sacred art lists it among its hundred jewels. The town also has a church of Santa Rosa de Lima and a chapel of the Cristo de Esquipulas, both colonial.

The church is best known for the Virgen de la Expectación, an image of a pregnant Mary also called the Virgen de la O or Virgen de la Dulce Espera, to whom women pray for a safe pregnancy. Her feast on 18 December draws pilgrims from Telchac, Motul, Ixil and Conkal, with a procession of women in ternos and huipiles, voladores and a brass band, alongside a fair with a vaquería. Local crafts are hammock weaving and hand embroidery.