Dzoyaxché

Dzoyaxché, or San Nicolás Dzoyaxché, is a comisaría of Mérida municipality about 27 km south of the city by road, inside the Reserva Cuxtal, the municipal nature reserve created in 1993. It borders Molas to the northwest and Yaxnic to the southwest. The village had 533 inhabitants in the 2020 census. Its Maya name means "row of ceibas", from dzo, row, and yaxché, the ceiba, the sacred tree of the Maya; San Nicolás is Saint Nicholas of Tolentino, patron of the hacienda chapel.

The village grew around the Hacienda San Nicolás Dzoyaxché, one of the estates that flourished in the 19th-century henequen boom and one of seven historic haciendas protected within the Cuxtal reserve. Its long main house, painted deep red and fronted by an arcade of scalloped arches, is built over a cenote called Dzonot-Ich. The machine house and its tall brick chimney, the old machinery and the narrow-gauge track with its horse-drawn flat truck, used to haul henequen across the fields, survive from its working days. In 1952 the estate belonged to Francisco Martínez de Arredondo y Castro; his widow, Josefina Molina, sold part of it to Nacional Financiera in 1962.

The yellow chapel, with arches along its side and a stepped belfry, was built in 1926 and keeps a marble carving by an Italian artist dated 1888. Every year from 10 to 20 September the village holds its fiesta for San Nicolás. Paths lined with white stones run through the low forest behind the hacienda, past ruined walls and arches. The hacienda has opened its grounds for tours, horseback rides, bicycle paths, swimming in the cenote and picnics for modest fees, though it is best to check before going, since the offer has changed over the years.