Hotzuc

Hotzuc is a small village in the municipality of Umán, about 14 km south-east of the city of Umán. You reach it through Xtepén, from where a 7 km road heads east. It had 247 people at the 2020 census. The Maya name means 'five little hills', and before the conquest the area belonged to the Maya province of Ah Canul.

The village sits on an ancient Maya site. Bishop and Mayanist Crescencio Carrillo y Ancona pointed out its importance in 1883 in his Historia Antigua de Yucatán, and in 1965 the INAH found an important round altar carved with hieroglyphic inscriptions here. From the middle of the 19th century a henequen hacienda was built on the spot, and its builders took many carved stones from the Maya ruins: pieces of decorative masks, such as noses, eyebrows and ears, can still be seen set into the façades, and a notable carved head is embedded in a wall of the main house.

The village had its best years during the henequen boom. The hacienda belonged to Eusebio Escalante, as its tokens show: small metal fichas stamped HOTZUC on one side and E.E. on the other, which collectors now seek out. Today the old buildings stand partly in ruins around a large water-filled hollow, with arched gateways, long stone walls and a tall brick chimney, while the village has a red-fronted church on its main square and a park shaded by big trees.