Ixil

Ixil is a small town and the seat of the municipality of the same name, in the old henequen country about 45 km northeast of Mérida and 25 km southeast of Progreso. The municipality reaches north to the Gulf of Mexico, taking in a stretch of beach around Uaymitún, east of Chicxulub Puerto, and borders Progreso, Chicxulub Pueblo, Mocochá, Motul, Baca and Dzemul. The name is Maya and is said to mean a place where something curls or bristles. The town had 606 people in 1900 and 4,115 at the 2020 census.

Before the Spanish conquest the area belonged to the Ceh Pech province, and in colonial times the town was held in encomienda. After Yucatán's independence it was part of the Partido de la Costa, governed from Izamal, and later of the Partido de Tixkokob. Ixil is known to historians for a document found here in 1919: an old manuscript in Yucatec Maya, one of the Chilam Balam books, now called the Chilam Balam de Ixil. The parish church of San Bernabé dates from the 17th century, and the town holds its annual fiesta for its patron on 11 June.

Henequen was the mainstay until the late 20th century; now farmers grow maize, beans, vegetables, chiles and fruit, and the town is best known in Yucatán for the cebollita de Ixil, a small local onion sown between November and April and harvested once a year. People also raise cattle, pigs and poultry, and fish off the municipality's coast for grouper, red snapper, octopus and shark. In the north of the municipality, about 24 km from the town, is Las Trincheras, a low wall said to date from the colonial period and built for defence. Tourism, mostly beach visitors, adds to the local economy, and the coast draws visitors from Canada and the United States.