Opichén

Opichén is a comisaría of Mérida municipality on the western edge of the city, about 6 km west of the centre (not to be confused with the town of Opichén, seat of its own municipality in the Puuc region). Once an isolated hacienda, it has been reached by the city's growth: new subdivisions and shops have spread around it, and the Paseo Verde linear park, with its bike path and walkway, now connects Opichén with the neighbourhoods of western Mérida. The 2020 census counted 724 inhabitants, up from about 150 in 2000. The Maya name is explained as 'the well of the anonas', from op, the custard apple, and chen, well.

Opichén was a henequen hacienda, one of the many estates around Mérida that went from growing maize and raising cattle to producing the fibre in the 19th century. Around 1937, after the agrarian reform decrees of President Lázaro Cárdenas, its land became an ejido while the hacienda buildings stayed in private hands. The census figures tell the story of the estate's decline and the village's recent revival: a handful of people lived here from the 1930s to the 1970s, and the population only grew again once the city reached it.

Today the village has a Catholic church, a park, the comisaría building and an ejido house. The remains of the hacienda are the main thing to see: stretches of dry-stone wall, massive square gate pillars, a ruined stone arch and the long red-painted buildings of the old estate, standing among scrub and young trees beside the road. It makes an easy outing by bike from western Mérida along the Paseo Verde, or a short stop on the way out of the city.