Petac

Petac is a subcomisaría of Mérida municipality about 23 km south of the city centre, between the villages of San José Tzal and San Antonio Tzacalá, in the farmland and low forest of the south of the municipality. It is a small place of 234 people (2020 census), with a park, a kindergarten, a primary school, the comisaría building and a church, and its life has always revolved around the hacienda at its centre.

Hacienda Petac is counted among the oldest in the Mérida area. It dates from the 17th century and was built over an earlier Maya settlement; mounds that have never been excavated still stand on its land. It began as a sugar estate whose land reached west as far as the boundary of Yaxcopoil, and over time it followed the course of Yucatán's economy, from cattle ranch to sugar and honey producer and, in the 19th century, to henequen plantation during the 'green gold' boom. By around 1970 it had stopped producing henequen and fell into ruin. In May 2000 an American couple bought it and spent three years restoring the main house, the machine house and the steward's house.

Today the hacienda is a private retreat with seven suites, a pool, gardens, a chapel-like oratory and an organic kitchen garden, rented to one group at a time; more than 20 people from the surrounding villages work there, and it occasionally hosts small weddings. It is not open for drop-in visits, so for a day-tripper Petac is a quiet village on a drive through the old hacienda country south of Mérida: you can see the hacienda gate and drive from the street, the village church and the comisaría, and continue to San Antonio Tzacalá with its own ruined hacienda.