Suytunchén

Suytunchén is a subcomisaría of Mérida municipality about 26 km north of the city centre, west of the Mérida–Progreso highway (Federal Highway 261), between Komchén and Sierra Papacal. Its Maya name means 'stone well', from suytun, a large rock, and chen, a well. It is a very small place: 150 people lived here at the 2020 census, about the same as the 130 counted in 1900.

The village grew around a henequen hacienda with a long chain of owners. It was first an annex of Kikteil belonging to the parish of Santa Ana in Mérida; by 1860 it was the property of Manuel José Peón y Maldonado, and in 1897 it passed to Joaquín Peón y Peón, later to Arturo Peón Aznar and then to Augusto Iturralde, before Luis de Yturbe Redo acquired it in 1982. After the agrarian reform of 1937 the fields became ejido land while the hacienda buildings remained private. The main house has since been restored and altered by its owners.

Today the hacienda is known for its gardens with large old trees and is rented out for weddings and other social and business events; it is not a museum, and access depends on there being an event. The village itself is a few streets around a shady main park. Suytunchén also has a fish farm raising tilapia. It combines well with Kikteil and Dzidzilché, two other former hacienda villages a few kilometres to the north-east, and with Sierra Papacal just to the west.