X-Can

X-Can (pronounced roughly "ish-KAN") is a Maya town in the far east of Yucatán, in the municipality of Chemax, close to the state line with Quintana Roo. It sits on Federal Highway 180, the old free road between Valladolid and Cancún, about 64 km east of Valladolid by road and about 36 km northeast of the town of Chemax in a straight line. With 5,530 people in the 2020 census it is the second-largest place in the municipality after Chemax itself.

X-Can has grown fast. The census counted 194 people here in 1940 and 890 in 1950; by 1990 it passed 3,000, and it reached 5,191 in 2010. Like the rest of Chemax municipality, the area lived for centuries from maize, beans and other crops grown on the milpa, along with cattle and pigs; the municipality's own description notes that tourism has grown recently because it sits between Valladolid and the Caribbean coast. The list of archaeological sites recorded in Chemax municipality includes one named Xcan.

For a traveller, X-Can is mainly a place you pass through on the free highway, and a way to see an everyday town of the Maya east rather than a tourist stop. The town lies at about 25 m above sea level in flat, wooded country. The highway runs straight through town as a wide street lined with houses, and the village church, an ochre building with a stepped bell gable framed by palms, is the landmark to look for. It makes a natural break if you drive the slower free road between Cancún and Valladolid instead of the toll motorway.