Yaxché de Peón

Yaxché de Peón is the second village of Ucú municipality, a short way north of the municipal seat and about 20 km north-west of Mérida, in the flat country of the old henequen zone. It had 846 inhabitants in 2010, up from 691 in 2005. The village grew up around the hacienda of San Antonio Yaxché, and its name joins the Maya yaxché, the ceiba tree, with the surname of the family that made the estate prosperous.

In 1853 the landowner Manuel José Peón y Maldonado bought a group of ranches in the area, Balché, Cheumán, Ulilá and San Antonio Yaxché, and in 1873 his son Augusto Luis Peón inherited San Antonio Yaxché, which from then on was known as Yaxché Peón. It flourished in the henequen boom of the late 19th century and, like other big estates, paid its workers partly in its own tokens; pieces dated 1888 with the initials A.L. Peón are now collectors' items. A narrow-gauge Decauville railway once linked Yaxché to the Xtul hacienda in Progreso municipality, about 25 km away, passing through Sabakalal and Santa Elena; the last 13 km of that track bed now form part of the road to Sierra Papacal. At the former settlement of Sabakalal there is a small lagoon.

Today Yaxché de Peón is a quiet village with its comisaría, a police post and a white church with two bell towers. The main sight is the shell of the hacienda itself: a long arcaded main house, now roofless and weathered, with the tall brick chimney of the old machine house rising behind it across an open field. There are no visitor services, so it suits a short stop on a drive through the villages north-west of Mérida, combined with Ucú and Sierra Papacal.