Why go
The machine house supplies the clearest link between the residence and the business that supported it. Henequen shredding equipment and a German diesel engine explain fiber production, while portraits and household furnishings give the estate a human scale. Nearby Maya remains belong to an earlier history, distinct from the hacienda itself.
The full story
Yaxcopoil dates to the seventeenth century and developed first as a cattle ranch before becoming a henequen plantation. Henequen is the plant whose fibers were extracted in the estate's machinery. Its late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century commercial importance helps explain the industrial buildings beside the residence. Don Donaciano García Rejón and Doña Mónica Galera purchased the estate in 1864. Their oil portraits and surviving furniture connect the house with particular owners. The office's books, maps and documents preserve another strand of the estate's history, though the existence of an archive does not make it a general visitor facility. In the machine house, a Körting diesel engine made in Hannover in 1913 powered production until 1984. The Maya pottery associated with nearby ruins belongs to a much older landscape. Keeping these histories distinct makes Yaxcopoil easier to understand as a working estate layered over earlier settlement.