Dziuché is a town located in the Hoctún Municipality in the State of Yucatán in the southeast of Mexico. The town developed around an old

hacienda A ''hacienda'' ( or ; or ) is an estate (or '' finca''), similar to a Roman '' latifundium'', in Spain and the former Spanish Empire. With origins in Andalusia, ''haciendas'' were variously plantations (perhaps including animals or orchards ...

. It had its splendor during the time of the henequen boom, between 1870 and 1920, and issued tokens which, due to their design, are of interest to

numismatists A numismatist is a specialist, researcher, and/or well-informed collector of numismatics/coins ("of coins"; from Late Latin , genitive of ). Numismatists can include collectors, specialist dealers, and scholar-researchers who use coins (and poss ...

. These tokens accredit the hacienda as the property of Juan Gamboa. Later, the hacienda was acquired by

Raymundo Cámara Luján Raymundo Cámara Luján (May 14, 1850 – April 15, 1919) was a prominent Mexican entrepreneur, banker, landowner, and philanthropist who played a significant role in the economic expansion that the Yucatán Peninsula experienced in the late 19t ...

, a wealthy landowner who reactivated the sugarcane industry in the Yucatán peninsula; in the period 1909-1910, for example, the Dziuché Hacienda produced some 12,000 kilograms of

sugarcane Sugarcane or sugar cane is a species of tall, Perennial plant, perennial grass (in the genus ''Saccharum'', tribe Andropogoneae) that is used for sugar Sugar industry, production. The plants are 2–6 m (6–20 ft) tall with stout, jointed, fib ...

and some 10,000 kilograms of

honey Honey is a sweet and viscous substance made by several species of bees, the best-known of which are honey bees. Honey is made and stored to nourish bee colonies. Bees produce honey by gathering and then refining the sugary secretions of pl ...

. In 1937, a

socialist Socialism is an economic ideology, economic and political philosophy encompassing diverse Economic system, economic and social systems characterised by social ownership of the means of production, as opposed to private ownership. It describes ...

government headed by President

Lázaro Cárdenas del Río Lázaro is a Spanish or Portuguese-based given name or surname. Notable people with the name include: Given name *Lazaro (footballer) (born 1977), Lazaro Paulo de Sousa, Brazilian football striker *Lázaro (footballer, born 1990), full name Lázaro ...

expropriated Eminent domain, also known as land acquisition, compulsory purchase, resumption, resumption/compulsory acquisition, or expropriation, is the compulsory acquisition of private property for public use. It does not include the power to take and t ...

the

Haciendas A ''hacienda'' ( or ; or ) is an estate (or '' finca''), similar to a Roman ''latifundium'', in Spain and the former Spanish Empire. With origins in Andalusia, ''haciendas'' were variously plantations (perhaps including animals or orchards) ...

from the traditional landowning families and transformed them into

ejidos An ''ejido'' (, from Latin ''exitum'') is an area of communal land used for Agriculture in Mexico, agriculture in which community members have usufruct rights, which in Mexico is not held by the Mexican state. People awarded ejidos in the moder ...

, an autonomous communal unit, with collective right to land ownership. After the government expropriated the land around the hacienda from the Cámara family in 1937, the

sugarcane mill A sugar cane mill is a factory that processes sugar cane to produce raw sugar or plantation white sugar. Some sugar mills are situated next to a back-end refinery, that turns raw sugar into (refined) white sugar. The term is also used to refer ...

was abandoned and Dzuinché stopped being the economic powerhouse it had once been. As a result, the town which once housed tens of thousands of laborers now has a population of only ten people.Census Results by Locality, 2010
INEGI 2010.

Image Gallery

File:Dziuché (Hoctún), Yucatán (03).jpg, alt= File:Dziuché (Hoctún), Yucatán (02).jpg, alt= File:Dziuché (Hoctún), Yucatán (01).jpg, alt= File:Ficha por 1 Mecate de Chapeo de la Hacienda Dziuché, Yucatán (01)(anverso y reverso).jpg, alt= File:Dziuché (Hoctún), Yucatán (04).jpg, alt=

References

{{Yucatan Municipalities of Yucatán Pino-Cámara family