Map - Santa Elena Municipality (Santa Elena)

Santa Elena Municipality is one of the 106 municipalities in the Mexican state of Yucatán containing (694.90 km2) of land and is located roughly 95 km south of the city of Mérida.

The original location founded in this area was named Nohcacab and was inhabited during the Classic Maya period (600-1000 A.C.). At the conquest an encomienda, that is a tribute-paying small community with an ethnically mixed population which included Spanish people, criollos, mestizos and mulattos, was established. In the early 1840s the explorer John Lloyd Stephens used this small community as a base from which he and his companions departed to explore the Puuc area: thanks to this fact we still have detailed accounts about the people of Nohcacab and their culture, as well as drawings showing how these visitors perceived the village at that time.

Nohcacab was attacked, and even burned down, several times: the second burning in 1849, during the Caste War of Yucatán, which devastated the village forcing most of the Spanish and criollo population to emigrate into Merida. It is very likely that around that time the village was officially renamed as Santa Elena.

In 1865, with the arrival of approximately 300 German colonists, who settled there to form the Villa Carlota farming colony under the initiative of Emperor Maximilian I of Mexico, the village began rebuilding. Although this farming colony collapsed in 1867, several German families remained in the village.