Peter Mathews
Santa Elena Poco Uinic was first brought to public attention in 1928, after a Mexican archaeological expedition spent several days at the site in the summer of 1926 (Palacios 1928: 109-140). Frans Blom visited the site in 1928 (Basauri 1928), but I am not aware of any sudden tourist rush since then. I visited Santa Elena Poco Uinic for a few hours in 1980, and found the monuments where Palacios and Blom had left them.
A weathered emblem glyph on Stela 3 indicates that Santa Elena Poco Uinic might have been the capital of a small kingdom late in the Classic Period. Santa Elena Poco Uinic shows similarities in stone masonry and style of monuments with Chinkultic and Tenam Puente, and I suspect that it had stronger affiliations with those sites to the south and southwest rather than with Tonina to the northwest.