Travels in the Yucatán: Mérida, Part 2.
In which I try to visit a museum but end up in a mansion.
As part of my research for my current novel, I spent eight days in January visiting ancient Maya pyramids and temples in the Yucatán, on a tour led by the Archaeological Institute of America. You can read my first installment about the trip here.
Sunday, January 21, 2024: Mérida, continued.
After seeing the sights around Mérida’s Plaza Grande, our tour group clambered aboard our bus and headed to El Gran Museo del Mundo Maya. On our way, a convoy of SUVs sped by us. At the front was a pickup filled with uniformed soldiers, one of whom stood behind what looked to my untrained eye like a submachine gun.
The sight of heavy weaponry should have been my first indication that the day wasn’t going to go as planned.
We arrived at the parking lot that the museum shares with the Siglo XXI Convention Center to find the entrance blocked. Our excellent tour guide Alfonso had a lively conversation with the parking attendants and then delivered the sad news: the museum was closed for the morning, because Yucatán governor Mauricio Vila Dosal was giving his “state of the state” address at the convention center. Hence the convoy.
Time for Plan B! Alfonso suggested we instead visit the Museo Regional de Antropología de Yucatán (Regional Anthropology Museum), which is housed in the Palacio Cantón, one of many grand houses built during the city’s henequen boom in the late 19th and and early 20th centuries. Sounded great to me.
We drove down the Paseo de Montejo, a beautiful wide boulevard modeled after the Champs Élysées in Paris. On Sunday, the city closes one side of the street to car traffic, so that morning the paseo was full of people riding bikes, rollerblading, strolling in groups, and hanging out in sidewalk cafés.1
I loved the whole vibe and MUST RETURN, because the idea of sitting in a café on a beautiful boulevard on a lazy Sunday, drinking coffee and watching people, is my idea of heaven.
At last we arrived at the museum. Since its completion in 1911, the building has served a few different purposes: first as a home for General Francisco Cantón Rosado and his family, then as an art school, and finally as the Museo Regional de Antropología de Yucatán. In 2012, after extensive renovations, Mexico’s Instituto Nacional de Antropologia e Historia (INAH) opened the current iteration of the museum, which focuses on Yucatàn and Mayan culture. Here are some pieces in the collection from the site of Ek’ Balam.
Now, as some of you know, Catherine (the main character in my current novel) is an expert in deciphering Maya glyphs, so I appreciated the museum’s exhibit labels, which explained the glyphs in depth and with helpful graphics. I love me a good infographic and would have totally geeked out on them if we hadn’t been on a schedule.
Of course, the labels were in Spanish, but I was that day years old when I discovered that my iPhone’s camera can translate text. Yay technology!
Here’s a limestone column from Ek’ Balam and Google’s translation of the sign.
I also found this display of art conservation tools fascinating:
Another highlight of our visit was a special temporary exhibit, “La X’Tabay: El libro de los libros,” which displayed original sgraffito plates, sketches, and large-format digital prints from the silkscreen-printed and hand-bound graphic novel of the same name.
A collaboration between muralist Juana Alicia and author Tirso González Araiza, their work explores the Yucatec Mayan myth of X’Tabay, who’s often portrayed as a malevolent seductress, but who Alicia and Araiza depict as a figure of female empowerment.
I walked up the museum’s magnificent marble staircase to see “Palenque: 200 Anos de Descubrimientos” (“Palenque: 200 Years of Discoveries”), a temporary exhibit on the second floor. Palenque, in the state of Chiapas, is another archaeological site on my bucket list.
With that, it was time for an early lunch at an excellent seafood restaurant, La Pigua, where I had sea bass with mushrooms and discovered that one of my fellow tour group participants was—despite being a New Yorker—also a fan of my beloved and soon-to-depart-Oakland Athletics (insert despondent wail here). Afterwards, we piled back into the bus for our second attempt to visit El Gran Museo del Mundo Maya.
I mentally crossed my fingers. Even though by this point we were well fed, and some members of our group had enjoyed a few beers over lunch, I sensed some antsiness. The Palacio Cantón had only partially whetted our appetite for art and culture. Surely El Gran Museo would be open by now!
To be continued…
Oh, this reminds me so many ways of the time I spend working in Mexico City, but even better. the artifact pics are astounding. And that boulevard with the cyclists? Sign me up. You are making me want to travel!!!
Your post brought back memories from long ago. I visited Merida in 1988 (I think). A beautiful, very interesting city. Palenque is on my list...but not for 2024.