A day in the land of the Maya

We started the day with a visit to the Montejo mansion. Two successive governors Montejo founded the city of Mérida, which until then had been a Mayan city. At the end of our visit, we stepped into a classroom with a huge mural on the wall, showing the Montejo mansion in the midst of a Mayan landscape. Indigenous workmen chipped away the ornamentation from stones that Montejo had removed from Mayan temples. My heart went out to the workers in the mural, destroying important cultural artifacts on behalf of their oppressors, and I said something about it to Alla.

An employee of the mansion overheard my comment and “corrected” my impression. He claimed that the Maya had already abandoned the city when the Spaniards arrived, amplifying and decorating his story with numerous fabrications about the Maya. I looked at his Spanish face and let the matter drop after questioning his claim that Montejo had taken over an empty city. He seemed sure of his facts.

We stopped next at City Hall, where we spent a lot of time studying various murals and paintings depicting the history of the Yucatan Peninsula. Most of them included texts explaining the historical events shown, including the 20-year war between the invading Spaniards and the locals who didn’t want to give up their land. The Spaniards had better weapons and ultimately prevailed, though Mayan culture never disappeared and by now dominates the area.

By this time we’d gotten hungry and I asked a volunteer guide where to eat lunch. She wanted us to go to Chaya Maya, a restaurant where we’d had a disappointing lunch yesterday. Her face fell when I told her we didn’t like it. She said that it’s the best Yucatan food in the city and that the locals eat there. She really wanted us to try again. Her earnestness won us over, so we decided to go. This time we went to the restaurant’s original location, and I couldn’t immediately even find any non-Mayan customers in the room. We asked if we could have an English-speaking waiter and described what we wished we’d ordered yesterday. He helped us get a huge and delicious meal accompanied by a stream of fresh handmade tortillas.

We loved our meal. About the time we started talking about how we may have more than we could eat, Alla looked up and saw a man staring in the window with deep pathos. That is to say, he looked very hungry. Alla made him a taco from our serving plate and a waitress brought over a take-out box for it. The guy took his food nearby and ate it with such enthusiasm that we stopped eating altogether. Alla scraped up all the food we had left, begged a couple more hot tortillas from the lady making them, and added them to the man’s take-out plate. The look on his face confirmed that the food was more important to him than to us.

After lunch we visited the Anthropological Museum, which had an excellent contemporary pottery exhibit on the first floor and a Mayan architectural exhibit upstairs. We had a great time on both floors.

Apparently we walked around enough, because on the way back to our inn I noticed that my shoe was falling apart. I wanted to buy some glue, and looked at the shops and businesses we passed. Ultimately we reached a little building-supply store where the owner offered to sell me a Coke-bottle full of glue from a gallon can. While I didn’t object to the price, I didn’t want to waste an entire bottle of glue. Finally he agreed to put a smaller amount onto a piece of cardboard since I intended to use it immediately. I stood on a plastic bag while the glue set, and Alla went out to make change so we could pay our five-peso debt. My shoe is a little better, but not by much. The patch won’t hold for long, but we’re flying back to Boston tomorrow.

We’re glad we came to Merida, with its colonial architecture, great museums and festive streets. I think next time we’ll spend another weekend in the city and then move on to the heart of the archaeological zone nearby. We have a lot to see and a lot to learn.