Merida

Suppose you had a jones to retire in Mexico, wanted to do so in a city that had lots of things to do, but the idea of a city the size of Mexico City was just way too intimidating. Where would you go?

For a lot of expat wanna be’s, the answer seems to be Merida.

It’s too big to be a quaint little town, with a population of 900,000 plus and a metro area of around 1.3 million. Big enough for cultural diversity, but not stupid crowded like Mexico City at 20 million plus. Many sources name it as the safest city in Mexico, and it is well rated for quality of life and as a place to do business. The chief complaint is that it gets damned hot in the summer (average highs in the mid 90s, humidity in the 70 percentiles).

In the Merida area the Mayans had been around for a couple thousand years, culminating in a city called T’hó. Remember a couple posts back when I was talking about Campeche? Francisco de Montejo (the younger), the same Spanish dude that finished up the conquest of the Yucatan and established Campeche also captured T’hó. In 1542 he established Merida on that site, and pulled down the Mayan structures for raw materials to build up a Spanish settlement. Merida became the capital of Montejo’s regional settlements and remains the capital of the state of Yucatan to this day.

Cathedral of Merida

As for the old Mayan city, almost nothing remains, unless you consider things like the Catheral of Merida, constructed from Mayan building materials. This cathedral is considered the oldest in the America’s, and the first to be completed in the 16th century. (Construction was from 1562-1598).

Cathedral interior

For a brief period, around the turn of the 20th century, Mérida was said to house more millionaires than any other city in the world. This is thanks to the production of what our local guide called sisal [si saul], an agave based plant that provides fibers used to make rope, twine, mats, nets – you get the idea. The plantation owners got rich – at least until synthetics took over the market. Technically, they used henequen (Agave fourcroydes) rather than sisal (Agave sisalana), a close cousin. Another regional cousin, Agave tequilana, is used to make a certain liquor…

A nice place on mansion row…

… and another.

These days most of the plantations have gone to ruin, and the only folks who can keep up the mansions are the new rich and other businesses that can afford expensive toys (banks, insurance companies, etc.)

But even the lesser “mansions” are targets for gentrification.

A street in the process of gentrification

One can only assume the local Mexicans have mixed feelings about all this. You think the inflation you’re seeing is bad?

One thing that wasn’t hard to find was shopping. Street side shops displayed wares of many flavors.

Piñatas, and other party animals

But even they couldn’t hold a candle to market areas – buildings and their surroundings that were packed to the gills with kiosks, with many of the kiosks packed to the gills with a wide variety of stuff. American malls are mere posers.

Services were available as well. There wasn’t just an entire section of shoe shops, there were also cobblers who could fix your shoes on site and on demand, and probably build a pair to order. And if you weren’t happy with the work, they could arm wrestle you for a price break.

There were other things to see.

Monument to the Fatherland

Kissing chairs

Pasaje a la Revolución

And in one building, free access to a showing of Marc Chagall artworks. That guy was versatile. I recognized his name from a prior trip to Germany back in 2015, where we stumbled through a maze to find stained glass windows he’d done in the church of St. Stephan.

Here, he’s doing paintings. Watercolor, maybe? It’s a slide show. Click the arrows to navigate.

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Historically, visitors to the area have been known to have a real blast. A famous one in particular, an entity of meteoric proportions went clubbing about 25 miles north of Merida by the coast, and they’re still telling stories about it 65 million years later. Yep, it was the comet that ended the dinosaurs. Chicxulub crater and a ring of cenotes are the main remaining scars from that party.

I wonder if the meteor considers itself an expat? It did retirement in a major way.

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