A leafy green shrub that has nourished Maya communities for millennia is taking center stage in the southern Yucatán town of Tekax this month, when the second edition of the Festival de la Chaya, or Chaya Festival, comes to the town’s downtown plaza. The event brings together roughly 30 vendors offering dishes, drinks, and desserts…
In 1951, a Yucatecan architect named Leopoldo Tommasi published a book in Mexico City called La ciudad de ayer, hoy y mañana — The City of Yesterday, Today, and Tomorrow. It was part history, part complaint, and part urban vision. Seventy-five years later, researchers say it quietly shaped the way Mérida looks today. Tommasi was…
Travelers arriving at Mérida’s international airport are about to have a new way to get downtown — one that’s fully electric, air-conditioned, and part of the city’s expanding public transit network. Yucatán’s state transit authority, known as ATY (Agencia de Transporte de Yucatán), announced this week that a dedicated Airport Route will launch April 14,…
One of the more telling footnotes in Yucatán’s political history involves not a palace or a prison, but a pair of columns that stood at the northern edge of Mérida for barely a decade — long enough to be photographed, not long enough to be remembered. In 1928, Gov. Álvaro Torre Díaz marked the opening…
Trade routes, goods, and the merchants were bound up with politics, cosmology, and everyday ritual — and still echo today.
For more than two decades, a domed room tucked inside the Centro Cultural Olimpo — right on the Plaza Grande — has been one of Mérida’s quiet cultural treasures. The Planetario Arcadio Poveda Ricalde has introduced generations of schoolchildren and curious visitors to the mechanics of the cosmos, the formations of distant galaxies, and the…
Most people have never heard of octopus farming. But the only such operation in the entire Western Hemisphere is running right now in Sisal, a small fishing town on Yucatán’s Gulf coast about 50 kilometers west of Mérida — and a Mexican senator wants to make sure it never scales up. For anyone who has…
A crimson flash lit up the sky above Yucatán’s coastline Saturday night — there and gone in a few milliseconds, but not before photographer Juan José Chac caught it on camera. The image, shared on social media, shows a luminous column of red light rising from storm clouds into a star-filled sky. It quickly went…
(Updated to reflect new schedule) Dave O. Dodge has spent more than a decade living in Mérida’s Centro Histórico, running a boutique bed-and-breakfast and writing fiction rooted in the New England he left behind. His latest novel returns to that territory — and to some of its darkest history. Released March 24, Hannah: One Woman’s…
The Orquesta Sinfónica de Yucatán closed out the sixth program of its 45th season this weekend with a concert built around two of classical music’s most searching themes — grief and transcendent love — timed precisely to the opening of Holy Week. Under conductor Alfonso Scarano, the orchestra performed Giovanni Battista Pergolesi’s Stabat Mater alongside…
A gray fox turned up in an unexpected place last week — the offices of one of Yucatán’s oldest newspapers — leaving staff equal parts baffled and charmed before wildlife authorities stepped in. The animal was found early Friday morning resting in a hallway of Diario de Yucatán, in the heart of downtown Mérida. Employees…
In 15-plus years, the show has returned to the city more than a dozen times, even as prices have soared. What’s the appeal?
For 30 years, the official record-keepers of Mérida’s history were all men. That changed Wednesday. The Mérida city council voted unanimously to appoint María Teresa Mézquita Méndez and Ileana Beatriz Lara Navarrete to the Consejo de Cronistas — the city’s honorary Council of Chroniclers — making them the first women to hold the role since…
One of Mérida’s most recognizable landmarks will require a full restoration project after sustaining significant damage during International Women’s Day demonstrations earlier this month. Mexico’s National Institute of Anthropology and History (INAH) issued a formal technical assessment this week concluding that the Monumento a la Patria on Paseo de Montejo suffered the most severe damage…
Travelers in Mérida will soon have a new nonstop route to the U.S. border — and, just a short bridge walk away, to Southern California. Volaris is relaunching its Tijuana-Mérida route on June 1, with four weekly flights connecting the two cities nonstop for the first time since early 2024. The service originally launched in…
More than 8,400 people packed the ancient Maya city of Chichén Itzá on Friday for the spring equinox, watching one of the world’s most remarkable astronomical spectacles play out just as it has for centuries. The star of the show: a shadow that resembles a serpent. Between 4:30 and 5:10 p.m., the setting sun cast…
It’s one of Yucatán’s most remarkable natural destinations — a protected estuary sheltering Mexico’s largest colony of American flamingos, thousands of migratory birds, and crocodile-filled mangroves that draw ecotourists from around the world. But a simmering turf war among local tour operators is raising questions about whether Río Lagartos can manage its growing appeal without…
One of the oldest and most sacred texts in Mayan literature just got an unexpected update. The announcement came on Wednesday during a presentation titled “Presentando el nuevo capítulo de los ebooks,” held as part of FILEY 2026. Lalo Macías, founder of Fíctica, led the event and framed the project as a way to restore…
French documentary photographer Bénédicte Desrus officially launched her Arraigo exhibition Tuesday morning at the Museo Regional de Antropología de Yucatán at Palacio Cantón, bringing two years of quiet, door-to-door work in Mérida’s historic center onto one of the city’s most prominent boulevards. The ceremony, held on the sidewalk along Paseo de Montejo, drew officials from…
A photo exhibition two years in the making will make its public debut on Paseo de Montejo next week, when French documentary photographer Bénédicte Desrus opens Arraigo as part of the 14th annual Feria Internacional de la Lectura Yucatán (Yucatán International Reading Fair), known as FILEY. The inauguration takes place at 8 a.m. Tuesday, March…
The Mérida city government has a new way to teach us about ancient Maya fashion — a delightful, colorful comic book. Released in February, Moda Maya (Maya Fashion) is a 10-page illustrated booklet produced by the Dirección de Desarrollo Urbano (Urban Development Directorate) as part of the current Ayuntamiento 2024–2027 administration. It was authored by…
Every year in the weeks before International Women’s Day, a quiet argument plays out across Mexico’s city halls: how much steel and plywood to put in the streets. In recent years in Mérida, the answer has been considerable. Sheets of metal sheeting have gone up around the Palacio Municipal and the Palacio de Gobierno. Monuments…
While boats sit idle during the fishing ban season, the port of Dzilam de Bravo is getting a fresh coat of paint — courtesy of the fishermen themselves. State authorities launched the Pintemos Juntos (Let’s Paint Together) program in the small coastal community last week, kicking off a project that will transform the facades of…
Billy Kasberg doesn’t fit neatly into any one category, which is exactly the point. The Austin-based artist — who now splits his time between Texas and Mérida — makes paintings that feel like a cross between a microscope slide and a fever dream: dense, layered acrylic compositions in which human anatomy, microbiology, and the raw…
That’s all for now
That’s all for now