Tag Archives: Mérida

Dia de los Muertos Mérida

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This is a combined post based on activities for the upcoming Dia de los Muertos in Merida, and a post which I wrote after a visit to the  Cemetery in Merida. Even if you can’t visit this year, do make a note to visit next year, traditions and local food provide such an intimate exposure to this culture.  And we have some of the best guides available in Merida and the Yucatan Peninsula.

Every year, the Day of the Dead, or Dia de los Muertos, is celebrated Oct. 31 through Nov. 2 throughout Mexico, in the Yucatán it’s called Hanal Pixán, Mayan for “food of the souls.” This holiday coincides with the Catholic All Souls Day and All Saint’s Day, the local indigenous people combine the holiday with their ancient belief of honoring their deceased loved ones. Offerings to the ancestors entail elaborate preparations, and we can combine several outings to commemorate this yearly auspicious event.

The Mayas venerate their deceased as they believe the soul is immortal and the dead are allowed to travel back to this world once a year, during the designated dates. The name for this celebration in the Yucatan Peninsula, receives the name of Hanal Pixan (Food for the Souls) and unlike the rest of Mexico, it lasts 3 days instead of 1 – it is celebrated every year from Oct 31 to Nov 2. All the families set up altars in their houses with special tablecloths, combining the ancestor’s favorite foods, flowers, candles, photographies, incense, liquor for the grown-ups and candies and  toys for the kids. This is a celebration of love, for being reunited with those who have passed-away. But also, it’s a culinary celebration. The star at every house is the “mucbil pollo”, which is only eaten during these dates and is not available the rest of the year. This unique and delicious meal is a large tamal made with corn dough, filled with a kind of sauce, seasoned with spices and mixed with chicken and pork meat, wrapped in banana leaves – all cooked in an underground pit. In main cities, such as Merida and Campeche, hundreds of colorful altars line in the pedestrian streets, along with music and a celebration vibe. The Hanal Pixan is a unique opportunity to be part of a living Maya tradition, learn about this ancient culture and taste incredible food.

Some of the activities than can be experienced in Merida with our esteemed guides include:

Explore Merida, the city that preserves its rich architectural heritage like no other. Travel its shady avenues, lined with exquisite mansions from the end of the 19th century, when henequen (sisal) wealth reached its zenith and the fiber’s producers sought to reaffirm their prestige and world-view in architecture. You will also visit the cathedral and famous restored buildings in the city center. Then we will head to the market and the main cemetery for an introduction of Hanal Pixán, or “Feast of the Spirits”, a tradition that combines food and death in an ancient ritual in which ancestors are revered

Full immersion in a Maya town – Today we head to Yaxunah, a living Maya town, a tunnel of time, to be fully immersed in the celebration of Hanal Pixan. We’ll be greeted by the community and we’ll learn how farmers are committed to the harvest of several type of maizes and how Maya traditions come with it.

Later, we will be welcomed by a local family that will explain how this feast is characterized by flowers, chocolate, stewed chickens and of course, the Mucbilpollo, cooked in a pib – the Maya underground roasting oven. The category of “buried foods” is enormously important in Yucatecan cuisine as foods that are “buried” and then “resurrected” and ingested carry an obviously symbolic resonance.

We will participate in the whole process of making the mucbilpollo, the iconic dish of this celebration.

While it gets cooked underground, we will explore the nearby pyramids and ride a bike through the town to visit two Maya workshops. Haciendas del Mundo Maya Foundation supports the founding of small community businesses that keep traditional arts alive by rescuing techniques and materials used since pre-hispanic times. For women in these communities, producing handcrafts with their own hands helps them to generate income and provide better opportunities for their families.

LUNCH: Lunch today is mucbilpollo, set in the setting of a traditional Maya village. At the end of the day, your driver will bring you back to your hotel.

The Mayans truly believe their loved ones return to visit for three days every year, graves and tombs are elaborately decorated. Folkloric music is usually played in the streets of Cementerio General and on stages near the town plaza.  

Luis Ronzón, chef at Chable Resort provided this authentic recipe for Muc Bu Pollo:

MUC BI POLLO

 Ingredients

1.100 Kg                   Corn dough

0.250 Kg                   Lard

0.100 Kg                   Achiote paste

0.005 Kg                   Epazote

0.010 Kg                   Cilantro

0.500 Kg                   Pork meat

1 Pz                            Whole chicken

3 Pz                            Banana leaf

0.020 Kg                   Salt

0.007 Kg                   Ground pepper

0.500 Kg                   Tomato

0.400 Kg                   White onion

0.010 Kg                   Habanero chili

0.004 Kg                   Allspice

0.004 Kg                   Whole black pepper

0.002 Kg                   Laurel

0.020 Kg                   Garlic

0.040 Kg                   Salt

 

Method of preparation:

Mix 1kg corn dough with the lard the 20gr of salt. Cook the whole chicken in water with half the portions of laurel, whole black pepper, allspice, salt garlic and white onion. Carve the chicken into whole pieces. Cook the pork meat in the same way as the chicken.

Col: Place in a saucepan 100gr corn dough and 300gr chicken stock and cook in medium heat for 10 minutes, add epazote, cilantro and achiote paste. Season to taste. Mix with the chicken.

Place one banana leaf flat over a surface and make a base with the corn dough leaving a hole in the middle. Stuff with the chicken and pork meat mixture, on top place some slices of tomato and habanero chili. Place a thinner corn dough mix layer and use this to cover the first layer. Cover both with a banana leaf and tie it with a string making sure that the whole dough keeps its shape.

Cook in the Pib, or oven, for approximately 2 hours.

A post from May when I visited the enchanting city of Merida. As we drove toward Plaza Mayor, we slowly passed through a vast cemetery, the oldest Cementerio General. If you like moseying through old cemeteries, this one is a particular treasure. It is the largest and oldest in Mérida and is graced with a few spectacular headstones and mausoleums of wealthy Hacienda owners, historic figures, groups of musicians, hemp workers, a complete gamut of the locals, albeit deceased locals.

American Alma Reed Headstone – Cementerio General – Mérida

Rosa Benet, gazing at her husband, Alvaro Medina Rodriguez, Cementerio General – Mérida

Rosa Benet, gazing at her husband, Alvaro Medina Rodriguez, Cementerio General – Mérida 1905

Humberto, my guide, led me to another remarkable mausoleum, a shrine to a wealthy Hacienda patron. An enormous full size bed, layered with rippled linen sheets of hand carved marble, is elevated about five feet off the ground. Standing alongside the bed is a elegantly dressed woman, Rosa Benet, gently lifting the corner of the sheet to gaze at her husband, Alvaro Medina Rodriguez, who passed away while she was at a gala. The story is that he had persuaded her to go and enjoy the evening, she protested, but went and missed saying a last goodbye to her beloved husband. The work was an Imitation of the work of Mexican sculptor Almo Strenta.

The Cementerio mimics community life, the wide main avenue is lined by the houses/mausoleums of the wealthy, the casta divina families. Many historic people are buried here, and its memorials are built in Greek, Gothic or French neoclassic styles, often from stone or granite brought from Europe by local wealthy families. They range from classically beautiful to over-the-top displays of wealth, and deeper in the back you will find simple but colorful houses of the dead, all filled with restos – remains.

If you walk deeper into the Cementerio, under the enormous shade trees, you will also discover more modest houses for the deceased, small tomb-houses that seemed to be devoted to just one person. On closer inspection, you will see stacks of osarios, boxes full of bones. The bones of generations, buried one on top of the other. In a family-owned plot, the most recent body will be buried in the ground. That usually involves digging up the old bones from previous generations and adding new family members. The little houses, built by the living for the dead relatives, are kept for visiting purposes. Simple replicas of houses, some are very colorfully painted, others remain white, bleached by years of blazing sun; some have windows or doors and are topped by angels or crosses and inside each house, may be a small memento of the deceased. The living place these trinkets to honor their ancestors, you may see statues of saints, candles or bits of flowers and plants.

Every year, the Day of the Dead, or Dia de los Muertos, is celebrated Oct. 31 through Nov. 2 throughout Mexico, in the Yucatán it’s called Hanal Pixán, Mayan for “food of the souls.”

Once, historically held at the beginning of summer, Day of the Dead was moved to coincide with the Christian festivals following the Spanish colonization of Mexico in the 16th Century. On Oct. 31, All Hallows Eve, children make a children’s altar to invite the angelitos – children to visit. Nov. 1 is All Saints Day, and the adult spirits are invoked and invited. Nov. 2 is All Souls Day, when families go to the cemetery to decorate the graves and tombs of their relatives. The holiday and celebration has evolved over the years and is a complex celebration of the deceased relatives and a celebration of life.

Cementerio General – Mérida

Look skyward to view the many cherubs or angels, many missing wings or body parts, spirits guarding the families from above.

 

 

 

 

Mérida, Yucatán Gem

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Centro historico of Mérida

The Yucatán’s capital, Mérida, is an unhurried city of pastel crayon colored 19th Century Spanish Colonial mansions and traditional squares accented by popular public parks. One of the safest cities in Mexico, not only is it an architectural gem, it treasures its Mayan heritage. Folk dancing takes place on the closed off historic square on Saturday nights, and bike riding can be enjoyed in Paseo Montejo, which is closed to cars on Sundays. Mérida was founded in 1542 and was named after the town of Mérida in Extremadura Spain. The city was built on the site of the Maya city of “Tho.” Tho had been a center of Mayan culture for centuries and because of this, some historians consider Mérida the oldest continually occupied city in the Americas.

The Plaza Grande marks the center of the city, the centro historico of Merida. Bounded on four sides by buildings which include the Cathedral San Idelfonso, the Governor’s Palace, Casa Montejo (now inhabited by a Banamex), the MACAY museum, the Olimpo (a cultural center that houses gallery space, a movie theatre and the Planetarium) and the Ayuntamiento (City Hall), the Plaza Grande is a lovely park where people come to meet, sit, read the paper, sing, dance, chase the pigeons or just watch the world go by. Locals still ride in little horse-drawn taxis, which gather by the plaza in the evenings. Trios of trovadores wait to be hired for serenades and wander the corridors strumming their guitars.

At the turn of the century, merchants who had grown rich on the trade in sisal rope brought great wealth to Mérida. The city retains a European feel, with many of the older buildings built from French bricks and tiles, brought over as ballast in trading ships. Like the rest of the peninsula, it had little effective contact with central Mexico until the 1960s and looked to Europe for influence, thus the stark difference in character and style from most of other popular Mexican cities.

Ancient Mayan history is still evident in many buildings, carved Maya stones from ancient T’ho were widely used to build the Spanish colonial buildings that are abundant in central Mérida. Much of Mérida’s architecture from the colonial period through the 18th century and 19th century is still standing in the centro historico of the city.

From colonial times through the mid-19th century, Mérida was a walled city intended to protect the residents from periodic revolts by the indigenous Maya. Three of the original seven old Spanish city gates survive, but modern day Mérida has expanded well beyond the old city walls.The exposed brick streets were originally brought from Spain as ballast in the sailing ships, sailors replaced the ballast with ink wood harvested in Mérida.

Mérida and the state of Yucatán have traditionally been isolated from the rest of the country by geography, creating a unique culture. The conquistadors found the Mayan culture to be incredibly resilient, and their attempts to eradicate Mayan tradition, religion, and culture had only moderate success.  The surviving remnants of the Mayan culture can be seen every day, in dress, language, and in both written and oral histories. It is especially apparent on holidays like Hanal Pixan, a Mayan/Catholic Day of the Dead celebration. It falls on November 1 and 2 (one day for adults, and one for children). Many of the local ladies still wear the traditional white dress decorated in beautiful embroidery.

Not only is Mérida a wonderful draw on its own, the central location is the perfect starting point to explore the Mayan Route of ruins, cenotes (underwater sinkholes with crystal clear water), and refurbished haciendas. Some of the haciendas are private residences and we have access to the best of the best!

Uxmal

I spent three days with a couple of extremely knowledgeable guides – I was wildly impressed with both guides and loved exploring Mérida and Uxmal, one of the largest and most important archaeological sites of Mayan culture. The Mayan town of Uxmal, in Yucatán, was founded c. A.D. 700 and had 25,000 inhabitants. The layout of the buildings, which date from between 700 and 1000, reveals knowledge of astronomy. The Pyramid of the Soothsayer, as the Spaniards called it, dominates the ceremonial center, which has well-designed buildings decorated with a profusion of symbolic motifs and sculptures depicting Chaac, the god of rain. The ceremonial sites of Uxmal, Kabah, Labna and Sayil are considered the high points of Mayan art and architecture. Uxmal is only about 40 miles from Merida. Spend a week here and vary your days: lounging about, exploring Mérida and venturing out to the archeological sites.

Despite the large population of Mérida, the area feels sleepy and calm, it doesn’t exhibit the rush rush energy of a large city; small villages dot the country roads, week long fiestas are popular in the tranquil towns outside the city. Mérida, itself can lay claim to a couple of well known chefs – I met two who had trained under chef René Redzep at Noma, the world famous Copenhagen restaurant. Roberto Solis, owner and chef at Néctar is a former Noma chef and he also cooked at Per Se in New York. Our dinner at Néctar, a small unassuming restaurant was amazing and the  very reasonable tab was beyond belief for the amount of food and wine we enjoyed, under the watchful care of friendly and efficient staff. The New Yucatecan Cuisine, as Solis describes it, is traditional in a sense, but wildly innovative.

Don’t miss the Mercado market teeming with vendors of fresh fruits and vegetables, piles of  indigenous spices, housewares – a massive mecca of interesting food and home items. If you like poking through cemeteries, the Cementerio General is spectacular.

This is not a traditional bustling city like Mexico City – Mérida has a relaxed vibe, love the proximity to Mayan ruins without the crowds, love the authentic city and the very friendly locals.

Planning another escape soon! Highly recommend and we can help you organize the VV Best guides, dining, private experiences and hacienda resort stay. We can also arrange visits to private haciendas for cooking classes with well known local chefs.