Mérida
Mérida
Mérida, capital and principal city of the state of Yucatán in Mexico, located in the northwestern part of the Yucatán peninsula, about 22 miles south of the port of Progreso (and the Gulf of Mexico). Mérida was founded on 6 January 1542 by the conquistador Francisco de Montejo on the site of the semideserted Maya town of T'ho. Formerly known as Ichcaazihó (which means Five Mountains in Maya), T'ho was within the Maya city-state of Peches, which allied itself with the conquering Spaniards against rival Maya city-states. It is believed that the conquistadores chose the name Mérida because T'ho's indigenous ruins reminded them of the Roman remains in the city of Badajoz in their native Estremadura.
Since the Spanish lacked the military capability to pacify the entire peninsula, their colonizing strategy hinged on the establishment of garrison towns such as Mérida during the colonial period. Mounted troops were dispatched to trouble spots to maintain peace and subdue Indian uprisings. Mérida's physical layout echoed the classic style of the Spanish Renaissance. Crown authorities had insisted on the traditional grid pattern of wide, straight streets intersecting at right angles to form rectangular blocks and open squares. If the city's architecture replicated the Moorish style in vogue at the time in Spain, its simplicity also reflected the dearth of material wealth found in the province. Throughout the colonial era, Mérida remained the seat of the captaincy-general, a self-governing administrative unit independent of the Viceroyalty of New Spain.
At the beginning of the nineteenth century, Mérida was a small town of 10,000 inhabitants. It grew appreciably during the first twenty years after Independence as the regional economy prospered. An unfortunate result of economic progress, however, was the escalation of tensions between expansionistic sugar planters and Maya peasants on the state's southeastern frontier. Ultimately, the apocalyptic Caste War of Yucatán erupted in 1847, reducing Yucatán's population by more than a third. Ironically, Mérida (and the northwestern portion of the peninsula) benefited economically and demographically from the hostilities, as residents of the southeast fled to escape the attacks of the rebel Mayas.
Political factionalism in Mérida and neighboring Campeche during the first fifty years following Independence also contributed indirectly to the state capital's growth: when campechanos seceded from Yucatán in 1862, Mérida remained the only viable commercial center in the state. By 1883, the city numbered roughly 40,000, the only state capital to record a sizable increase during the Mexican nation's turbulent first half-century.
By the beginning of Porfirio Díaz's dictatorship (1876–1911), Mérida was positioned to assume a dominating role in the rapidly expanding Henequen (hard fiber) industry. The northwest quadrant of the peninsula was converted into large henequen estates, as hacendados lived in Mérida and managed their haciendas through overseers. During the henequen boom, a peninsular railway network, built, financed, and managed by indigenous entrepreneurs, was routed through Mérida to transport the monocrop. The combination of henequen monoculture, the railroad, the Caste War, and the secession of Campeche (and later in 1902, the partition of the southeastern territory of Quintana Roo) all contributed to Mérida's steady ascent to the leading city in the region. By 1910, the capital's population had grown to more than 60,000; Valladolid, the second-largest city in the state, had fewer than 12,000 residents.
The late-nineteenth-century henequen boom radically changed the city. During Olegario Molina's gubernatorial administration (1902–1909) the most sweeping changes occurred. The Molinista regime taxed the lucrative monocrop and, with the support of the private sector, transformed housing, transportation, communications, public health and sanitation, education, the arts, and the urban landscape. Mérida soon earned the sobriquets "The White City" and "The Paris of Mexico." It was clean, well lit, paved with asphalt, and increasingly modernized.
Since World War I, henequen monoculture has gradually dissipated, but the state capital has remained the political, economic, and cultural hub of the peninsula. Migration and immigration throughout the twentieth century have swelled the population dramatically. More recently, the city has benefited from tourism (as visitors flock to Maya archaeological sites) and as a service sector for the new Caribbean resorts of Cancún and Cozumel. In the early 2000s, with a population in excess of a half million, Mérida functions as the unchallenged primary city in the peninsula.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Enrique Dulanto, "Apuntes históricos y anecdóticos sobre Mérida," in Artes de Mexico 20, nos. 169-170 (1973): 7-61.
Rodolfo Ruz Ménendez, Mérida, bosquejo biográfico (1983).
Asael T. Hansen and Juan R. Bastarrachea M., Mérida: Su transformación de capital colonial a naciente metrópoli en 1935 (1984).
Allen Wells and Gilbert M. Joseph, "Modernizing Visions, Chilango Blueprints, and Provincial Growing Pains: Mérida at the Turn of the Century," in Mexican Studies/Estudios mexicanos 8 (1992): 167-215.
Additional Bibliography
Peraza Guzmán, Marco Tulio, and Pablo A. Chico Ponce de León. Arquitectura y urbanismo virreinal. Mérida: Unidad de Posgrado e Investigación, Facultad de Arquitectura, Universidad Autónoma de Yucatán; Mexico City: Consejo Nacional de Ciencia y Tecnología, 2000.
Reyes Domínguez, Guadalupe. Carnaval en Mérida: Fiesta, espectáculo y ritual. México, D.F.: Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia; Mérida: Universidad Autónoma de Yucatán, 2003.
Rodríguez, Edgar. Ciudad blanca. Merida: Maldonado editores del mayab, 1999.
Rugeley, Terry. Yucatán's Maya Peasantry and the Origins of the Caste War Austin: University of Texas Press, 1996.
Allen Wells