Mexico wants to promote tourism. The Mayan Train was López Obrador’s last major project: a link between the country’s different tourist areas, perhaps to provide easier access to other less tourist-friendly areas. The 2024 goal was to attract 8,000 daily tourists to the Yucatan Peninsula alone, and the plan seems to be working. There’s one problem: Some of those tourists decide to stay, pushing out indigenous communities.

This is such a serious problem that there are towns that no longer have anywhere to bury their dead, and urban speculation is to blame.

gentrification. Mérida is the largest city in the Yucatán Peninsula. It is also its capital. Its demographic growth seems unstoppable and its population has almost doubled from 520,000 in 1990 to 921,000 in the 2020 census. It is classified as one of the best Mexican cities to do business and has a company, but also has many memories of times past and is considered a tourist attraction by the Mayan community.

Urban colonialism. The problem is precisely that they condemn the expulsion of indigenous communities from the urban center. Rodrigo Alejandro Llanes Salazar is a doctor in Anthropological Sciences and has condemned many times that colonialism did not end with the independence of Spain. As he himself stated, there is a new form of colonialism:

“This is urban colonialism,” Llanes comments, “not only because Mérida has transformed the towns surrounding it into colonies or subdivisions, but also because its characteristics resemble colonialism.” And among the towns/neighborhoods that have suffered the consequences are Chablekal, Temozón, Caucel, Cholul or Santa Gertrudis Copó.

Skirmish over traditions. Llanes confirms that this form of colonialism pits indigenous people, their natural spaces and traditions against the complicity of municipal authorities. In Disidentemx, they note that authorities justify attacks on towns near the capital because they are making economic progress, but in reality only a few people benefit.

Lady Eloína Cocom Valencia is one of those responsible for the Santa Gertrudis Copó neighborhood and confirms that this boom in real estate developments has caused residents to disregard the indigenous people. “They want to eliminate our traditions,” she says, adding that a few years ago, when she was organizing one of her parties, residents of a residential area complained to the Mérida city council.

The reason given was that “the town makes too much noise” and that rockets can cause heart attacks in pets. Lady says it’s not just new residents who have these behaviors, and there are those who participate in these ancestral traditions.

CheblekalThe problem with it all is the urban development the city has experienced due to its demographic growth. The Lady assured that there has never been any consultation on the mega real estate developments that are currently taking up space in the towns there, stating that her town has been “badly treated by businessmen”.

And one of those towns is Chablekal. According to Randy Soberanis Dzul of the Chablekal Residents Association, only 1,000 people are now left from a 5,000-hectare community with title to Land, Territory and Natural Resources. The town is now surrounded by luxury condominiums and shopping malls, and there have been complaints of people selling their land due to fraud, pressure or lack of resources.

Graveyard drama. Silvia Beatriz Chalé Euán is a resident of Chablekal and confirms that in the last 10 years Mérida has taken control of libraries, civil registry offices and cemeteries. This is a problem that seems common in many villages and it causes something tragic: there is no room for the dead. What causes this? There are families who are forced to bury their dead in cemeteries far from their homes.

No room for the dead. In El País México we can read something that is still anecdotal but shows the current reality of these towns. In Chablekal, two or three people die a year, but in 2023, two people died on the same day and at the same time. It was a strange event, but for the relatives, the drama continued after the death: there was only room for one of the two bodies in the town’s cemetery.

After the argument, the person born in the town was buried in Cheblekal. The other person was buried in a nearby cemetery, but the problem is that the cemetery could be perfectly expanded if the landowners do not want to donate it because they prefer to sell it for urban development.

Planned excavations. And if we have to make room for the new dead, those already buried are exhumed. Apparently the city council of Mérida has a list of people to be exhumed after three years to make room for the new dead. The problem (another one) is that when the date comes, many bodies do not decompose and are reburied for religious reasons.

When a body is exhumed and not reburied, the family cremates it, something they have to get used to because it is not in their beliefs. And the biggest problem is that the Chablekal Pantheon has 45 vaults for a population of 5,000. This will continue for a long time.

Mayans against gentrification“We don’t want to be a colony of Mérida, we want to continue being a Mayan people,” said Silvia Beatriz, a land advocate. And that doesn’t just mean that institutions or cemeteries are controlled by Mérida, it also means that local officials who run elections in these towns and villages have less and less value in politics.

“In Mérida, the municipality now decides when the deceased will be buried and when the administrative procedures related to death will be carried out. This removes the powers of our elected representatives. Little by little, without saying a word, they are removing them. As if we were actually a colony, we are destroying things and damaging many things in the town,” says Silvia, adding that the municipal council exercises “the power to control, to decide and to say: what do I say, when and when on behalf of this municipality”.

That’s why there are groups like Silvia or Randy who are fighting to have more autonomy and weight in the decisions surrounding their communities; they hope that Mérida will stop seeing them as a colony and that they can at least have the security of this colony that will remain with its own people forever.

Photos | Ivan Alexis Huerta Reyna, Kprateek88

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