For gentleman, a white linen suit and a Panama hat won’t seem the least bit out of fashion on the streets of Mérida. One can swagger down Mérida’s boulevards with the same dash displayed back in 1960 by Noel Coward in the movie “Our Man in Havana” and feel very much at home.
“Actually, we get quite a number of Cuban tourists here,” says Oscar Menéndez, who shows visitors the sights along elegant Paseo Montejo from a horse-drawn carriage.
“Cubans from Miami,” he hastens to explain. “Mérida reminds them of how Havana used to be.”
No doubt about it. The past has found a home in Mérida.
The Miami Cubans find themselves outnumbered by Germans, Scandinavians and the Dutch, by Swiss, French and Italians along with a few Americans who have heard that during December Mérida becomes the most cosmopolitan city in Mexico.
Of course, you’ll go out to see the ruins at Uxmal or Chichen Itza and maybe the flamingos all pink and graceful at Celestún, but the happiest moments are likely to be in Mérida itself, strolling along Calle 60 -- the Colonial Corridor as the tour guides call it -- where everything seems to be happening.
Start out the day breakfasting on huevos motuleños (Motul-style eggs, Motul being a village near Mérida) right at your hotel, or over at the sidewalk cafes by the Teatro Peón Contreras and those around charming little Parque Hidalgo.
In Mérida, you look forward to being hungry.
Lime soup, which really is chicken soup with a touch of lime, is a traditional mealtime starter. Follow this with chicken pebil or pork pebil, the pork or chicken having been marinated in a sour orange sauce and baked in a banana leaf.
It’s not on the menu at Taco Bell.
Of course, there’s more to Mérida than eating and drinking.
You’ll want to wander down to the Plaza Principal come morning and get a feel for the city. Shops intermingle with boutiques around the plaza and while Mérida brims with stores it’s hard to imagine not finding what you want on the plaza, especially if what you want is a guayaberra shirt.
The Spanish conquered the Aztecs in a couple of years. It took them a couple of decades and two generations to gain even a toehold in Maya Yucatán. Still standing is the home of the local conquistadors, Francisco Montejo, father and son. It’s a bank now. The monumental sculpture on the facade shows dad and junior balanced in triumph on the heads of a defeated Maya warriors. Tactful the Montejos were not.
The Cathedral gives a more accurate picture of how things really were. Instead of windows it has gun slits. This monumental church, started in 1561, was expected to double as a fortress. Murals in the Palacio de Gobierno depict the turbulent history of Yucatán.
Something of a backwater during the 300 years of the colonial era, Mérida came into its own late in the last century when plantation owners out in the surrounding countryside became rich producing sisal, the stuff rope was made from before all those synthetic fibers hit the market. What rope ships still use these days is made from synthetic fiber.
The sisal barons found it easier to visit New Orleans and Havana than Mexico City. They usually spent a few months each year in Europe and built their Paseo Montejo homes along the lines of Paris mansions.
Those days vanished when steam replaced sail and plastic was invented. For a while Mérida seemed to be living on its memories.
No more. The Paseo Montejo no longer is a boulevard of broken dreams. Banks and insurance companies occupy some of the grand old mansions. Hotels are interspersed with restaurants.
Allow a morning to explore el Palacio Cantón and the archaeology museum within. This is the place to learn all about the ancient Maya. Mérida has more than half-a-dozen museums, but the one at the Palacio Cantón is by far the best.
Women old and young saunter about in the Yucatán version of their Sunday best: a lavishly embroidered white cotton blouse worn over an equally lavishly embroidered white cotton skirt from beneath which peeks a lace-trimmed petticoat.
Clothes may be why they call Mérida the White City, for there is, in truth, little white about the buildings.
But unembroidered white is the traditional garb for men. The shirt can be a simple affair with a mandarin collar or the tailored guayaberra which passes for a jacket in the steamy climate of the peninsula.
And, of course, a white linen suit would not be out of place.
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