An Ode to Merida…

By Indalecio Cardeña Vázquez

The Merida of the XXI Century.

I admire the light that bathes you in the mantle of your primordial name, kept in the roots of the Ceiba tree, forged in the enigmas of myth. I walk through your ancient new streets. I kiss the wings of time that keep the voice of blood, the voice of the beginning, ancient Ho’, ancient Cinco, sweet face of the origin of time, of the birth of the earth.

In an eave of the night sleep the doves with all the stories, with the names of your forgotten heroes, with the lost rituals of your ancient sages, with the writing carved in the stone, with your sacred paths for the passage of the stars and the gods, with the flight of your bright remote birds,

Fruit upon fruit, flower upon flower, mistress of centuries, you are reborn each day on the wings of the sun, in the memory of your runes unfurled in the air, in the new blood born in the other time, this additional time, when the footsteps that came over the sea joined with the soft hands that wove cotton when the jaguar roared, and the earth saw new moons, new suns rise.

Then it was Merida, then Ho’ was wrapped in the turquoise of the air, and the new hymns arose, the light took on new hues, and your children, your new children carried vegetable syllables in their hands, all, those born here whose parents came from across the sea; those born of parents whose original parents were of parents born here the same, and those born of parents from both sides of the sea.

Hundreds of pearls adorn you, mestiza grandmother, tender Merida, ancient Ho’. Your stones keep the music of guitars and shells, stories of past gods turned into demons, remote temples turned into churches and loves marked by a fatality. Your stones carry ancient Ho’, tender Merida, the memory of water.

Summoned by the stars, in the kingdom of the plain, your flags come to drink from the bowels of the earth, and it seems that the memory is lost in the wind, that the new sun melts the roads and that the moon forgot its face in the passing of the years.

The Merida of the new times arises slowly, with a new face, as before it arose in the time of obsidian; as before, in the time of the Iberian riverbed dyed by Greece, Rome, and Arabia; as before, when it was dressed with French airs, and later when it was covered with the multiple forms and colors of the end of the second millennium, slowly, the new Merida arises, slowly, you emerge, Merida, the Very Noble and Very Loyal City.

By Indalecio Cardeña

Indalecio Cardeña Vázquez. – Anthropologist, researcher, and writer.

He has collaborated with the “Unidad Yucatán de la Dirección de Culturas Populares”, Instituto Nacional Indigenista and was the director of the Pinacoteca “Juan Gamboa Guzmán” of the INAH

Among his anthropological works is the iconographic analysis of the colonial sacred art of the Yucatan Peninsula; the symbolisms in the facade of Conquistador Montejo’s house, in Mérida; the Mayan symbolism in the Yucatan Cathedral, and the archaeoastronomy among the Mayans.

Professor Cardeña has written several books and articles since the mid-1980s to this date.

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