On the northern edge of Mérida’s Plaza Grande, kitty-corner from the cathedral and painted the exact shade of a key lime pie (mmm…pie….) sits the Palacio del Gobierno. It looks like a standard-issue Porfirian civic building—two stories, arched colonnades, symmetrical as a ruler, and colonial but with just enough grandeur to suggest, “We’re Spanish, and we’re in charge.”
And they are. In charge, not necessarily Spanish anymore. The palace still functions as the seat of the Yucatán state government. People work here. Important-looking doors are closed. Guards nod or don’t. The vibe is official but not unfriendly. And you’d be forgiven for thinking it’s just worth a quick exterior photo op. But you’d be wrong.
Head upstairs to the Salón de la Historia, and everything changes. The bright green façade gives way to a gallery of giant oil paintings, some more than 20 feet wide, mounted like heraldic banners on the walls. These aren’t here to flatter dignitaries. They’re here to interrogate the whole historical narrative, and they do it with startling honesty.
The murals are the work of Fernando Castro Pacheco, a Mérida native and one of Mexico's most respected 20th-century artists. He began the series in the early 1970s when the state government—unexpectedly—commissioned him to tell the story of the Yucatán. Most official murals of the era leaned toward nationalism and heroic messaging. Castro Pacheco took a different route.
And his work was meant to provoke. It's emotional, physical, brutal. These are not polite illustrations of historical "incidents." They're visual indictments rooted in the Maya perspective. And if you've been drifting through the elegant old homes of Paseo de Montejo wondering whose money built them—as I had been before wandering in here—this room provides some answers.
One mural shows Bishop Diego de Landa’s infamous auto-da-fé of 1562 when thousands of Maya codices and ritual objects were burned in the name of salvation. (An auto-da-fé was a kind of public religious inquisition—a mix of trial, punishment, and theatrical purge, often culminating in fire.) Another shows the henequén boom of the 19th century, with Maya laborers—indentured servants, really—cutting agave under the merciless Yucatán sun. A third features Felipe Carrillo Puerto, the socialist governor who was executed (executed!) in 1924 for championing Maya rights. Castro Pacheco renders him with arms outstretched, cruciform, against a red sky.
There's no timeline on the wall, no gentle guide through the centuries. The murals demand your attention but don't hold your hand. Each one has a small explanatory panel in Spanish, English, and Mayan—but the emotion is obvious without them. There's pain here but also resilience. These aren't victims. They're people who endured, adapted, and—sometimes—fought back.
Unlike other Mexican muralists of the time, Castro Pacheco painted on canvas rather than directly on the wall—a deliberate decision that allowed him to experiment and maybe gave the government a discreet exit strategy if things got a little hot. (They haven’t taken him up on it. Yet.)
These murals made such a strong impression—artistically and culturally—that the state government invited him back for more. More! So he returned to create a three-panel sequence based on Maya cosmology, now installed along the grand stairwell. In the center, the gods create humankind from a stalk of corn—no metaphors needed; we are the crop. To the east, a golden sun illuminates the Maya world of art, astronomy, and writing. To the west, twilight brings the jaguar gods of war and sacrifice, emerging from darkness like smoke. The whole thing reads like a prayer and a warning.
He also created several murals on the ground floor, which are often overlooked but no less powerful. These explore Maya life before conquest—land, education, ritual—and serve as a prologue. In the interest of space, I, too, will overlook them now. Hah!
You don’t expect to find this kind of work in a government palace. That’s what makes it so powerful. This isn’t a private gallery or a museum tucked away in a suburb—it’s right here in the heart of Mérida, in the very building where laws are signed and budgets approved. Castro Pacheco’s murals remind anyone in power exactly what kind of ground they’re standing on.
He died in 2013 at the age of 95, but the force of his work still fills the room. If you're in Mérida and have even a passing interest in history, politics, art, or the complicated legacy of colonialism—go see it. And even if you don't, go anyway. You might leave with a different kind of history in your head.
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