40 Fun Facts About Merida, Mexico

Which buried crater, named after a town near Mérida, was left by the asteroid blamed for wiping out the dinosaurs?

Chicxulub is about 200 km wide yet lies a kilometre underground, so nobody knew it was there until oil geophysicists mapped it in the late 1970s. Mérida sits inside its rim.

Which slow-roasted pork dish, Mérida's most famous, is marinated in bitter orange and wrapped in banana leaves?

Cochinita pibil takes its first word from the Spanish for baby pig, and the traditional version roasts a whole suckling pig. Annatto seed turns the meat a vivid burnt orange.

Which nickname, linked to its colonial façades, does Mérida share with Arequipa in Peru and Popayán in Colombia?

The White City is often put down to the pale limestone wash on Mérida's old buildings. Seen from orbit, the city shows as a whitish patch in a sea of green forest.

Mérida got its Spanish name because Maya ruins on the site reminded conquistadors of ruins left by which people?

The Romans founded the Spanish Mérida as Augusta Emerita, a colony for discharged soldiers, and it keeps more major monuments from that era than any other city in Spain.

Which US president met Mexico's Felipe Calderón in Mérida, launching a security pact named after the city?

George W. Bush and Calderón agreed the Mérida Initiative, under which Washington sent aircraft, equipment and training to help fight drug trafficking. It ran until 2021.

Hanal Pixán, when Mérida families set out food on altars for lost relatives, is the Maya form of which holiday?

Day of the Dead in Mérida centres on mukbil pollo, a large tamal pie baked underground and often served with hot chocolate. Hanal Pixán means food for the souls.

Which item, woven in villages around Mérida, is so central to local life that even humble homes have hooks for it?

Hammock weaving around Mérida supplies buyers worldwide, yet the idea is thought to be an import: most accounts say it reached the Maya from the Caribbean not long before the Spanish did.

Which fiery chile, grown more on Mérida's peninsula than anywhere else, takes its name from a city in another country?

Habanero means 'from Havana', because the chile was once traded heavily through the Cuban capital. Traditional Cuban cooking barely uses it, while Mérida serves it with almost everything.

Mérida's Leones de Yucatán, a team named after a local family's beer company, play which sport at Parque Kukulcán?

Baseball has deep roots in Mérida: the Leones joined the Mexican League in 1954, and their home park is named after Kukulkán, the Maya feathered serpent god.

The rim of the asteroid crater buried beneath Mérida is traced at the surface by a ring of what?

Cenotes, natural sinkholes that open onto groundwater, formed where the rock weakened along the crater wall. Researchers studying satellite images spotted the arc they make.

Mérida's grandest boulevard is named after which conquistador family, whose son founded the city in 1542?

Montejo was the name of a father, son and nephew, all called Francisco, who conquered the region between them. The son, known as el Mozo, founded Mérida on a largely abandoned Maya city.

Mérida's mansion-lined main boulevard, planned in 1888 on rope-fibre fortunes, was modelled on which European avenue?

Champs-Élysées was the model, and families enriched by the henequen boom lined the new boulevard with European-style mansions, including twin houses by a French architect.

Mérida's cathedral, built with stones from a Maya temple, is the second-oldest in the Americas after which city's?

Santo Domingo's cathedral was finished in 1550 and Mérida's in 1598, which makes the Mexican one the oldest on the American mainland. Its builders were largely Maya labourers.

Mérida lies about 35 km inland, at the north-west corner of its peninsula, from the coast of which body of water?

Gulf of Mexico shores are cooler: Mérida usually runs a few degrees hotter than the coast, so many residents traditionally spend July and August at the beach.

Which citrus fruit gives its name and flavour to the chicken-and-tortilla soup that is a classic of Mérida's cooking?

Lime juice gives sopa de lima its light citrus edge, though chicken is the main ingredient. The tortilla strips come on the side so they stay crisp.

Queso relleno, a Mérida speciality, is a hollowed-out ball of which European cheese stuffed with ground pork?

Edam is known in much of the Spanish-speaking world as queso de bola, ball cheese, and was long prized as a delicacy. Mérida's version arrives at the table in tomato sauce.

The street grid of Mérida's old centre is sorted by what, with one kind running north–south and the other east–west?

Odd and even numbers do the work: even-numbered streets run north–south and odd-numbered ones east–west, which is why Calles 60 and 61 meet at a corner of the main square.

Workers from which Asian country arrived near Mérida in 1905 to cut henequen, a story now told in a city museum?

Korea saw more than a thousand people sail in 1905, recruited by labour brokers on plantation contracts. Most stayed on, and Mérida now has an avenue named after the Republic of Korea.

Henequen fibre grown around Mérida became known worldwide by the name of which small port that shipped it?

Sisal was the region's main port during the fibre boom, so the rope and twine shipped from it took its name abroad. A more modern port built to the east later overshadowed it.

Which pleated men's shirt with patch pockets is also known in Mexico as the Yucatán shirt, after Mérida's home state?

Guayabera shirts are also called wedding shirts in Mexico. Cuba claims the design too, with a tale of a seamstress who sewed on big pockets for carrying guavas.

When Mérida was capital of the breakaway Republic of Yucatán in the 1840s, which other republic's navy did it hire?

Texas rented out its fleet for $8,000 a month, and in 1843 the allied ships fought Mexican steam warships off Campeche to break a blockade.

In 1848 Maya rebels besieging Mérida are said to have left their lines, ending the siege, in order to do what?

Plant their crops is the traditional account: swarms of flying ants after heavy rain signalled sowing time, and the fighters went home. The governor had already drafted an order to evacuate.

Which independence-era writer and politician, a native of Mérida, has one of Mexico's states named in his honour?

Andrés Quintana Roo was sent home in 1841 to talk the breakaway region into rejoining Mexico, and treaties were signed that November. His state covers the peninsula's eastern side.

Which idol of Mexican cinema's golden age died in 1957 when his plane crashed minutes after take-off from Mérida?

Pedro Infante, a keen aviator, was on his way to Mexico City when an engine failed five minutes into the flight. A bust marks the crash site, where fans still gather.

Which Mérida-born composer wrote Somos Novios, the ballad Perry Como sang in English as It's Impossible?

Armando Manzanero wrote his first melody at fifteen and went on to a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award. His ashes were returned to Mérida, where a theatre bears his name.

Papadzules, a Mérida dish resembling enchiladas, are egg-filled tortillas dipped in a sauce made from which seeds?

Pumpkin seeds, or pepitas, are ground into the sauce, and a cooked tomato sauce goes on top. The dish is often called a forerunner of the enchilada, though that is debated.

Marquesitas, the rolled crepes sold on Mérida's streets, were invented in the 1930s by a man who ran what business?

Ice cream shop owner Leopoldo Mena needed something to sell in the cooler months, so he rolled sweet fillings and salty cheese into a crepe. The name is said to honour a marquis's daughters who kept buying them.

Xtabentún, the anise liqueur of the Mérida region, is made by fermenting what before rum is added?

Honey for the liqueur comes from bees that feed on xtabentún flowers, a morning glory whose Maya name means vines growing on stone. The drink possibly descends from balché, a ceremonial Maya liquor.

Which month brings Mérida its highest average temperatures, just before the summer rains arrive?

May afternoons average about 36 °C and often pass 38 °C, just ahead of a rainy season that runs from June through October.

Which town 72 km east of Mérida, built over Maya pyramids, is painted so uniformly that it is called the Yellow City?

Izamal was the first seat of the region's bishops before they moved to Mérida. Its hills are the remains of ancient temple pyramids, and Maya is still heard there as much as Spanish.

Mérida was founded in 1542 on the ruins of which Maya city, whose carved stones were reused in the new buildings?

T'ho was also called Ichcaanzihó, the City of Five Hills, after its pyramids. Mérida's Maya name is still Jo', and the old stones can be seen in the cathedral walls.

Which Maya city about 62 km south of Mérida is famed for the oval-sided Pyramid of the Magician?

Uxmal is a World Heritage Site in the Puuc region. Its Governor's Palace, a long low building on a huge platform, has the longest façades in pre-Columbian Mesoamerica.

The best-known temple at Dzibilchaltún, a Maya site just north of Mérida, is named after seven of what found inside?

Dolls is the nickname for seven small effigies that archaeologists found in the 1950s, when the temple emerged from beneath a later pyramid. Crowds gather there for the equinox sunrise.

Vast flocks of which birds spend the winter in the Ría Celestún wetland reserve, on the coast west of Mérida?

Flamingos share the reserve with more than 200 other bird species, drawn by a lagoon where fresh water meets the sea. The beaches nearby are a hatching ground for endangered sea turtles.

Which port city half an hour north of Mérida has a cruise-ship pier that juts more than 6 km out to sea?

Progreso was built in the 19th century to give Mérida a closer harbour than its older port. In July and August its beaches fill with families escaping the city's heat.

Mérida, Mexico became the first holder of which annual title in 2000 and was chosen for it again in 2017?

American Capital of Culture is awarded by a non-governmental body founded in 1998 and modelled on the European scheme. It has the backing of the Organization of American States.

In 1916 Mérida hosted what is remembered as Mexico's first congress devoted to which cause?

Feminism got its Mexican platform thanks to the state's revolutionary governor, a general who also cancelled plantation workers' debts and outlawed bullfights.

In Maya words heard around Mérida, such as Xtabentún, the letter x is pronounced like which English sound?

Sh, as in shy, is one of the sounds that make Yucatec Maya distinctive, along with the popped consonants written p', k' and t'.

One story says the name Yucatán, Mérida's state, began as a Maya reply to Spanish explorers meaning what?

I don't understand you is one of three proposed origins, a version first set down by a 16th-century friar. Before the Spanish arrived, the region was called Mayab.

A panucho differs from a salbut, its sister snack in Mérida's panucherías, because its tortilla is stuffed with what?

Black beans, refried, go inside the panucho's tortilla before it is fried again, while a salbut is simply puffed and topped. Both are evening food, fried to order.