Palacio de Gobierno

The Palacio de Gobierno is the pale green, two-story building along the north side of Mérida's Plaza Grande, on Calle 61. It houses the executive branch of the State of Yucatán, and it stands on a loaded spot: in colonial times this was the site of the Casas Reales, where the Spanish governors lived and ruled. The present building, a palace arranged around an arcaded central courtyard, was inaugurated on 15 September 1892. It is still a working government office, but the courtyard, the grand staircase and the upstairs galleries are open to visitors and free.

What people come for are the paintings of Fernando Castro Pacheco (1918–2013), a Mérida-born painter, engraver and sculptor who helped found the Escuela Libre de Artes Plásticas de Yucatán, moved to Mexico City in 1943 and came back to Mérida as a well-known artist in the early 1970s. Over the next few years he made 27 large works for the palace, painted on panels rather than straight onto the walls and usually counted among the city's murals (some sources count a few more). The series begins at the staircase with Maya cosmogony: following the Popol Vuh, man is shown rising from an ear of corn, surrounded by the four Bacabes who hold up the corners of the sky. On the upper floor are pieces such as Mexico's Eternal Struggle, a portrait of General Salvador Alvarado and The Henequen Cutter's Hands, about the Maya workers of the haciendas.

The strongest room is the Salón de la Historia, the big ceremonial hall upstairs, whose panels run from the arrival of the Spanish to the restoration of the Republic in 1867: the Inquisition, the sale of Maya people as slaves, the Caste War, and the torment of Jacinto Canek, who led a Maya uprising at Cisteíl in 1761 and was executed within a month. Another panel shows the agrarian reform with Felipe Carrillo Puerto and Lázaro Cárdenas. The hall's balconies look straight onto the Plaza Grande, and on the night of 15 September the governor gives the Grito de Independencia from them. The building also keeps a replica of the Dolores bell and a portrait hall with eight canvases by Castro Pacheco of figures from Mexican history.