The Governors Palace

Within the center of Merida, near the Cathedral and Montejo house lies a building known as the Palace of the Governor.  Now, when first hearing this one would probably assume that this was the place where the governor lived and would not really be open to the public; however, this is not the case.  The governor’s palace is actually a very big tourist attraction and it contains office buildings where people work but it also houses gigantic murals of many different things.

            Some of the murals were of the governor, or other important people, but many of them depicted scenes of violence, despair, or suffering.  When first entering the palace, on the right side of the interior, there was a huge mural showing Mayan men being tortured and killed.  It showed men being consumed by fire, while others were being impaled by giant thorns, and even one man hanging in some sort of torture device.  Through all of this carnage there was a priest depicted with his hands of two of the condemned men’s heads with an expression of anguish and despair on his face.  This mural really put into perspective what the Mayan went through at the hands of the men who had built this place centuries ago.  Straight across from this mural was one of complete opposite.  This mural showed Mayan workers doing their job and then above them the maize god was shown arising from the maize itself.  This contrasts the mural on the opposing side showing that the Mayan people are able to overcome struggles and like their god will be risen up though the earth when they die so in essence never actually be killed.

            The major part of the palace that I remember very clearly comes from one of the upstairs room that contained about 10 or 12 very large murals of all kinds.  The mural that sticks out in my head was titled “La Guerra Castillo” or The Castle War.  In this mural there were a group of 4 men wielding machetes and standing in front of a group of terrified children.  The men were in a fighting stance and ready to defend the children from the oncoming attackers.  The reason that this stood out to me was because of the realism in the expressions of the faces of each individual in the scene and also the thought that this exact that me have actually occurred.  It is human nature for adults to protect their young no matter what culture you come from.  This is one of the main ideas of thinking that most everyone is the world is able to say that they have in common, the idea of wanting to protect their young.  This can be seen not only in humans but also is many animals in the world.  It is not always the male that protects the young, but regardless the adult still protects the infant.  One example of this is in birds when predators get too close to the nest and they try to distract them so that their young do not get hurt, or another example of this is in bears.  There are not many things scarier then coming into contact with a young bear cub and realizing that its mother is probably close by.  Overall I feel like this mural really catches the main theme of protection of young ones in all walks of life, and it also shows that the Mayan people were no more “savages” than any other human.