The city’s only chronicler, Gonzalo Navarrete Muñoz, describes the renovation work on the Plaza Grande in Mérida, which the administration of the now ex-governor and senator Mauricio Vila Dosal has been carrying out since April 16, 2024, and must deliver this September, as shocking, dictatorial and a punch to the people.
In an interview with a local media outlet, the chronicler, writer, and historian narrates that “in 1940 and so on, the Social Action League of Don Gonzalo Cámara Zavala (lawyer, writer, and founder of this league) said ‘Gentlemen, in the main square there is a need for a sign of Mayan culture that speaks of our origin and the origin of the city.’
“It’s been almost 100 years and nothing has been put in place,” says Gonzalo Navarrete.
“This man, the governor (Vila Dosal), decided to do all that (the renovation of the Plaza Grande). He says that the trees are sick and, instead of curing them, he kills them. He put benches, put this, put that, and where is that symbol of the Mayan culture?”, he questions.
“(The Plaza Grande) It is history, it is memory, it is the emblem of the entire state of Yucatan. It is the nerve center of Yucatán it is not so much anymore, but it is emblematic,” he emphasizes.
“That is why it is a bit shocking that the authority arrogates to itself a right to do whatever it wants, without consulting at least the intermediate organizations, without seeking a consensus and finding a way to legitimize it, as if (the Plaza Grande) were its property,” says the chronicler with that powerful voice that characterizes him.
“I put up the benches I want. Why? Because I want to. And I close (the Plaza Grande) for a certain time. Why? Because I want to. But it’s not your property! Do not be mistaken!”, Navarrete said regarding the former governor’s decision.
“Some governments with a spirit of governance, of democracy, publish what will be done, they seek the opinion of architects”.
“Dictatorial governments act with blows, they beat people up. contrasts the chronicler, recalling that “thugs” brutally kicked out the people of Merida who were protesting at the roundabout in the Mexico neighborhood of Merida on July 4, 2011, in the municipality of Angélica Araujo Lara, to prevent the start of the construction of that underground bridge. “Nothing is for the people if not for the people themselves. In other words: nothing is for the citizens, if not for the citizens themselves, if they do not participate.
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