The City of the Dead

the socialist transformation of the General Cemetery in Mérida Yucatán, 1918-1919

Abstract

The transformation of the General Cemetery of Mérida in the City of the Dead between 1918 and 1919 carried out by the first post-revolutionary governor of Yucatan, Carlos Castro Morales was the starting point of the monumental art that developed the post-revolutionary socialism of Yucatan, had the end to accompany the social change that he proposed with a visible cultural change in the public space. This paper aims to understand the need to start this political-cultural operation with the remodeling of this cemetery, in response to the socialist project that was outlined during those years. For this, two processes that generated a public work of this type will be explained: the post-revolutionary socialist project itself discussed between 1916 and 1924, and the vernacular avant-garde, which opted for the claim of pre-Hispanic Mayan art, discussed between 1911 and 1924. And also, understand this remodeling as a socialist transformation that managed to create a secular sanctuary in which it was possible to represent the social changes operated by the post-revolutionary regime and generated inside, through the mausoleum of the Rotunda of the Illustrious Socialists, a sample of the society that He was corporatizing during the time he ruled this regime.