This past Sunday, a week after the women’s march on March 8, Paseo de Montejo felt like it always does when the boulevard closes to cars.
The city softens.
Families take to the streets on bicycles. Children wobble forward on scooters. Couples walk slowly beneath the tall trees. Vendors line the avenue selling fresh juice and marquesitas. Artisans set up small tables displaying their handmade goods. People pause, browse, talk, linger.
The rhythm is easy and communal, as if the avenue briefly remembers that connection is important.
I wandered down the boulevard with no real destination other than breakfast, just watching the life of the morning unfold.
When I arrived at the Monumento a la Patria, I could finally see the marks from the 8M women’s march the week before. Bright paint across the carved stone. Messages layered over the intricate figures that tell the story of Mexico’s past. The graffiti had not yet been washed away.
What struck me most was not the paint itself, but the scene around it.
Children were riding bicycles in circles around the monument. Families stopped to take photos. A father steadied his daughter as she learned to balance on roller skates. Nearby, artisans adjusted their displays as people stopped to admire their work.
The ordinary joy of a Sunday morning moved forward without hesitation.
Life had already continued.
And yet the monument held the voices of the women who had stood there just days before.
For a moment, I stood still and watched the contrast. Feeling myself witnessing multiple timelines at once.
Laughter and movement in the street. Words written in urgency across the stone. History carved into the monument itself.
All of it existing together in the same space.
The Monumento a la Patria is already a complex monument layered with stories. Its carved surface tells scenes from the history of Mexico. Indigenous cultures, colonization, revolution, independence. Figures and symbols are arranged like a narrative unfolding in stone.
But beneath even that story lies another one.
This land carries much older memory.
Long before the wide boulevards and colonial facades, the Yucatán Peninsula was the heart of Mayan civilization. The Maya built cities aligned with the stars and the cycles of the earth. Their temples were places of observation, ceremony, and spiritual connection with the cosmos. Time itself was something sacred to them, something cyclical rather than linear.
Standing there on Sunday, it was impossible not to feel those layers.
Ancient land beneath the city.
History carved into the monument.
Fresh paint from voices demanding to be heard.
Artisans sharing their craft along the boulevard.
Children riding bicycles through it all.
It made me think about how cities carry memory.
Stone remembers things that people forget.
Sometimes those memories appear in monuments meant to tell official histories. Sometimes they appear in murals or graffiti that arrive suddenly and temporarily. Sometimes they exist quietly in the work of artisans who continue traditions passed through generations.
And sometimes they simply live in the land itself.
Watching the scene unfold, I wondered how long the paint would remain.
Perhaps by next Sunday, the monument will be cleaned. The words washed away. The stone restored to the version of history it was originally meant to show.
But for this brief moment, it holds something more.
A reminder that history is not finished.
It is still being written. Still being spoken. Still being layered onto the places we move through every day. I couldn't help but notice this message embedded into the sidewalk that said, "Mérida para todos". Meaning, Merida is for all.
That morning, Paseo de Montejo felt like a living timeline.
All of it coexisting in the same breath of the city.
And maybe that is the quiet truth of Mérida.
Nothing here is ever just one story.
If you would like to follow the work unfolding during this residency, I share new paintings first with my mailing list subscribers. Joining the list gives you early previews of new work, studio updates, and occasional reflections from this time of making and exploration.