Image Source: “El turismo comunitario en Yaxunah lo lideran las mujeres,” Echoes of the Journey (18 February 2019)
On Saturday and Sunday, we’ll be guests in Yaxunah, a small Mayan town south of Chichén Itzá. We’ll stay with host families, meet local Mayan language students from Valladolid, help out the community with some small projects, swim in the cenote, and visit the Yaxunah archaeological site.
Going into Yaxunah with no context may leave you confused. What is the relationship between Yaxunah and the state of Yucatán? What do people do for a living? How are they connected to the broader Mexican and global economy?
Before we go, please read the following chapter from the U.S. anthropologist Chelsea Fisher’s Rooting in a Useless Land: Ancient Farmers, Celebrity Chefs, and Environmental Justice in Yucatán (2023). In this chapter, Fisher discusses the history of Yaxunah and the community’s recent collaboration with the Michelin Star chef and restauranteur René Redzepi, who used corn from its milpa at his luxury pop-up restaurant Noma Mexico in Tulum. The article offers both a great overview of Yaxunah’s history and a sense of how small communities in the rural Yucatán are adapting to changing economic and cultural traditions. Plus our host, Elías, is quoted in the piece!
We’ve also found a few YouTube videos about the city: some made by the community, others made by visitors like ourselves.
Before we go, think about…
- What do you hope to get out of spending two days in a very rural community? What do you want to learn?
- What moments of “culture shock” can you anticipate?
- What do you think the people of Yaxunah will think when they see 26 U.S. college students come into town?
- How will you behave differently with your host families? How can you be a good guest in their homes?
