The preacher’s chapel
The austere façade of Tixcacaltuyub church contrasts with its spacious architecture and notable mural paintings, now languishing from the effects of time and neglect, in what is an important example of Yucatecan sacred treasures.
Tixcacaltuyub, 120 km (75 miles) southeast of Merida and 12 km (7.5 miles) from Yaxcabá, the municipal head, was the birthplace of the journalist and historian Justo Sierra O’Reilly, born on the 24th September 1814.
One of Yucatan’s most important religious buildings, now threatened by neglect, stands on 18th Street of the town. It was a shining beacon of Catholicism during the 18th century, and during the sisal boom in the late 19th, but it was also severely damaged when it became the scene of heavy fighting during the Caste War in 1847.
According to Manuel Arturo Román Kalisch, in The Building of Parrochial Complexes in Viceregal Yucatan, the church, dedicated to St. John the Baptist, started life as an Indian chapel erected by the Franciscans between 1576 and 1582 on the east side of a large pre-Hispanic platform. It became a parish church at the end of the 17th century.
The present church, built between 1700 and 1737, as attested in documents written by the Bishop of Yucatan Francisco Pablo de Matos Coronado, consists of the presbytery, sacristy, choir and baptistery, all under a continuous barrel vault.
According to the book Churches of Yucatan, by Miguel A. Bretos, the church in Tixcacaltuyub is outstanding for the quality of its masonry – as can be appreciated in the exterior ramped staircases that provide access to the atrium -, the murals depicting floral and botanical allegories in the choir, and some frescoes that portray scenes from the lives of Mary and the patron saint, unfortunately all now much neglected.
Bretos notes that in its heyday the church boasted a reredos made in 1799 by Antonio Arenas, although it no longer exists. There are also eight niches inside – four on each side of the building, where fragments of religious mural paintings can still be seen.
Despite the fact that the Catalog of Religious Buildings in Yucatan states that the church has a monastic structure, Román Kalisch points out that it was never constituted as a monastery, and indeed it has belonged to the secular clergy since the time it was built, although it was always considered an important parish church.
In her work Architectural Restoration Project for the Religious Complex of St. John the Baptist at Tixcacaltuyúb in Yaxcabá Yucatán (sic), Vidaura Anamari Cardós Ramírez highlights, among other structural details, the interior mural painting depicting botanical themes and biblical episodes, which are now at risk of being effaced.
According to Cardós Ramírez, who undertook post-graduate studies in the Conservation of Architectural Heritage at the UADY, Tixcacaltuyub church is “one of the few buildings in Yucatan to bear the papal arms at the entrances.” She goes on to explain that this emblem was added to demonstrate the town’s links with the Holy Father.
One testament to the prestige of the Tixcacaltuyub curacy appears mentioned in Movement of Priests in the Bishopric of Yucatan, by Víctor Hugo Medina Suárez, which refers to the designation of father Juan Joshep Cavero y Cárdenas as parish priest in 1784. Father Cavero, who went on to hold higher positions, was the son of captain Diego Cavero y Castro and Juana de Cárdenas y Díaz, and a descendant of Conquistadors.
On June 24th, Tixcacaltuyub celebrates its patron St. John the Baptist, the only saint in the Catholic church whose festival is on his birthday, six months before Jesus’s.
According to the Dictionary of Yucatecan Spanish, Tixcacaltuyub is a Mayan toponym meaning “The double throat or gorge of Tuyub”. An earlier form was Xkakaltuyub from ka’akal, double throat,and Tuyub, a Mayan family name.
To discover more of the sacred riches housed in this historic church, you will need to take into account the times of religious services.
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