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Full-scale Spanish-style bull-fights, with the toreros dressed in flashy, sequinned suits, are presented every Wednesday in Cancún’s bullring, preceded by a charro (cowboy) display – and sometimes cock-fighting too. There’s also a bullring in Mérida that’s used less frequently, and bullfights feature in many Yucatán town fiestas(see Village Fiestas).

An innovative mix of young performers from Latin America, the U.S., and Europe – often playing Latin Jazz and contemporary fusion rather than strict jazz – features in this festival. Several acts play for free in Parque de las Palapas in Ciudad Cancún.

The biggest and brightest celebration of the year in the cities of the Yucatán. In Cancún and Cozumel the streets fill with music, dancing, food stands, and a little Río-style parading. The biggest Carnival in southern Mexico, though, is in Mérida.

Huge numbers of earthenware pots are made in Ticul, sometimes using pre-Conquest techniques.

A charro is a Mexican cowboy, in the famous outfit of big sombrero and embroidered jacket(charras are cowgirls, in similar hats but flounced skirts), and a charrería is a Mexican rodeo, a spectacular, competitive display of rope tricks, steer-wrestling, and astonishing horsemanship. There’s no fixed charrería program in Cancún, but they come up fairly often. Mérida’s charro ring has a similarly irregular schedule.

More solemnly religious than most fiestas, with processions culminating on October 13, when the figure of “Christ of the Blisters” (Cristo de las Ampollas ), kept in Mérida Cathedral, is carried through the city before a ceremonial Mass.

Sugar skulls, dead bread (pan de muerto ), zempazuchitl fowers, and coffin-shaped decorations are the mark of Mexico’s most famous celebration, when people party to celebrate the dead on Halloween and All Saints’ Day (Todos Santos ), and families visit cemeteries to picnic by the graves of their own departed relatives.

Lush flower designs are made by Mayan women on traditional huípil dresses, handkerchiefs, and tablecloths.

The visual effects integral to these Mayan cities – such as the “descent” of the sun down the serpents on El Castillo at Chichén and the striking of the rising sun through the Seven Dolls temple at Dzibilchaltún – were timed to happen on the spring and fall equinoxes. Today, over 80,000 people visit Chichén for the day; crowds are smaller at Dzibilchaltún & (see Chichén Itzá.