The Aluxes: The Little Landlords of the Yucatán and Their Seven-Year Contract
On the highway from Cancún's airport toward the hotel zone, drivers pass — most without a glance — a small stone structure tucked beneath a bridge: a miniature house, windowless, solidly built, obviously maintained. It is not a utility box. It is the house of an alux — and the story the whole Yucatán tells about it, engineers included, is the modern flagship of one of the oldest living traditions in the Americas: the bridge, they say, kept failing during construction — collapses, accidents, delays past all engineering explanation — until someone did what any Maya farmer would have advised from the start: built the small house, made the offerings, and formally requested permission of the aluxo'ob , the little people whose land the pilings stood on. The bridge has stood since. Hotels along the Riviera Maya keep alux shrines on their grounds with the same quiet practicality; and out in the villages and cornfields where the tradition has its roots, the knee-high landlords of the p...