Tulum’s Maya families give thanks for a harvest the late rains never let grow

Children, teenagers, and adults in their best embroidered clothes danced jarana at 8:30 on Tuesday night, opening the Cancha Maya festival, 10 days of offerings at the ceremonial heart of Tulum.

The dancing is what visitors see. Behind it sits a crop cycle that mostly failed.

The Fiesta Tradicional de la Cancha Maya 2026 runs from October 6 to 15 and is held every six months, in March and October. Its purpose is to give thanks and to ask for good sowing and good harvests on the parcels that Maya families here still work. The practice dates back to a time when ancestors depended on the milpa for everything, according to cultural promoter Nicasio Canché, who said some households in Tulum still subsist that way.

This year they are asking more than thanking. Canché said climate change has pushed the rains back, leaving day laborers without their crops.

The festival takes place at the Cancha Maya, the ceremonial and communal space at the center of Tulum's Maya complex, also known as the Maya church or Chan Santa Cruz. The modern town was organized around that site in the 19th century, when Maya families arrived from places including Chumpom and built lives on farming and hunting. The walled archaeological site that draws the tour buses belongs to a separate history.

10 pigs, relleno negro, and a blessing at the Chan Santa Cruz church

The ritual opens with the offering. Maya families in Tulum sacrifice at least 10 pigs, cook them in relleno negro, the black stew that anchors the regional kitchen, and carry the result to the Maya church of the Chan Santa Cruz.

Prayers come first. The dish is consecrated, and only then does it travel.

It goes to the homes of the diputados, which is what the community calls the men and women who perform the ceremony of El Matán. The word is Maya and it means gift. Canché said the 2026 Matán will be carried out in 15 houses, and that people who keep their own milpas will turn up at those addresses to help.

Víctor Balam Catzin opened it as Tulum's Nojoch Yu'um

Religious authorities from the Chan Santa Cruz church inaugurated the celebration alongside municipal officials. Among them was Víctor Balam Catzin, the traditional judge of the municipality of Tulum, addressed as Nojoch Yu'um, Great Lord.

Rifka Renee Queruel Nussbaum, syndic of the Tulum City Council, attended, as did council member Jorge Alberto Portilla Mánica and the head of the municipal tourism office.

Jarana gremios dance to an orchestra where Maya Pax once played

La Real Orquesta Yucateca performed on opening night, and the jaraneros' gremios danced to it from 8:30 onward. Canché recalled that the jaraneros once danced to Maya Pax, the ceremonial music of the Maya communities of central Quintana Roo.

Organizers are working with a team from the Tulum city government so that the following days will also bring vaquería, meaning the arrival of visiting gremios of jaraneros and musicians.

Why the cabañuelas no longer tell Nicasio Canché when to plant

Farmers here have been sowing beans, corn, and squash since August, Canché said, and the rains that should have followed did not.

The second loss is harder to replace. Reading the cabañuelas, the method that uses the first days of January to forecast the whole year, is no longer as accurate as it was, he said. Corn crops have gone with it, and growers have shifted to other foods, among them dzunp'ak, the tomato.

The 2026 reading pointed toward trouble before the cycle began. In February, the Xok Ki'in collective, which keeps the annual record of the Maya cabañuelas, forecast a year of erratic rains and strong winds across the Yucatán Peninsula, with more humidity expected in Quintana Roo than in Campeche, and urged growers to plant native corn.

The Cancha Maya festival still counts on 119 ejidatarios

Keeping the Matán and the offerings alive strengthens the farmers and the work they do in the field, Canché argued, and keeps beans, squash, chaya, and other crops in the ground, which keeps them on local tables and preserves the regional kitchen.

He also put a number on who is left.

"We are going to think about the children and the grandchildren," he said.

There are 119 ejidatarios, according to Canché, and that is why there are always people making milpa this late in the calendar. The fair itself has more than six decades behind it, and roughly 100 stalls go up around the grounds, as The Tulum Times reported when the March edition opened, making it one of the few reliable income-generating events of the year for local traders and artisans.

Cobá, Chanchén Primero, and Sacamucuy are holding it without a harvest

The festivity reaches past the town. Canché said it extends into the Zona Maya, naming Cobá, Chanchén Primero, and Sacamucuy, communities where many producers lost their crops this cycle.

Those are the places where the ceremony and the arithmetic sit furthest apart. The offering is given in thanks for what the land produced, and in several of those ejidos the land produced very little.

The fiesta closes with a procession on its final day, October 15, which Canché described as the sign that everything ended in order and calm. The next edition falls in March. By then, the 119 will know whether the rains that came late this year came in time for anything to grow.

Have you taken part in the Matán in Tulum, or watched the gremios dance at the Cancha Maya? Join the conversation and share your perspective with us on Instagram and Facebook at @thetulumtimes.