THE DECLINE OF MEXICO'S MENNONITES: FROM AG POWERHOUSE TO CARTEL COURIER AND FOREST PILLAGER

 

Mennonites in Campeche at Harvest (Photo Reuters)

In Cancun we'd often see Mennonites in straw cowboy hats hawking cheese wheels at downtown stoplights. Smack dab in the middle of a thorough-fare, young men in Bib overalls would stand fearlessly on the center line, waving their products as cars zoomed by on both sides. We later learned the Men-nonites had a long history with Mexico and the Yucatán stretching back to the early 20th century.

The Mennonites trace their roots to a group of Christian radicals who emerged during the Reformation in 16th century Germany. They opposed both Roman Catholic doctrine and mainstream Protestant religions and maintain a pacifist lifestyle. They emigrated to North America to preserve their faith.

In the 1920s a group of 6,000 moved to Chihuahua in northern Mexico and established themselves as important crop producers. In the 1980s a few thousand moved to Campeche on the edge of the Maya Forest which is second in size only to the Amazon. According to Global Forest Watch, a non-profit that monitors deforestation, the Maya Forest is shrinking annually by an area the size of Dallas. In Campeche, the Mennonites bought and leased tracts of jungle land for farming, some from local Maya. 

Burning Fields in Campeche

In 1992 Mexico legislation made it easier to develop, rent or sell previously protected forest, increasing deforestation and the number of farms in the state. When Mexico opened up the use of genetically modified soy in the 2000s, Mennonites in Campeche embraced the crop and the use of Round Up, a glysophate weedkiller, designed to work alongside GMO crops, according to Edward Ellis, a researcher at Universidad Veracruzana.

Higher yields meant more income to support large families. For the Mennonites, a family of ten children is not uncommon. They typically live simple lives supported by the land and choose to go without modern-day amenities such as electricity or motor vehicles, as dictated by their faith. But their farm work has evolved to use harvesters, chainsaws, tractors. While most Mennonite communities remain in Chihuahua, now another 15,000 Mennonites also live in Campeche.

Mennonite Girls in Cleared Field (Photo Reuters)

Presently the tide has turned on deforestation in Mexico and both ecologists and the government that once welcomed the Mennonites' agricultural prowess believe the rapid razing of the jungle by these new ranches is creating an environmental disaster. The Maya Forest is one of the biggest carbon sinks on the planet and the habitat of endangered jaguars, plus 100 species of mammals to which the jungle is home.

A 2017 study published by Universidad Veracruzana showed that properties cleared by Mennonites had rates four times higher for deforestation than other properties. Under international pressure to follow a greener agenda, the Mexican government has persuaded some Mennonite communities to sign an agreement to stop deforesting the land. But not all communities have signed such an agreement.  

In speaking to Reuters, a Mennonite school teacher in a pueblo on the edge of the forest stated that the agreement has not impacted the way they farm. The Mennonites have signed on an attorney who states they believe they are being targeted by the government due to their pacifist beliefs while other land destroyers are not bothered.

Between 2001 and 2018, in the three states that comprise forest growth in Mexico, 15,000 square kilometers of tree cover was razed, roughly the size of the country Belize. With changing weather patterns and less rain, harvests are smaller in general for all concerned, both Mennonites and the indigenous Maya.

The Campeche Secretary of Environment, Sandra Loffan, clocked in stating the Mennonites did not always have the correct paperwork to convert forest land to farm land. An agreement was signed last year, 2022, to create a permanent group between the government and Mennonite communities to deal with land ownership and rights, and disagreements that arise including those from locals stating the Mennonites are abusing logging rights.  

Typical Mennonite Buggy

But this is only one of the Mennonites' problems in Mexico. Ten years ago connections between the community and Mexican cartels were exposed when a mule pipeline from Chihuahua to Alberta, Canada, was discovered. In this unlikely alliance, the pacifist Mennonites were growing tons of marijuana for the cartels and shipping it north, smuggling it in gas tanks, inside farm equipment and cheese wheels. For background, in an old ABC interview, Michael LeFay, Immigration and Customs Director in El Paso, stated a Mennonite network emerged long ago. What began with marijuana expanded into cocaine smuggling. When customs officials at the U.S. border looked into a car and saw Mennonites, he explained, officials waved them through. Mennonites were a common sight at the border and frequent travelers from Mexico to Canada because many Canadians from Manitoba and Ontario have Mennonite family members in Mexico. 

Mennonite Man with Cheese Wheel

Though the Drug Enforcement Agency's (DEA) issued a statement decades ago that only a few members of the Mennonite community had links to violent cartels, facts proved them wrong. In the 1990s not all Mennonite families owned land; they fell on hard times. At the same time the tenets of their faith drew questions from a younger generation raised in Mexico where there was no legal age restriction to buy alcohol or cigarettes. Vices began to creep in. It wasn't uncommon, an ABC newscaster reported, to see young Mennonite teens drinking Corona and smoking cigarettes after a Sunday church service once their parents left the church parking lot.

Reports started to trickle in: a Mennonite man was accused of smuggling 16 kilos of coke across the U.S.-Canadian border in 2012. Jacob Dyck faced charges of conspiracy to import $2 million of cocaine and possession for purpose of trafficking.

Then along came the Canadian TV drama Pure, earning a place in Canadian pop culture about Mennonites connected to the cartels. But DEA agents were still trying to get their heads around it, tsk-tsking the outrageous idea that Mennonites had a corrupt streak. DEA Agent Jim Schrant was quoted as saying a "large scale marijuana and cocaine distribution group run by Mennonites with cartel connections seemed bonkers." 

Though Schrant was aware that a huge drug distribution group was operating in Mexico and shipping large quantities into the U.S. he believed it was being run by individuals only. Then along came the story of Grassy Lake, Alberta, a rural town of 649 souls where 80 percent of residents were Mennonites. In time the DEA got wise and outed the town as the distribution hub for an international weed and coke smuggling operation linked to the Juarez Cartel.

31-Hour Drive from Mexico to Canada

A widely publicized case against Abraham Friesen-Rempel, 2014, had the DEA intercepting 32,500 phone calls believed to be linked to Juarez Cartel drug activity. Although Friesen-Rempel played only a minor role as driver, he'd delivered 1575 pounds of pot for the cartels. Convicted of smuggling drugs, he received a 15-month federal sentence. And so on, and so forth.

It's believed that the cartels lean on the Mennonites because they share a common bond of anti-government sentiment. Staunchly private, the Mennonites shun government interaction and their fierce sense of privacy aligns them with the philosophy of the cartels. Also, for decades they never got a second look at the border. The perfect cover for illicit border crossings. 

So now, though the drug implications are tamped way down, the government is extremely dissatisfied with the deforestation done by their farming tech-niques. Mexico's President Andres Manuel Lopez is pressuring them to shift to more sustainable practices. The government plans to phase out glysophate by 2024 which would lower harvest yields and their incomes.

"That's a consequence all farmers, Mennonites and locals, might have to pay to save the environment," said Campeche's Secretary of Environment Sandra Laffon.

If you enjoyed this post, check out  Where the Sky is Born: Living in the Land of the Maya, on Amazon. My website is www.jeaninekitchel.com. Books one and two in my Mexico cartel trilogy, Wheels Up—A Novel of Drugs, Cartels and Survival, and Tulum Takedown, are also on Amazon. And my journalistic overview of the Maya 2012 calendar phenomenon, Maya 2012 Revealed: Demystifying the Prophecy, is on Amazon.

EXPLORER AND PHOTOGRAPHER ALICE DIXON ADDS THE MYSTIC INTO MAYA EXPLORATIONS

Alice Dixon LePlongeon

At 22 years old, Alice Dixon met Augustus Le Plongeon, a world explorer of antiquities, in London, in 1871. Le Plongeon, 26 years her senior, traveled to Europe after successful journeys to South America and California. His extensive explorations in Peru and Chile led him to London to study Mexican and Maya artifacts and manuscripts at the British Museum where they met. 

Considered an amateur archeologist, Dixon, a second generation photog- rapher, photographed ruins at Chichen Itza and Uxmal alongside her husband.

Alice Dixon's father, Henry, was a copper-plate printer who became a successful photographer and was recognized for his development of panchromatic photographic for his photos of London architecture. Alice learned the principles of photography from her father and worked as his assistant in his studio.

SPIRITUAL INFLUENCES

Another family member with a strong influence on Alice was her uncle, Dr. Jacob Dixon, who practiced spiritualism. Alice became involved in that movement at a young age, participating in seances at her uncle's home.

As for Le Plongeon, in Peru he studied earthquakes and explored the country's archeological sites, including Tinhuanaco which he photographed while trying to assimilate clues as to who the builders of that empire might have been. In combination with his own Peruvian explorations, he'd read the works of John Lloyd Stephens and Frederick Catherwood, explorers of the Yucatan in the 1840s, and came to believe that civilization had early origins in the New World and he began to form philosophies on the world's great civilizations.

A few years into his South American sojourn, Le Plongeon heard of the California gold rush and jumped a ship to partake in that historic event, spending several years in gold country where he speculated on land and became a surveyor. There he managed to earn thirty thousand dollars in profits, enough to fund his trip to Europe as well as future South American travels. 

In Europe he stumbled onto a new photographic technique that used paper instead of metal and urged the inventor to teach him the process. This would serve him well when uncovering Yucatecan ruins, enabling he and Dixon to document their discoveries. Their photos of Uxmal and Chichen Itza remain some of the best ever taken as they show the pyramid sites as they stood for eons, long before archeologists re-discovered them.

HONEYMOON IN MEXICO

Soon after meeting, Alice and Le Plongeon were married. For their honey-moon they set sail for Cuba then onto Mexico, where they planned to explore ancient pyramid sites. They landed in Progreso, Yucatan, in 1873. 

A bout with yellow fever for Alice dampened their arrival but Le Plongeon nursed her back to health. During her recuperation the two studied Yucatecan Maya and became acquainted with local scholars. They believed communicating with present day Maya was an important step to interpreting the past. Alice remained a champion of the Maya her entire life, and wrote about them long after she left the Yucatan.

Alice in Palace of the Governors, Uxmal

Their first visit to see pyramids was at Uxmal, forty miles south of Merida. They were awed by the size of the site and camped in the Governor's Palace, sleeping on hammocks. They both took photos, cleared the land to better see the site and were determined to return again later.

Camping at Uxmal

CHICHEN ITZA

The number one item on the Le Plongeons' bucket list was Chichen Itza. He'd heard from a local that a sacred codex was buried there in a building with many chambers and he believed he could further his eccentric theory of Maya world supremacism if he could locate the text. Their timing overlapped the Caste War of Yucatan, and Piste, the pueblo nearby, was overrun with Chan Santa Cruz Indians. Le Plongeon, determined to search for the desired text, asked local authorities to post soldiers at the site as security.

He located the building, could not locate the text, but the building's lintel contained numerous glyphs which he believed could further his theory. He took 500 stereoscopic photos of the hieroglyphs, and he and Alice traced a number of murals and made molds of them in bas relief.

QUEEN MOO AND PRINCE CHACMOOL

They fixated on the Upper Temple of the Jaguars near the ball court. It was 1875. Workers discovered a large slab with carved figures holding outstretched arms. Le Plongeon called it Atlantis. Murals on the walls depicted village life, war scenes and rulers in court. The explorer concluded this was a generation of Maya rulers whose totem was an eagle or macaw. He declared it a symbol of a Maya princess who he christened Queen Moo (Maya for macaw). Her brother he named Prince ChacMool, powerful warrior, a reference to jaguar in Mayan. This flimsy attempt at a scholarly decision became the basis for his Maya myth as the center of world civilization and placed him squarely at odds with fellow archeologists of the time. His Maya "myth" led to much derision and plagued him his entire career.

The fabricated myth about a Maya princess and her warrior king brother who had been forced to flee Egypt, bringing their philosophies of the Maya with them, seduced the two at-one-time prominent Maya notables. They were viewed as the Maya world's "new age" scholars due to this far-fetched belief and the theory branded Le Plongeon as an eccentric crackpot, earning him disdain from those in his field. 

Excavation of ChacMool at Chichen Itza

Yet in spite of his oddball theories, Le Plongeon discovered the famous statue, ChacMool, five feet long weighing hundreds of pounds, which is virtually synonymous with Chichen Itza and the ancient Maya. Originally spelled Chaacmool, Maya for powerful warrior, the word was misspelled as ChacMool through a mis-translation by one of his missives to a benefactor. The ChacMool statue was lauded by the American Geographical Society as a great archeological find. The Le Plongeons struggled to bring the statue to the U.S. to display in Philadelphia at the America Centennial Exhibition but the president of Mexico denied their request. 

In the meantime, they sent other Maya artifacts to the U.S. to display at centennial ceremonies but the objects arrived too late. And in another spate of bad luck, the photos Le Plongeon had labored over were stolen by another archeologist who claimed them for his own. Soon even their main benefactor would give up on their excursions. At times they found it difficult to find money to eat, so dire was their situation. 

"SURROUNDED BY ENEMIES"

"Surrounded by enemies, Remington always at hand, death lurking in every direction," Alice wrote in a letter to a friend in 1877, describing their predicament. The Mexico government had refused to pay them for the extensive work they'd completed in not only raising the incredible ChacMool artifact but in delivering it to the pueblo Piste. With this final blow, they picked up and moved on to other ruins—Mayapan and sites in Honduras.

Their travels continued and in 1884 the Le Plongeons left Mexico and settled in New York. There Alice focused on her writing, both fact and fiction. She became well known for a series of articles written for the New York Times and other publications in which she romanticized the Maya world. Her best known work was Queen Moo's Talisman. Both she and her husband lectured non-stop in Europe and the U.S. promoting the Yucatan pyramids and the Maya. 

Queen Moo's Talisman

In A Dream of Maya, by Larry Desmond and Phyllis Messenger, Desmond explains if history had been kinder to the Le Plongeons, it would have depicted an extraordinary couple whose lifelong work had not been fairly appraised. The book gives deep insight into their lives and their controversial views and document their hard-nosed earnestness and early pioneering excavations—from digging up pyramid sites to drawing architectural floor plans and tracing murals to keeping detailed photographic records.

A Dream of Maya by Desmond and Messenger 

Their extensive explorations were done under the duress of the Caste War, yet they persisted and came away with great discoveries. 

Augustus Le Plongeon died in New York in 1908. Alice died in New York in 1910.

If you enjoyed this post, check out  Where the Sky is Born: Living in the Land of the Maya, on Amazon. My website is www.jeaninekitchel.com. Books one and two in my Mexico cartel trilogy, Wheels Up—A Novel of Drugs, Cartels and Survival, and Tulum Takedown, are also on Amazon. And my journalistic overview of the Maya 2012 calendar phenomenon, Maya 2012 Revealed: Demystifying the Prophecy, is on Amazon.

TO BE IT YOU NEED TO SEE IT: WHAT IF INDIANA JONES HAD BEEN A WOMAN?

Merle Greene Robertson, Archeologist, Artist, Scholar

I've written about Maya women warriors and queens, women archeologists, anthropologists, epigraphers, authors and artists, all who've inspired the masses. After reading a Washington Post Op-Ed (A Woman to Reboot Indiana Jones? Yes, Please) by bio-archeologist Brenna Hassett about the new film starring Hollywood's favorite archeologist, she reminded us that overall, the study of archeology is dominated by men. Says Hassett, "This is what generations of girls—me included—saw when we saw archeology, and that's a problem. Because to be it, you need to see it."

So let's address women trailblazers in archeology who've carved a place for themselves and those who came after—the likes of Merle Greene Robertson and Linda Schele for starters. In her study of the Maya, Robertson lived as many adventures as the more famous Dr. Jones, traipsing through Central American jungles, crossing rivers, evading looters, working hours on end creating a multitude of life-size art rubbings in dam, cramped spaces. 

Linda Schele was a major scholar, author and trail blazer in the decipherment of Maya hieroglyphic writing and the study of ancient American civilization. Her death at age 55 in 1998 was a terrible loss to archeology and the study of the ancient Maya.

I'll begin with a previous 2022 post on Robertson, a larger than life presence in the world of Maya archeology and culture. Next will be Linda Schele and I'll then continue with women outliers in the global field of archeology and anthropology, several of whom I've already written about.

MERLE GREENE ROBERTSON

Merle Greene Robertson was an archeologist, artist, scholar and Maya explorer, but these are mere labels. Her entrance into the study, portrayal and exploration of the Maya culture was a catalyst for introducing the ancient Maya to the modern world through art, photography and exploration of numerous Maya sites. After I read Never in Fear, her autobiography, I realized she well could have been the glue that stuck it all together, the Gertrude Stein of the Maya world. Along with fellow scholars, she shaped an understanding of the ancient Maya civilization. She galvanized others, as an organizer, planner, dynamo and she knew everyone in the field from Eric S. Thompson and Alberto Ruz to Michael Coe, George Stuart and those who came after.

INCIDENTS OF TRAVEL IN YUCATÁN

Her enthusiasm and limitless energy in regard to Maya culture made her a fulcrum at the very moment the Maya re-emerged on the world stage after an unduly long absence. The first European and American explorers who stumbled onto these pyramid sites in the 1840s were floored by what they saw. A blockbuster bestseller in 1846, Incidents of Travel in Yucatán, written by John Lloyd Stephens with drawings by Frederick Catherwood, ushered the reader into Maya sites at Uxmal, Chichen Itza, and Copan for starters. The book literally blew the collective mind of the world. No one had a clue that intricate stepped pyramids lay hidden, covered by centuries of vines and forest, deep in Mexican and Central American jungles. The archeology world lay in the mid-east and far east. Before the release of Stephens' and Catherwood's book, the word "bestseller" had not yet been coined. 

Frederick Catherwood Maya Drawing

The world clambered for more knowledge of this mysterious civilization, hidden in southern rainforests of North America. Stephens' concise writing along with Catherwood's magnificent drawings assisted in shaping the identity of one of the world's great civilizations—the Maya. Previously unknown, the Maya had joined an iconic club alongside other great civilizations: Egypt, Mesopotamia, the Indus Valley and China.

ROBERTSON AND HER WORK 

Robertson is nearly indefinable, so interwoven was the role she played with her Maya work over the past fifty years—from assisting in breaking the Maya hieroglyphic code, to co-founding the Palenque Roundtable talks, including trekking to and exploring scores of pyramid sites in Mexico and Central America. Not to mention the body of work she left behind after reviving an ancient archeological rubbing technique using Japanese ink on rice paper.

She created beautiful reproductions of countless stela, columns, tombs, sarcophagus lids, often produced in unfavorable circumstances after trekking through rugged terrain and dense forests crawling with snakes and buzzing with bothersome mosquitoes. Occasionally she and her crew had close calls with grave robbers. A life of leisure was never to be hers— she wouldn't have wanted it. Not unlike Frederick Catherwood's drawings, Robertson's sublime rubbings brought the Maya to the world visually.

ANCIENT TECHNIQUE

Finished Rubbing, Stela 16, Dos Pilas

Merle Greene Robertson was a legend in the world of Meso-American studies and Maya epigraphy. With over five thousand rubbings to her name, thanks to a generous heart, many landed in museums and universities throughout the world. She not only explored these faraway Maya sites but shared her knowledge with others. Often her expeditions included lucky students who accompanied her in what would no doubt become the experience of a lifetime.

NEVER IN FEAR 

With a career that spanned close to sixty years, it's impossible in a single post to condense all that Robertson accomplished. Turning page after page in her autobiography, Never in Fear, it seemed she lived her life in warp-speed.

Do we shape our lives, or are our lives shaped by our experiences and those we meet along the way? After reading Robertson's autobiography, apparently her future unfolded while growing up in the rural West where she developed an interest in Native American culture.

EARLY BEGINNINGS

Born in Montana, she lived on land flanked by the Rocky Mountains. Her interest in Native American culture was ignited when her father took her to visit Blackfoot Indian chiefs. She was also influenced by nearby Montana neighbor Charles M. Russell, one of the greatest western artists of all time, who encouraged her interest in art and drawing. Meeting Blackfoot Indians and watching Russell paint may have shaped her future at an early age. 

She attended university in California and graduated with a degree in art. Later she attended the Instituto Allende in San Miguel de Allende, Mexico, where she studied watercolors, oils, photography, and mural painting for three summers before earning her MFA from University of Guanajuato.

Afterwards she went to Tikal, Guatemala, to work on a University of Pennsylvania project where she made architectural drawings of the Central Acropolis. This was her entry into recording monuments by means of rubbings. The technique is an ancient one, the earliest taken from Buddhist texts on wooden blocks in 8th century Japan, or from rubbings practiced in 2nd century China. Robertson brought it to an art form. Her perfection of the technique showed how rubbings could be a means of documentation of Maya relief sculpture.

SUMMER EXCURSIONS TO MAYA COUNTRY

Central Acropolis, Tikal (Afar)

Robertson's working life was as a teacher at Robert Louis Stevenson School in Pebble Beach, California, where she met her second husband, Lawrence "Bob" Robertson. In the summer of 1960 they began taking students to Guatemala and Mexico for summer vacation. The main purpose of the trips was to record in photos and rubbings the magnificent monuments on which the ancient Maya carved. Even as early as the 1960s, the looting of Maya sites was common and Robertson's desire was to record as much of the Maya civilization as possible before it was hacked to pieces or sold off to private collectors.

PALENQUE AND PAKAL'S TOMB

Though Tikal, her first jungle excursion, stole her heart, once in Mexico, Palenque replaced Tikal as her number one site. Her documentation of the site was revolutionary. She started with the Temple of the Inscriptions. In order to photograph it before beginning her rubbing, giant scaffolding was constructed for her to stand on. Nothing she did was easy. Her rubbing of Pakal's sarcophagus lid, Palenque's greatest ruler, took super-human tenacity.             

She wrote, "The first thing I started on was the sarcophagus lid, down in the crypt of the Temple of the Inscriptions. A rubbing had never been done before. I worked locked in with only a lantern to see by. It was quite a trick getting myself on top of the lid. It took seven sheets of rice paper (1 x 2 meters). Also, I had to use oil paint instead of sumi ink; there could be no way to work on so much space and keep an inked area from running into the sheet of paper next to it. After two weeks working on the sarcophagus, doing several parts of it over time, I felt that Pakal was not only my friend but a long lost relative."

After the lid, she worked on the side. "Standing in water on the floor of the tomb, trying to do the rubbings and not getting the paper wet was no small feat, especially since the space between the walls of the crypt and the sarcophagus was barely wide enough for me to stand. All of the rubbing equipment had to be kept on top of the sarcophagus, making it difficult to reach when standing on the floor.

"Inch by inch, as different features of the ancestors of Pakal emerged, it was as though I was speaking with these dead kings—I now knew them. Being alone in the tomb was like being in their world long ago."

THE SCULPTURE OF PALENQUE

The results of her Palenque work was documented in a series titled The Sculpture of Palenque. She searched out pigment sources in that region to duplicate the colors used by Palenque artists centuries ago. Her impressive collection of rubbings represents a major archive of Maya monuments throughout the Maya world and has been a major resource for scholars studying the culture. 

Temple of the Sun Reconstruction Painting

At Palenque, she met Moises Morales, head guide and major domo of the site. Her friendship with Moises and his family would be a staple in her and Bob's lives for decades. At first he rented them a room and in the 70s built a house next to his in the La Cañada compound.

Merle and Bob worked together on the Maya projects—she as artist and he as jack of all trades, performing behind the scene duties that greased the wheels. Their presence in Palenque became an interest to traveling scholars and and their house, Na Chan-Bahlum, became a meeting place for every archeologist working in Chiapas, the Yucatán Peninsula, and Belize—their door was always open. Palenque is where Linda Schele and Merle met and became fast friends.

MAYA ROUNDTABLE IN PALENQUE

 In 1973, things were beginning to gel in the Maya world. Through conversations initially with Linda Schele and other Mayanists, an idea emerged— why not have a gathering of like minds? They put together a list and sent out feelers for a get-together. Soon afterwards, Merle heard from famed archeologist Michael Coe. He suggested December would be a good time. The idea ignited and the first Maya conference took place in 1973. Through discussions, lectures, late nights and visits to the pyramid structures footsteps away, the group was at the beginnings of breaking the Maya hieroglyphic code and figuring out who the ancient Maya were. The conference became known as Primera Mesa Redonda de Palenque.

Topic talks ranged from art, history, chronology, iconography, early explorers, inscriptions, sacrifice, trade and the surrounding area. Word got out and everyone came: guides, archeologists, scholars, artists, students. Fourteen universities from the US, Mexico, and Canada came and everyone was asked to have a paper ready to give as a lecture on the art, architecture, or iconography of Palenque. The second year, 1974, the governor of Chiapas opened the ceremonies in Palenque's Municipal Auditorium, it had grown that much. The first had convened in Merle and Bob's house in Palenque.

BREAKTHROUGH AT FIRST CONFERENCE

That first year's highlight was the discovery of the names of Palenque's rulers by Floyd Lounsbury, Linda Schele and Peter Mathews. The second year's highlight along with the governor presiding was the attendance of archeologist Dr. Alberto Lhuillier Ruz, famous for his discovery of the Tomb of the Temple of the Inscriptions where Pakal's sarcophagus was buried. Eventually, through the melding of minds, the Maya hieroglyphic code was broken, the turning point being that first Roundtable in 1973. 

Bob and Merle lived in Palenque and helped host Mesas Redondas until Bob's death in May, 1981. Merle went on to do many more Maya rubbings in the Yucatán, specifically at Chichen Itza, where at Hacienda Chichen, Robertson was given her own suite which became headquarters for her crew. After the Chichen Itza project, Merle traveled the world, visiting other archeologists, artists, and friends while painting and walking ancient ruins everywhere on the planet. 

Stela 1, Ixkun, the Peten, Guatemala

MAYA SITES VISITED

During her time studying and recording the Maya, Robertson visited and worked at Tikal, Sayaxche, Dos Pilas, Aguateca, Itsimte, Naranjo, Tamarindito, Ixkun, Ixtutz, El Peten, Seibal, Yaxchilan, Lubaantun, El Baul, Bilboa, Jimbal, Uaxactun, Lamanai, Caracol, El Palmar, Calakmul, Copan, Palenque, and Chichen Itza. She could definitely compete with Dr. Jones. And to my women readers, I'd say she'd come out on top.

Merle Greene Robertson died at her home in San Francisco in 2011. She was 97 years old.

If you enjoyed this post, check out  Where the Sky is Born: Living in the Land of the Maya, on Amazon. My website is www.jeaninekitchel.com. Books one and two in my Mexico cartel trilogy, Wheels Up—A Novel of Drugs, Cartels and Survival, and Tulum Takedown, are also on Amazon. And my journalistic overview of the Maya 2012 calendar phenomenon, Maya 2012 Revealed: Demystifying the Prophecy, is on Amazon.

MARRIED TO THE MOB—A MEXICANA NARCA FALLS HEAD OVER HEELS FOR HER BODYGUARD

In Wheels Up—A Novel of Drugs, Cartels and Survival, Layla Navarro falls for her bodyguard, Carlos. This excerpt, a back story on how their relationship unfolded, was not included in Book 1 in the trilogy.

LAYLA AND CARLOS (Mexico City)

Layla often wondered how she'd gotten herself into the crazy relationship with Carlos, her bodyguard. For someone who was supposed to be smart—she was the accountant for the Culiacan Cartel for godsake—she often found herself consumed with emotion because of her feelings for a handsome, overbearing hulk of a man.

On their last business trip to Mexico City, known as CDMX to locals, they almost came to blows. Problems were happening more frequently, not unlike small temblors foreshadowing a substantial seismic shift, the cosmic wake-up call.

They decided to leave Carlos' Escalade at their hotel parking garage and take a taxi over to see Don Ernesto at the Marquis Reforma, a fashionable Art Deco property on Paseo de la Reforma. Ernesto was the Culiacan Cartel's main man for distribution for Mexico City's cocaine and delivery systems, and Layla was in high anxiety mode as she mentally prepared to cram all his expertise into her head at their upcoming meeting.

That night, Carlos had started out all right, no big problems, or no bigger than usual. But when communications with Don Erneseto got down to a higher level of disclosure, the capo gave Carlos a nod and he slunk away but not before giving Laya one of his poisonous "get ready" looks.

He excused himself to the don before exiting the suite. To Layla he said, "I'll be in the downstairs bar. Should I call you?"

She told him to ring up to the room in an hour, which he did. She noticed his voice had a slight slur, not common, but since he didn't need to drive—they'd be taking a taxi—she thought nothing of it. 

"I'll meet you by the elevators in five," she said. She gave Don Ernesto a quick goodbye kiss on both cheeks, then a handshake and finally her requisite, "Ciao." 

She knew things had gone south the instant the elevator doors opened. She could spot trouble and there it stood in the form of her bodyguard. He gave her a hard stare, barely motioned his head in a non-assuming way and moved towards the exit at a slow jog. From that moment she was practically running to keep up with him. Chinga! He was her bodyguard, that were in Mexico City, not some rural pueblo, and he was running away from her. How absurd! 

As they tore out of the hotel's go-round doors onto the lavish drive-up entrance where the bellmen stood, a valet called out, "Taxi, señorita?" 

"No gracias!"

She quickened her pace to keep up. He was way ahead of her and moving fast. For a man his size, he could move.

"Carlos!" she yelled. He didn't turn around. Louder now, "Carlos!"

Then he did a quick twist and yelled back at her as he crossed the street, "Leave me alone. You're nuts! You're the one who's screwed up, not me."

She felt like she'd been hit in the gut with a baseball bat. Passing from the opposite direction was a well-dressed man, mid-thirties, who'd seen Carlos at a near run and Layla, striving to catch up. By this time they were sprinting. The passerby obviously sensed her anguish and called out in passing, "Don't believe him. He's the crazy one, not you."

At that moment she wanted to throw her arms around this total stranger and thank him because she wondered what mistakes she'd made, how much she herself was to blame for their explosive relationship. Somehow Carlos always managed to make her feel like crap no matter what. 

He was pulling ahead. She was losing him now. Damn the heels. He'd crossed yet another block and she was farther behind. She couldn't be alone on these streets; it was Mexico City for God's sake.

"Carlos!" This time she yelled it loud and long. To hell with anyone who might see her running after some man on the street like a common trollop. "Please stop!" 

At that he turned, gauged her distance, took off his coat and tucked it under his arm but moving all the while. He seemed surprised she wasn't farther behind. With that look she knew she had him. She ran with abandon as fast as she could and soon caught up. She was no lightweight but she couldn't be alone in a CDMX hotel room in her line of work. It was unacceptable. Of course she could handle a gun but that wasn't the point. Hijole! What the hell were they paying him for anyway? El Patrón insisted she have protection.

When she caught up with him he was breathing heavily. "Why did you chase me? Chinga!" 

"You will not leave me alone here!" she shouted, surprised by her own show of force. "Do I need to remind you? You're on the payroll." 

In retrospect she realized she should have taken Patrón up on his offer to reassign Carlos a few years back. Her uncle had a knack for reading people and no doubt sensed trouble. That suggestion was his way of letting them both off the hook. Otherwise, Carlos would surely have been expendable. You didn't quit the cartel. The cartel quit you. 

Hijole! Why hadn't she listened to Patrón? Oh, now it seemed totally clear: what she should have done. But back then, they were still too good together, at least in the bedroom. There was the sex, so much sex. The on-going sex, the break-up sex, the make-up sex. And yes, also the fighting and a whole lot of it. Drama and tears, walk-outs and disasters. Hurling names at each other like javelins. No brutality, just two screeching cats, fighting it out. 

Too late now, and this charade had gone on too long. What was it with the men in her life? Were they all pendejos? Did she pick these guys or did they pick her? Even Reynoldo, her brother, God rest his miserable soul. He'd also treated her like dirt. And how long ago was that? She'd been a teenager and he was dissing her back then. She needed one of those internet courses that taught self esteem. You could learn that, right? Or was she stuck in this loop forever, a mere doorstop, even though she commanded all negotiations in Mexico on cocaine and marijuana for the cartel? What the hell was going on? 

Maybe it was time to see Our Lady of Guadalupe at the Basilica of the Virgin. Do penance to Mexico's patron saint, and a woman at that. So maybe she was actually a goddess? Forget about the Virgin Mary. Sure Mexicans pretended they believed all that Catholic stuff. She'd even been forced to go to church herself when her father put her in parochial school before he died. 

Mexico's twisted alternate history ran through her mind. The conquistadors ravaged the land and converted the sinners, or so they thought. What was really happening centuries ago and to this very day was the sly coverup each and every Mexican knew so well. The Virgin Mary wore blue; their sacred and beloved Guadalupe wore blue. Yes, there was a close resemblance, but the dual icons were worlds apart in significance. Go into a church in any Mexican pueblo and who did you see about the altar? Our Lady of Guadalupe, not Mary, Mother of God. And Feast of Guadalupe, December 12th, was more revered that Christmas. 

Mexicans converted the various saints to align with their gods. Catholic holy days coincided with their sacred days. The missionaries were never the wiser. Not unlike the cartels, they were all about volume; they wanted to boast to the European powers how many natives now worshipped their savior. As part and parcel of the Catholic Church, they cared only about numbers. 

It was a thinly veiled conspiracy. The Mexican, Aztecs, the Nahuatl, the Maya, they all pretended they'd been saved by the blood of the Lord. But they had merely converted Christianity into their form of paganism. In Oaxaca, Chiapas, the mountains of Michoacán, where the indigenous people were strongest, that's where shaman still ruled the villages and the ancient calendar, Aztec or Maya, governed lives. Not the book of the Lord. The calendar was the way. And the local shaman, who at times would pose as a priest, served as every pueblo's mayor and major domo. He settled disputes, gave readings, sanctioned marriages, named children from their calendar make-up not unlike astrology, divined dreams, cured illnesses and helped choose life paths for his flock.

Lost in thought, she stared at Carlos, her hotheaded bodyguard and lover, still huffing from their Olympic style run. For some reason she flashed on shaman Don Cuauhtemoc's reading from so long ago: "The woman is coming." God, she hoped it actually meant something.

If you enjoyed this missing excerpt from Wheels Up—A Novel of Drugs, Cartels and Survival, order a copy from Amazon. Also on Amazon, Where the Sky is Born: Living in the Land of the Maya. My website is www.jeaninekitchel.com. Find book two in my Mexico cartel trilogy, Tulum Takedown, on Amazon. And my journalistic overview of the Maya 2012 calendar phenomenon, Maya 2012 Revealed: Demystifying the Prophecy, is on Amazon.

WHAT MEXICO CARTEL'S QUEEN OF THE PACIFIC AND LAYLA NAVARRO HAVE IN COMMON

Sandra Avila Beltran (L) at Party

THE STUFF OF LEGENDS 

Though female Mexican cartel leaders are few and far between, there were one or two I'd heard about while living in Mexico. There was a hardened former federal police officer, Dona Lety, who had commandeered the Cancun Hotel Zone as her territory, wrenching it from the grips of the Gulf, Sinaloa and Los Zetas cartels. Her gang was involved with drug sales and extortions from bars and restaurants, even stooping to squeeze payments from lowly hammock makers. The Hotel Zone became her personal fiefdom. If business owners did not bend to her demands, someone could lose a finger. Even though she'd gone head to head with some major players, she was still small change in the big picture.

When the idea for Wheels Up, a narco thriller set in the Yucatan and Riviera Maya came to me I decided to go against type and cast a woman as top dog for Mexico's most powerful cartel. No Dona Lety for my novel, I wanted a jefe of jefes. It seemed a fitting insult to have macho cartel narcos paying homage to a boss woman. I loved the irony. 

And thus, like Athena, sprung from the head of Zeus, Layla Navarro was born.

I modeled Layla Navarro, my Wheels Up—A Novel of Drugs, Cartels and Survival protagonist, on Sandra Avila Beltran, known in the narco world as the Queen of the Pacific. 

Layla rises to the top of the fictional Culiacan cartel in Sinaloa, much as Sandra rose to the top of the Guadalajara cartel in that famous city. Layla's ascent happened after her uncle, cartel boss, was recaptured and sent back to prison. Since Rodolfo, her older brother and heir apparent, had been gunned down in an ambush a year earlier, Layla fell into the position. Her job was to secure and further the goals of the Culiacan cartel during her uncle's incarceration in Mexico City. 

Sandra Avila Beltran is the stuff of legends. Though her advancement happened over three decades, her rise to power was vertical. She participated in and had a front row seat to cartel activities, from private jets, clandestine plastic surgeries, murderous shoot-outs, money laundering, non-stop corruption and even a stunning bribe to a Mexican president for $100 million dollars. 

At the height of her career, Avila had a knack for carrying suitcases with millions of dollars in crisp Benjamins to make cartel payoffs. Born into narco royalty, much like Layla Navarro, she lived in opulence, a world of private schools, piano and dance lessons, trips to Disneyland. Her father, one of the founders of the Guadelajara cartel, even had her counting money as a child.

She said she'd spent so much time counting cash as a kid that she later turned that ability into a clever party trick: she'd grab a roll of bills, hold them up, and precisely calculate the value. 

Not as precocious as young Sandra, Layla Navarro grew up in her older brother's shadow. Fun and games were no part of her childhood and Layla was not even considered second best as her childless uncle ascended the ranks to head of the Culiacan cartel. Layla was third in line, after Rodolfo and second brother, geeky Martin. But the devastating ambush that took out her eldest brother brought her unique abilities to the forefront.

Neither Sandra nor Layla was removed from the terrors of life in cartel families. Sandra witnessed her first shootout at age 13. In an interview with The Guardian, she said, "At dawn you heard the music, the shootouts. It was when they killed people."

IF LOOKS COULD KILL

Both women had movie star looks and exuded a magnetism and sex appeal that welcomed them into the wide world of major drug cartels. They entered this haven of danger and wealth as connected power players.

Sandra Avila Beltran Age 19

Avila, once alleged to be Mexico's most famous female drug trafficker, became a household name known as Queen of the Pacific after her coolness during a 2007 police interview captured her on camera in a video that went viral. In it she came across totally unruffled by claims that she had been part of an operation to smuggle nine tons of cocaine across borders, insisting she was only a housewife with a side-hustle selling clothes and renting out properties. 

In spite of her protest, Avila was charged along with her lover, Colombian drug lord Juan Diego Espinosa, El Tigre. Authorities claimed she was one of the key cross-border links between the Sinaloa cartel and Norte del Valle cartel in Colombia. With the spotlight turned on to her alleged cartel activities, Avila's lifestyle and criminal career became the basis for the Mexican tele-novela, La Reina del Sur. 

Cartel royalty runs deep in Avila's veins. Her uncle, Felix Gallardo, controlled the illegal narcotics trade from Mexico to the U.S. for decades. If you watched Netflix's Narcos, Gallardo's presence and power is written all over the script. In Wheels Up, Layla's uncle has an ironclad grip on the Culiacan cartel and is known only as El Jefe.

OTHER PLANS

While Layla Navarro's career was always tied to her uncle's Culiacan cartel, early on, Avila distanced herself from her family's cartel ties. As a 17-year old she enrolled in journalism classes at Universidad Autonomia de Guadalajara, planning a career as an investigative reporter. But three years into her studies, a jealous boyfriend kidnapped her. And after this significant episode, once released, she left town, ending her hopes of a career in journalism. Instead, she turned to the drug underworld, bringing numerous skills: she was an extremely disciplined car driver, a master horseback rider, and a talented sharpshooter. Plus, she herself said she made the best of her ability to flirt.

A suitor once bought her a new pickup truck, left it at her house with an envelope containing $100 thousand dollars and a note that read, "Spend the money on a trip or anything you want." Shortly after that, at 21, she was linked with drug lord Amado Carrillo Fuentes, known as Lord of the Skies, a famous pilot who flew tons of cocaine for Felix Gallardo's cartel.

Sandra Avila Beltran At Home

She rose fast, her life became full-time cartel, and she was coveted by powerful and dangerous men at every step of the way. She avoided cocaine and drugs, stating to The Guardian, that if women use cocaine, "the men think you are just another disposable woman and you won't be respected." Layla Navarro shared those exact sentiments and never did drugs though she did enjoy her tequila.

DOUBLE STANDARD

Avila went on to say that men in the business would have harems of women and sexual freedom, but women had to maintain a personal code of ethics. As noted by Layla Navarro in Wheels Up, "Women are either Madonnas or whores." As a female power player at the top of their games they had to walk a tight line.

Gaining respect for both of these female narcas was paramount. Avila's climb to power included her gifting her son a Hummer on his 15th birthday along with a $40 thousand dollar allowance every three months. By this time, she'd met El Chapo, commanded a 30-car flotilla, and had won shooting exhibitions.

She seemed invincible. Until she wasn't. Her son was kidnapped in 2002, and when she paid the $5 million dollar ransom, the police became interested in her lifestyle. She went on the run and became a fugitive for many years. But her undoing came when she attended a fiesta for El Chapo high in the Sierra Madre Mountains. She arrived with an AK-47 in hand, wearing a baseball cap and no make-up and was seated next to El Chapo. The band playing for the fiesta composed a narco corrido about her and that was her undoing. The song, Party in the Mountains, became a hit, her anonymity was shattered, and bad luck followed.

ON THE LAM

Months later she was ambushed, made a run for it, ended up on the lam in a barrio and was rescued by a woman who gave her a change of clothes and 50 pesos for a cab. She continued on the run for three years but was finally caught with her new love, El Tigre. She claimed she was sold out by a business partner who had failed to pay her for an investment return. In retaliation for her questioning his honor, he handed her over to the government. 

She'd survived two husbands and a dead lover, but finally, justice caught up with her in 2007. She spent a good portion of the next decade behind bars, but her jail time wasn't the same as a regular civilian's jail time. She had 'guests' escorted to her cell where her three maids served food, alcohol and cigarettes. When interviewed by Jose Gerardo Mejia, the first journalist to speak to her once incarcerated, he described the prisoner "in four-inch heels, adorned in jewels, custom clothing, and fawning guards who treated her like a minor diplomat."

Avila Beltran in Interview, The Guardian

Though she had been sentenced to 70 months in federal US custody, she was eventually transported back to Mexico to carry out the balance of her sentence after pleading guilty to accessory after the fact for helping El Tigre, her love interest, reduce his sentence.

In Mexico she was sentenced to another prison term for money laundering but Mexico courts threw the conviction out in 2015 and she was given an early release. 

Though Layla avoids the law in Wheels Up, her infamous uncle is not so lucky. But he, too, had quite a different behind bars experience than his fellow inmates—a comfortable bed, fine linens, large screen TV, good food with his own chef, cigars, alcohol and women when he so desired.

OUT OF THE GAME

Avila was released from prison in Mexico in 2015 and immediately began recovering her contacts. With her fortune mostly buried, it's rumored, she hired a host of lawyers to recoup approximately 15 homes, 30 sports cars and an estimated 300 jewels. Now in her 60s and not shy about interviews, she was asked by Jonathon Franklin of The Guardian if she had any qualms about her career and the products that the cartels sell.

Her position is simple she said—each individual is free to partake in the drug world or abstain. "The statistics show more people die from alcohol than drugs and where alcohol is sold, no one feels remorse. No one is obliged to use," she said. 

And what about cartel related deaths? "They result from competition and the Mexican government's brutal assassination tactics. The government at times has to kill people because it is not convenient to imprison witnesses who could testify against them."

The problem, she insisted, was not those who can't leave the cartels but those who prefer not to. "There are people with loads of money who don't get out, don't want to. They like what they are doing, like a Formula 1 race car driver who says I do it because I like speed."

And how do politicians eradicate drug violence, the reporter aks. "First you attack poverty," she answers. "Poverty is what causes violence. First you become a delinquent, then you become violent."

In Wheels Up, when Layla Navarro checks in with her surviving brother to see how her uncle is doing in prison while she's on the run, he assures her all is well. While imprisoned, the guards have his back, the warden is in his pocket, and the politicians will do as they're told when beckoned.

"Aah yes," she muses, "because if they don't do his bidding, they and their families will be murdered across generations." When you deal with the cartels, the cards are never stacked in your favor.

Avila Beltran With Her Cosmetic Line

Sandra Avila Beltran is presently on TikTok promoting a line of cosmetics, and a documentary about her, titled The Queen of the Pacific has had 109 million views. With or without bodyguards and smuggling schemes, she's still the stuff of legends. 

 If you enjoyed this post, check out  Where the Sky is Born: Living in the Land of the Maya, on Amazon. My website is www.jeaninekitchel.com. Books one and two in my Mexico cartel trilogy, Wheels Up—A Novel of Drugs, Cartels and Survival, and Tulum Takedown, are also on Amazon. And my journalistic overview of the Maya 2012 calendar phenomenon, Maya 2012 Revealed: Demystifying the Prophecy, is on Amazon.