THE OTHER SIDE OF CHICHEN ITZA—WAS IT THE FIRST CANCUN?

 

Chichen Itza

Is Chichen Itza one of the Maya’s most revered and renowned pyramid sites or a glorified shrine-museum concocted by slick politicians to reap tourist dollars, like Cancun? It’s no secret that the Mexico National Tourist Corporation (MNTC) designed Cancun with the intention of creating a luxury destination that would pull in coveted currency to fill state and government coffers—and if some spilled over into the private sector, so much the better.

BIRTH OF CANCUN

In 1967 the Mexico government’s aim was to find the best locale for an international tourist resort with the finest beaches, the most beautiful water, and the fewest hurricanes. Another requirement would be proximity to its wealthy northern neighbor, the US, so flight times would be minimal. 

A strip of sand before MNTC's discovery

A strip of unpopulated sand at the northeast tip of the Yucatán Peninsula fit the bill—Cancun—a destination so easily accessible that at 9 a.m. one could be in New York and by noon, landing at Cancun International, moments away from a white sand beach and a pitcher of margaritas.

And with that very same intent, as early as the 1920s, long before Cancun was even a glimmer in MNTC’s eye, the Mexico government, along with help from the Carnegie Institution of Washington, was priming Chichen Itza to become Mexico’s first full-fledged tourist destination.

Fullbright scholar and former Assistant Professor of Anthopology at University of Washington, Quetzil Castañeda detailed this in his book, In the Museum of Maya Culture: Touring Chichen Itza. Through prolific research, Castaneda's book explains how it all came about. 

 
TOURIST DESTINATION

Chichen Itza, translated as mouth at the well of the Itzas, had been a tourist destination for over five hundred years when MNTC and the Carnegie Institution hatched their plan. After being twice abandoned by both the Itzas (750 AD) and the Maya (1194 AD) the site became a pilgrimage spot for religious groups in the 1500s because of its sacred cenote. A tourist Mecca for centuries, Chichen Itza was a place the Maya came to pay homage to their gods.

Chichen Itza drawing by Frederick Catherwood

Early explorers Edward H. Thompson and John Lloyd Stephens, artist Frederick Catherwood, along with others fueled the flames of discovery and from their explorations, the Yucatec and Hispanic elite, according to Castaneda, began to create a Maya myth or identity—distinctly different from that of either Spain or Mexico.  

CITY OF FABLES

In the 1920s, the Mexico government organized excavations under its agency Monumento Prehispanicos, and permitted the Carnegie Institution of Washington, headed in the Yucatán by explorer Sylvanus Morley, to conduct ‘multi-disciplinary’ research in the Yucatán and to excavate and restore what Castaneda calls ‘a city of fables.’

In his book, Castañeda insists the main goal of the Carnegie Institution's Excavations Department was to create a tourist Mecca rather than to restore the site to its original state.

Castañeda believes not only do economic interests (from local to international levels) now compete at the site but different government agencies and levels of state jurisdictions also compete for the slice of Chichen Itza’s tourist pie. 

Castañeda’s book maintains that the Maya civilization, although very real, has been ‘tweaked’ by competing government agencies to make the ‘reproduction’ of the archeological excavations more desirable to tourists.

In his book he calls Chichen Itza a museum exhibit which represents the Maya through the epochs. The exhibit implies the Maya came from ‘a primitive society or race’ and then rose to a high stature through the creation of the pyramids. 

But Castañeda argues that the Maya are examined through ‘the eyes of European civilization,’ by which all civilizations are compared and judged. 

In many ways, Castañeda’s views are similar to those of author Daniel Quinn in his controversial book, Ishmael, which divides the world into two camps:  the takers—modern Western civilization—and the givers indigenous cultures.  

Quinn’s premise is that  Western man usurps indigenous cultures and these ethnic societies and their “myths” are then lost forever, so that the takers can impose their myth—science—onto the entire world. 

Quinn equates this with the destruction of all indigenous societies. Castañeda’s book basically concurs with this premise, and in his lament for the Maya, calls what the state and government have done at Chichen Itza a “violation” against Mayan society, and goes so far as to call it on par with rape.

EQUINOX PHENOMENON

Castañeda theorizes the height of the deception takes place every vernal and autumnal equinox (roughly March 20, September 21) since 1974—when Mexico figured out these date were significant to the Maya. 

According to Castañeda, specific knowledge of the phenomenon dates back to when Morley was excavating the site in 1928, but it was ignored by archeologists, local Maya, and Yucatecans until a thesis was published in Mexico City in 1974 by researcher Luis El Arochi.

El Arochi, after years of study, noted that at 3 p.m. on these dates, sunlight bathed the main stairway of the pyramid K’ukul'kan (feathered serpent), creating a serpent-like shadow which crept down the pyramid’s massive stairs. El Arochi called this the “symbolic descent of K’ukul’kan,” and believed it related to Maya agricultural rituals. 

Once word was out about the equinox display of light and shadow, Chichen Itza’s K’ukul’kan pyramid became a tourist magnet. Tourist numbers jumped thirty percent that year. A star was born.

In 1921, Yucatan Governor Felipe Carrillo Puerto signed an agreement with Carnegie Institution that gave Sylvanus Morley a renewable ten year permit to conduct scientific study at the ancient Maya city. Among the site projects, studies would be conducted in geology, botany, zoology, climatology agronomy, medicine, physical anthropology, linguistics, history, archeology, ethnography and sociology.

Felipe Carrillo Puerto

Through these studies the Maya way of life could be dissected. Castañeda insists this allowed the structure of an evolutionary fable that created “a museum of history” at Chichen Itza.   

 
"With Maya labor from nearby towns, the jungle was peeled back to reveal the ancient stones of decayed buildings. Chichen Itza was restored as a replica of itself and reconstructed into a life size model of an ancient Maya city.

Y TU, FELIPE

Casteñada even goes so far as to state that Felipe Carrillo Puerto, progressive governor of the Yucatan, permitted Morley and the Carnegie Institution to conduct research to create a class consciousness amongs the Maya and forge an ethnic group identity onto them, essential to complete the social revolution for which he was striving. 

In the Yucatán, however the plan would serve another purpose as well. It would bolster a long stagnant economy based on the former reign of henequen—an all purpose fiber used for making rope and Panama hats—omething yet unseen—tourist dollars.

This contradictory view of Chichen Itza only heightens the mystery of the Maya. For a culture whose entire past was wiped out in an afternoon bonfire conducted by a fanatical priest in 1539, it makes one wonder anew—who were the Maya?

Chichen Itza Observatory. Photo Unsplash.

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.

THE YUCATÁN'S CHICXULUB CRATER AND ITS CONNECTION TO THE DINOSAUR EXTINCTION

 

Chicxulub Crater Reproduction

For 170 million years during the Cretaceous Period, a time when oceans formed as land shifted and broke out of one big supercontinent into smaller ones, dinosaurs ruled the world. Meanwhile, an asteroid was hurtling towards planet Earth after its misguided journey around the sun.

The most consequential outcome of this impact caused a cataclysmic event known as the fifth extinction, wiping out roughly 80 percent of all animal species, including non-avian dinosaurs. But what really happened when the asteroid collided with Earth?

Hidden below the waters of the Gulf of Mexico, the Chicxulub crater marks the impact site where the asteroid struck our planet 66 million years ago. 

“The asteroid was moving astonishingly quickly,” according to Professor Gareth Collings of Planetary Science at Imperial College in London. “Probably around 12.5 miles per second when it struck. That’s about 100 times the speed of a jumbo jet.” 

SIZE MATTERS

By studying both Chicxulub and worldwide geology, scientists have pieced together what happened that fateful day and in the years following. Larger than the height Mount Everest reaches into the atmosphere, the mountain-sized asteroid slammed into Earth. It unleashed the equivalent energy of billions of nuclear weapons all at once. It vaporized the Gulf of Mexico. Bedrock melted into seething white flames at tens of thousands of degrees Celsius, and it created a hole 25 kilometers deep and nearly 120 miles wide.

The crater is a fairly recent discovery, first discovered in 1978 by geophysicist Glen Penfield who worked for Pemex, Mexico's state-owned oil agency. While searching for oil, his crew used a magnet-o-meter as they flew above the Gulf. That's when Penfield saw the outline of a perfect semi-circle in the water below, where the ground had been vaporized in a split second so long ago.

His device indicated to him and geophysicist Antonio Camargo Zanoguera that a magnetic field different from volcanic terrain existed there. The saucer shaped underground structure was ten times the size of any volcano. The two men agreed, according to Smithsonian Magazine, that it could not be the result of a volcano and most probably was that of an impact crater.

SPECIES COLLAPSE

Because of the impact, Earth's water supplies were poisoned and 75 percent of species vanished. The 25 percent that survived were pushed to the brink of extinction and anything larger than a raccoon perished. It would take 30,000 years for life to stabilize.

After Penfield's initial fly-over, Luis and Walter Alvarez (father and son) discovered a thin layer of iridium in a geological record marking the ending of the Cretaceous Period across the entire world. Iridium is more prevalent in comets and asteroids than on earth. 

The scientists theorized the impact led to global fires, smoke, and dust clouds that blocked out the sun, cooling the planet and preventing photosynthesis. They hypothesized that the crater might be the Cretaceous-Tertiary Mass Extinction event, commonly known as the K-T impact site.

MORE SCIENTISTS CLOCK IN

Soon after that, Allen Hildebrand, Ph.D. in Planetary Sciences from University of Arizona, worked with the Alvarez team and they published controversial articles suggesting that an impact from a large asteroid caused the mass extinction at the end of the Cretaceous Period. The site was determined to be at Chicxulub, and came to be known as the K-T event. 

In 1990 Adriana Ocampo, a planetary scientist from NASA, was using satellite images to map water resources in the Yucatan Peninsula. Along with her former husband, Dr. Kevin Pope, they discovered a semi-circular ring of cenotes, also known as sinkholes, that she recognized as related to the crater. They hypothesized the crater might be the K-T event site, publishing their findings in the journal Nature in 1991.

Adriana Campo (Photo YucatánTimes.

Ocampo has visited the Yucatán Peninsula numerous times since her discoveries, but few were aware of the importance of the place, she was quoted as saying in an interview in Yucatán Magazine. 

WORLD HERITAGE WORTHY?

"It should be preserved as a world heritage site," she said. Though not yet world heritage worthy, the Chicxulub Crater Science Museum south of Progreso is a stunning nod to the asteroid that literally shook our world 66 million years ago and created a new pecking order by destroying the dinosaurs.

Ocampo began connecting the dots back in 1988 when she attended a scientific conference in Acapulco as a young scientist. Though she’d studied with legendary pioneering astro-geologist Eugene Shoemaker, she gives Houston Chronicle journalist Carlos Byars credit as the first person to connect the Yucatán ring to the Alvarez father-son asteroid theory. 

Byars had shared his theory with Alan Hildebrand who then approached Penfield who'd flown over the Gulf for Pemex Oil in 1978. The two scientists determined the crater wasn't a volcano but an asteroid impact.

LAIDBACK SPOT

Chicxulub Puerto and Chicxulub Pueblo, the nearest pueblos, are laid back communities made famous because of the asteroid impact. But even the Crater Science Museum, part of the research complex in Yucatán Science and Technology Center, is miles away from the towns. 

Crater Science Museum, Chixculub.

The park, inaugurated in the past couple years, was closed during the pandemic. Now on what’s called the Jurassic Trail, it’s gained steam on social media and is growing in popularity.

The museum welcomes one to the world of yesteryear. Through its exhibits it shows how humans emerged at the top of the food chain after the astroid extinguished the dinosaurs. With no competition, here we are. So—loaded question—how are we doing?