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.

FRANK LLOYD WRIGHT'S LONG-STANDING LOVE AFFAIR WITH THE MAYA

 

Ennis House in Los Angeles, Photo Trip Savvy.

Though it's believed Frank Lloyd Wright never stepped foot on the Yucatán Peninsula, when he arrived in Chicago in1893 to begin his career in architecture, lore has it the display of Maya artifacts and replicas at Chicago’s World's Pre-Columbian Exposition inspired him.

It was there he glimpsed plaster castings from Maya sites Chichen Itza and Uxmal. A feature of the lesser known Labna site, in southern Yucatán’s Pu'uc Region, eventually became important to his work because of his recurring use of its meaningful arch.

Labna Arch. Photo courtesy of Barbra Bishop.

But Wright's interest in the Maya had developed long before the Chicago exposition. He was drawn to it from childhood when his mother showed him pictures in books about Central America and Mexico. “These images stayed in his mind most of his life,” said Thomas Hines, UCLA architectural historian.

In the 1840s, two books about Central America archeology had become U.S. best sellers: Incidents of Travel in Central America, Chiapas and Yucatán, and Incidents of Travel in Yucatán, Part 2, by explorer John Lloyd Stephens and British artist Frederick Catherwood. These books drew Wright, as a youth, into the Maya world.

MAYAN REVIVAL STYLE

The 1893 exposition's display of the ancient Americas lauded the indigenous people who first called North America home. For the exposition, Wright and his employer, Louis Sullivan, contributed a monumental golden doorway for the Transportation Building and during Wright’s visits to check on it, he would have seen plaster casts of the Maya buildings. Both he and Sullivan were drawn to the style which came to be known as Mayan Revival.

Early on in his career Wright experimented with different styles, incorporating one or more into his commissions. By 1900, he had developed a style that became his signature, the Prairie Style. Considered to be the world’s greatest architect of all time, Wright had never attended a formal architectural school.

He designed over 1000 structures created in harmony with humanity and the environment during a career that spanned 70 years. He dubbed his philosophy organic architecture. His early beginnings were in the midwest where he was born and raised.

Eventually Wright broke with his employer and established his own firm in a Chicago suburb where he designed numerous commissions, gaining ground and notoriety with his well-heeled clients. By now he had married. With his wife, Catherine, and their six children, he settled into a white picket fence existence.

While designing a house for local residents Edwin and Mamah (Mamey) Cheney, Wright and Catherine began socializing at the precise moment that middle age, ennui regarding his Prairie Style designs, and a craving for change and greener pastures collided. Mamey, a feminist and free thinker, could keep up with Wright intellectually. She intrigued him and change won. She and her husband divorced, allowing Mamey to escape the marriage. 

The new couple left for Europe to avoid the tabloids and the brouhaha.

They traveled to Germany and Italy, viewing various architectural styles. On their return to the States, despite his wife refusing to grant a divorce, Wright was determined to build Mamey a house in rural Wisconsin near his childhood home. It would be transformational and a beauty and he would name it Taliesin.

Love and happiness, however, were short lived. In 1914 at a nearly completed Taliesin, Mamey was murdered by a household staff member along with her two children and five others. After the heinous massacre, Wright sought solace far from the midwest. Los Angeles, known as a place for reinvention and recuperation, beckoned. He headed west.

A PLACE FOR REINVENTION AND REJUVENATION

After the murders, he was again exposed to Maya influence at the 1915 Panama Pacific Exposition in San Francisco. As the displays at Chicago had stimulated Wright, now known as FLW, this new glimpse of Maya culture made another lasting impression.

Even though they were based on a Maya fantasy world, the displays cemented the Maya link between architecture and death, "Which was not only the setting for a fantastic pyramid palace but also for human sacrifice; part of the complexes displayed where humans were buried,” said UCLA’s Hines.

"A place where the living could remember the dead.” 

And after the loss of his lover, death was much on the architect's mind. 

The exceptional style of the Maya sites must have greatly intrigued him. 

“It was an outsized influence on his Los Angeles architectural style," continued the UCLA historian.  

LOS ANGELES FIVE

Before his exodus to LA, Wright tested his Mayan Revival style on a 1915 Wisconsin commission, the A.D. German Warehouse. On completion, it more resembled a temple pulled from a Catherwood drawing of the Maya Nunnery at Uxmal than a warehouse. This commission used his Maya motif and became the basis for his residential work in LA. After Wisconsin he accepted an offer to design the Imperial Hotel in Japan.

Today five iconic LA houses render his Maya look. While constructing the first, Hollyhock House, he worked simultaneously on Japan’s Imperial Hotel which helped shape his architectural vision.

Though the houses Wright designed in Los Angeles pre-dated the 1920s Art Deco movement, they have the undeniable air of deco. We'll never know if Wright influenced the movement or vice versa.

Hollyhock House.

In a PBS special titled That Far Corner: Frank Lloyd Wright in Los Angeles, Christopher Hawthorne, writer/director as well as Architecture Critic for the LA Times, examines Wright’s intent for his iconic designs in that city.

FLW completed his first LA commission in 1921, Hollyhock House, located on 36 acres in Hollywood, for oil heiress Aline Barnsdall. Wright's finished design was basically a Maya temple. Barnsdall had planned on a multi-arts center, and never intended it for residential use.

With 17 rooms and seven baths, it's considered a bridge between Wright's two prominent styles—Mayan Revival, with textile blocks inspired by Palenque temples, and Prairie Style, with its low-pitched roof line.

In 1927 Barnsdall gifted it to the city. But it was at Hollyhock House, named for the flower that Barnsdall most loved, where Wright began working with natural materials.

A cultural nationalist, according to leading Wright authority and author Kathryn Smith, UCLA, he strove to define an original American architecture, shying away from Victorian and Spanish colonial. He believed an indigenous architectural style would better suit the Americas rather than a European style

His concept layout led to massive rooms and enormously high ceilings in some cases creating the feeling of a mausoleum, as those who lived in the houses had said. 

Next came the commission La Miniatura on an acre in Pasadena for the Millards. This is where he refined the concrete molecular block system with his stamped Maya patterns. Flat roofed and mysterious, one historian called it a small temple in a eucalyptus grove. It gives the feel of being at a jungle pyramid site, much like Palenque.

The Millard House.

After the Millard commission came the Storer House in 1923. Built on a steep hillside, the house is dominated by a large upstairs living room with a high ceiling. Maya inspired columns and tall narrow windows dominate. Considered one of Wright’s most thoughtful biographers, author Brendan Gill said it was more like a home for a Mayan god.

Los Angeles’ best known FLW house is the Ennis House, built also in 1923, for Charles and Mabel Ennis, and appears to be another Maya grand palace. Notably seen in a handful of movies including Blade Runner and Day of the Locust, it looms over the neighborhood like an ancient ruin, visible for miles around.

Last of the FLW LA five is the 1924 Freeman House built for dancer Harriet Freeman and her husband. Donated to USC in 1986, this house had the happiest existence. It was home for 62 years to the bohemian couple who befriended Wright and scraped together money for the commission. 

According to Harriet, the house was dense and introverted but it well-suited their purposes. Along with being their home, she used it as a dance center where she entertained and performed. 

The daughter and son-in-law of USC's Dean of Architecture lived in the house while attending university in 2002 for a year. "It felt like a ruin," she said. "Crumbling down all around us." 

Eric Wright, the architect's grandson who lived at FLW's unfinished Malibu hills property until his death in 2023 was interviewed by Chris Hawthorne for That Far Corner documentary. 

When asked what drew FLW to LA, Wright was candid. "He was very upset abut the loss of Mamey and the adverse publicity because they weren't married," he said.

"What was his state of mind when he moved to Los Angeles?"

"Sorrow," Wright said. "He had a wonderful life until her death."

NOT JUST HEAVY BUT HEAVY-HEARTED

Hawthorne asked Tim Samuelson, Chicago's cultural historian, what he made of Wright's Mayan Revival look. "They seem mausoleum-like. They are heavy. One critic described them as dark and macabre—like the dramas of Sophocles. The LA homes were ... brutal, romantic, fantastic, and—strange." 

Filmmaker Hawthorne continues, "The LA houses have funereal aspects. But scholars hesitate to embrace the idea of pre-Columbia death cults. These ideas, however, shaped his understanding of pre-Columbian design and its meaning.

"His LA houses stand apart from his overall world and other LA architecture of the period. They're not just heavy, but heavy-hearted—and in some cases, they are in a state of ruin. I don't think it's because the houses look crypt-like and that's why they are empty. They're empty because they are crypt-like. None are used as full time residences. The houses are shadowed by violence and even death.

"Building these houses was a means to put a troubled period behind him. It exemplified his own uncertain state of mind. They served as a catalyst for him.

"Wright buried Mamey in the Unity Chapel Cemetery in Spring Green, Wisconsin—but she's also buried in Los Angeles." 

Who knew Wright's ongoing obsession with the Maya would rescue him as he worked his way or of grief by creating mausoleum-like pyramid tombs over and over again in reverence of the women he loved and lost.

"His architecture," said Wright historian and architecture critic for the Chicago Tribune, Blair Kamin, "and this mission helped him recover from personal tragedy. His architecture saved him in the end."

The Nunnery at Uxmal Pyramids.

           A special thanks to Barbra Bishop for use of Labna Arch photo.

MAYA SCHOLARS RACE AGAINST THIEVES TO THWART THE LOOTING OF A LOST CIVILIZATION

Xpujil Pyramid Site on Pu'uc Route (Yucatan Magazine)

PART ONE

"Tombs are robbed, temples are looted, and the past is destroyed, all to feed the international market for antiquities." Donna Yates, Archeologist and Lecturer in Antiquities Theft and Art Crime, Associate Professor at Maastricht University, Netherlands

In 1997 we drove across Mexico in our Ford Focus wagon, loaded to the nines with our belongings and our cat, heading towards a new life on the Mexican Caribbean coast. Our hearts quickened after passing through Escarcega. At the end of that lonely 170-mile stretch of road, we'd cross from the state of Campeche into Quintana Roo. Then we'd certainly be homeward bound. 

The road narrowed as Escarcega was left behind in our rearview mirror. I settled in for the long drive ahead. We decided when we got to a stretch of little known pyramids at the half-way point we'd take a break, make a sandwich, and let Max, then just a kitten, walk around. I'd recently read about this quartet of pyramids in NatGeo—Kohunlich, Becan, Chicanna, and Xpujil—near the great ceremonial center Calakmul. Though these sites didn't have the star power of Chichen Itza or Tulum, Kohunlich, known for its Temple of the Masks, gained fame in 1971 when looters tried to sell one of its huge eight foot stucco masks to New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art. 

We made good time, virtually seeing no other cars on the road. Around 4 p.m. we passed Chicanna. Soon after, I spotted the towers of Xpujil from the road. "Can we stop?" I asked Paul. 

He nodded and we pulled down a sascab lane a good ways past an open wire gate into a rough parking area. I extricated myself from the car while Paul saw to Max. I stretched, then went to the back end of the car to find the cooler. I'd brought bread, mayonnaise and a couple cans of tuna. A quick sandwich would be welcome as we'd had only fruit and juice for a late breakfast around 11, not wanting to take time to stop. I pulled out a plastic container for mixing, located the can opener, mayo and bread, and began assembling a rather unglamorous tuna sandwich. As I finished up spreading the lumpy fish onto Bimbo wheat bread, I called to Paul. 

He'd put Max back inside the car. We leaned against the door, ready for our afternoon snack. After the sandwich I told him I wanted to have a quick look around the site. Just as I bit into the tuna fish, a white, older model International with a large tarp-covered trailer pulled into the parking area, leaving dust in its wake. Two men sat inside; an older man was driving. The vehicle was about 100 feet away when the guy riding shotgun jumped out. He was young and lanky, nineteen or so, and moved fast across the parking lot. The truck had Canadian plates and the driver kept the engine idling. 

"Weird," I said to Paul. "I wonder what they're up to. Why'd just one guy get out and why isn't the driver turning off the engine?"

"It is weird." 

We both watched the young man dart through the fence and run along the path leading to the pyramid site. 

With the truck still idling, we viewed the scene warily. "I don't feel good about this."

"Me neither. What are they doing?" Paul began to push things into the way-back. I followed his lead and closed the cooler, holding my sandwich in one hand. I tossed the can opener and bag of bread into the wayback.

"Let's get out of here. Something isn't right. Maybe they're scouting the ruins for artifacts. What's the trailer for?" I asked.

"Not good," Paul agreed. "And what's with the tarp? The cat's inside? Then let's go."

The truck had parked at just the right angle so we couldn't see the driver, as if it was planned that way. If these guys were grave looters, we didn't want to be around when INAH (National Institute of Anthropology and History) discovered them, or worse, the federales. 

Paul started the car and headed towards the long driveway that led out to the highway. The white International was still idling when I turned around and gave it one last look.

"Grave robbers? Were they grave robbers? Or looters?"

"We don't want to know," Paul said as we eased onto the uneven asphalt, amped up the gas, and headed towards Chetumal.

                          *********************************

NOT JUST WHITE COLLAR CRIME

Antiquity looters come in many guises as the above tale tells—unassuming tourist types, locals, businessmen looking to make a buck, collectors.

And as the international appetite for Maya culture continues to grow, so does the hunger for illegal artifacts. Researchers say it's a race against time and increasingly tenacious looters.

One of the Remaining Masks at Kohunlich

Art theft is big business. Ask any dealer of antiquities. It's a 'trade' worth billions, and it's not going away any time soon. As long as there's poverty in undeveloped countries where ancient civilizations once stood, you can bank on it. Some art dealers call it the world's second oldest profession. Any country in civil war or conflict is ripe for antiquities looting, says Tess Davis, archeologist from Boston University and legal expert. When conflict erupts in an archeological rich country, the world-wide art market is suddenly flooded with antiquities from that ravaged country. Artifact looting becomes a means of subsistence when homelands are war-torn and ravished, and it's practiced in a variety of environments, from Peru and the Andes Mountains to the Peten jungle and the Central Mexican highlands, for starters.

THE RISE OF NARCOTICS TRAFFICKING

"The public should be aware this is not just a white collar crime. Insurgents, terrorists are using the antiquities trade to fund their efforts. Unless we get it together soon, I fear there is going to be nothing left," Davis said in a lecture titled "Tomb Raiders and Terrorist Financing," for Boston University alumnae.

Of the organized trafficking groups involved in a diversified portfolio of illicit activities, most are dealing drugs as well as other commodities. The market prices antiquities can draw are too high for organizations dealing in contra-band to ignore. 

THE LOOTING OF THE PETEN

Palace of Palenque by Frederick Catherwood

Compared with well known ancient civilizations in Europe and Western Asia, archeological interest in the Maya culture came relatively late, partially because of the forbidding nature of the deep-jungle sites. The outside world was first exposed to Maya ruins through the writings and drawings of explorers John Lloyd Stephens and Frederick Catherwood. Their early adventuring shone a light on the Maya. After their travel memoirs about the Maya and the Yucatan were published in 1843, many adventurers trekked on through, conducting rudimentary recordings of archeological sites with limited removal of Maya artifacts. The first actual excavations were not conducted until the 20th century.

THE BEGINNINGS

Art and antiquity, according to Archeologist Donna Yates in her thesis, "Displacement, Deforestation and Drugs: Antiquities Trafficking and Narcotics Economies of Guatemala," underwent a huge upheaval in the first half of the 20th century. Aesthetic tastes in contemporary art shifted to modern looks and forms and an interest was taken in tribal art. Defined against a classic Western model, these disparate cultural traditions included ancient and modern cultural objects originating from Africa, parts of Asia, and the Americas. The appeal, her thesis stated, was that they didn't conform to familiar Greek and Roman styles. And demand grew as connections from these objects were drawn publicly between them and famous artists of the day such as Picasso, Kahlo, Giacometti, and Rivera. Soon, powerful collectors began to source them from their countries of origin for private collections.

The Maya on Display at Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

At the same time, 1957, Nelson Rockefeller founded the Museum of Primitive Art in New York. This was a watershed for the collection of Maya and other "primitive" cultural properties. The Maya were on the market.

MAYA DEBUT

Yates' thesis explained that endemic looting of nearly every known Maya site began around 1960. Collectors and museums, inspired by Rockefeller's acquisitions, were looking to fill the Maya gap in their collections and demanded the very best the Maya had to offer. This meant that even the large carved stone stelas that depicted the events of Maya lords and their recorded histories along with large architectural treasures from Maya temples were looted, trafficked, and sold. Size was not an issue.

Clemency Coggins is a professor of both Archeology and Art History at Boston University, and also holds a degree from Harvard University in Fine Arts. Decades ago she wrote,"In the last ten years there has been an incalculable increase in the number of monuments systematically stolen, mutilated, and illicitly exported from Guatemala and Mexico in order to feed the inter-national art market. Not since the 16th century has Latin American been so ruthlessly plundered."

RANSACKING RUINS

Guatemala Soldier Scouts Site of Xultun for Looters

Unfortunately this plundering tore the stelas, large concrete-like slabs that stood in front of pyramids to honor Maya kings and their empires' procla-mations, births, deaths and marriages, and they were ripped from where they stood. In order to understand any individual site, it's imperative for archeologists to know the provenance of stelas or pieces that have been looted. Without dates and locations it's impossible to place the art, the site, the structure, even the times and historical issues taking place when it was created. The Maya's very history was being torn apart, a story with no context, as various works of art floated throughout the world, moving to private collectors and museums across the globe. 

But looters cared not for the history of the ancient Maya. Their only concern was how to remove stela that could be 15 or 20 feet high, weighing several tons. Removal was their one and only mission and taking a power saw to the stela and cutting it vertically removed the face of it. This was then usually cut into quarters to make it easier to ship and the pieces could be sold off to separate investors. Sometimes the inscriptions along the sides were damaged by their mutilation.

This plundering set the archeology world back several decades in trying to break the Maya hieroglyphic code.

BANDS OF LOOTERS

Map of Yucatan and Guatemala (By NatGeo)

A landmark paper by Clemency Coggins that is often credited with exposing the gravity of the looting situation characterizes the 1960s as a time when bands of looters moved freely through the Maya region, particularly in the sparsely populated and heavily jungled regions of Guatemala's Peten, emphasizing the mutilation of large stone monuments with power tools. Countless Maya sites (Ixtonton and La Corona) were looted before they were even located by archeologists. "It was a terrible time," she wrote.

THE WHY BEHIND THE CRIME

She explained that the 1960s looting of the Peten is tied to two jungle economies: the trade in rare hardwoods and tapping gum trees for chicle. In both instances, she wrote, men (usually) at the bottom of the supply chain moved through vast tracts of wilderness searching for different tree types. In doing so, they encountered recorded but poorly protected remote sites as well as Maya cities yet unknown to archeologists.

THE CHICLEROS

Early on in the 20th century, archeologists worked closely with these men, paying them for info about new sites and monuments. Chicleros, as chicle hunters are known, are credited with locating many important sites in the Peten—Uaxactun, Xultun and even Calakmul, the famous Heritage Site. But when chicle prices bottomed out in the 1970s, financial gains for looting and trafficking in antiquities grew. Chicleros could expect higher rewards by reporting an unknown site to a trafficker rather than to an archeologist. And they could even be employed in the demolition, for added revenue.

Said one archeologist as he peered at the looting damage of a Xultun temple literally cut through the middle, "The humans are more poisonous than the snakes."

                                    ***************************************

Part Two will delve into a number of pyramid sites plundered, the lack of security at even famous sites, and what can be done to address the trafficking of antiquities. Stay tuned.

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.

MEXICO'S MAYA TRAIN PROJECT— ON THE RIGHT TRACK OR OFF THE RAILS?

 

Protestors Against Mayan Train in the Yucatán

Tren Maya is an ongoing high-caliber infrastructure project laying 1,525 kilometers of railway tracks set to cross five states in southeastern Mexico, connecting Chiapas, Tabasco, Campeche, Yucatán, and Quintana Roo. Depending on who you talk to, it's either "the greatest railway project being built anywhere in the world," (Amlo, Mexico's president) or "an attack on the environment and the Mayan identity," (Pedro Uc, member of the Assembly of Mayan Territory Defenders, Múuch X'iinbal).

At first the cries were but a whimper, with conservationists and the occasional archeologist or Riviera Maya environmentalist sounding alarm. But now, two plus years into its construction and the forest purge, the cries of elimination and contamination can be heard from as far off as The South China Post, Japan Times and New Delhi Times to periodicals and newspapers much closer to home. This 'feat' promised by President Andrés López Obrador (Amlo) has been both lauded and maligned in media coverage everywhere and continues to heat up.

Mexico's President López Obrador has promised the 200 billion peso project (9.8 billion USD) will provide a needed alternative to road and air transport for the "Mayan Riviera" and lift southeastern Mexico's economy which has lagged behind other parts of the country. The president's goal for completion of the train is December 2023, one year before his term ends.

Mayan Train Route

CONCERNS

Environmentalists, archeologists, concerned locals, and even the U.N., have voiced concern that the railway and its hasty construction will critically endanger pristine wilderness and ancient cave and eco-systems beneath the jungle floor. Portions of the train route extend over a fragile system of underground rivers, including the world's longest, that are unique to the Yucatán Peninsula.

The plan for the 910-mile rail is that it will carry both diesel and electric trains through the Yucatán Peninsula connecting Mexico's golden goose, Cancun, to popular tourist destinations like Chichen Itza as well as more remote, off-the-grid sites like Palenque in Chiapas. Twenty one stations with 14 stops comprise its total. 

JOBS AND ECONOMY

FONATUR (Fondo Nacional de Fomento al Turismo), Mexico's tourism arm spearheading the project, predicts the railway will lift more than a million people out of poverty by 2030 in the creation of a whopping 715,000 jobs. 

But with the train already billions over budget and behind schedule, scientists and activists, according to Reuters which has closely monitored and documented the evolution of Amlo's flagship project, says the government cut corners in its environmental risk assessments in a bid to complete it while López Obrador is still in office.

U.N. CLOCKS IN

U.N. experts warned in December the railway's status as a national security project allowed the government to side-step usual environmental safeguards and they called on the Mexican government to protect the environment in line with global standards.

FONATUR however defended the speed with which the studies were produced claiming that, "Years are not required. Expertise, knowledge and integration capacity are required," in response to questions from Reuters. It also declined to comment on the U.N. statement.

CENOTES

The Mayan Train route cuts a swath 14 meters (46 feet) wide through some of the world's most unique ecosystems, bringing civilization closer to vulnerable species such as jaguars and bats. It will pass above a system of thousands of subterranean caves carved by water from the region's soft limestone bedrock over millions of years.

Open Air Cenote (By Journey Wonders)

 

Early on, July 2020, researchers from 65 Mexican and 26 international institutions signed "Observations on the Environmental Impact Assessment of the Mayan Train" claiming it would cause "serious and irreversible harm."

Said one environmentalist, "When you destroy territory, you destroy a way of thinking, a way of seeing, a way of life, a way of explaining the reality that is part of our identity as Mayan peoples."

The ancient Maya's descendants have continued to live on the Peninsula, some still speaking Mayan, wearing traditional clothing, and also conserving traditional foods and recipes, crops, religion, and medicine practices, despite the Spanish conquest between 1527 and 1546.

When interviewed by NBC Latino, Lidia Camel Put, a resident of the area being cleared in Vida y Esperanza (Life and Hope) said, "I think there is nothing Maya about the train. Some people say it will bring great benefits but for us Maya that work the land and live here, we don't see any benefits.

"For us, it will hurt us because they are taking away what we love so much, the land," continued Put.

When marines showed up to start cutting down trees to prepare for the train on the edge of the village, residents who hadn't been paid for their expropriated land stopped them from working.

POLLUTION FACTOR

For residents of Vida y Esperanza, the train will run right by their doors. They fear it will pollute the caves that supply them water, endanger their children, and cut off their access from the outside world. In Vida y Esperanza, the train will run directly through the rutted four-mile dirt road that leads to the nearest paved highway. FONATUR says an overpass will be built for Vida y Esperanza, but such promises have gone unfulfilled in the past.

SAFETY ISSUES

The high-speed train can't have at-grade crossings (where a roadway and rail lines cross at same level), and won't be fenced. One-hundred mile per hour trains will rush past an elementary school, and most students walk to get there. Equally jarring, the train project has actually divided the pueblo Vida y Esperanza in half.

Not far from where acres of trees have been felled to prepare the land for train tracks, an archeologist and cave diver, Octavio Del Rio, pointed to a cave that lay directly beneath the train's path. "The cave's limestone roof is only two or three feet thick in some places," he told NBC. "It would almost certainly collapse under the weight of a speeding train."

Crystalline pools or cenotes punctuate the Yucatán Peninsula where the limestone surface has fallen in to expose groundwater. Along with the world's longest known underground river, this area is the site of discoveries such as ancient human fossils and a Maya canoe estimated to be more than 1,000 years old.

FRAGILE ECOSYSTEM

"If built badly, the railway could risk breaking through the fragile ground, including into yet-to-be discovered caves," said Mexican geochemist Emiliano Monroy-Rios of Northwestern University. He has extensively studied the area's caves and cenotes.

"Diesel," he added, "could also leak into the network of subterranean pools and rivers, a main source of fresh water on the Peninsula." With less than 20 percent of the subterranean system believed to have been mapped, according to several scientists interviewed by Reuters, such damage could limit important geological discoveries. 

In 2022, López Obrador wanted to finish the entire project in 16 months by filling the caves with cement or sinking concrete columns though the caverns to support the weight of the passing trains, as reported by The Chicago Sun-Times. This could block or contaminate the underground water system, the only thing that allowed humans to survive in a land of fickle rain fall. "I rely on water from a cenote to wash dishes and bathe," said Mario Basto, a resident of Vida y Esperanza. 

Uncharted Cave in Yucatán

IMPACT STUDY

The government's environmental impact study for Section 5, a 68-mile and most controversial stretch that runs from Cancun to Tulum, states its environmental impacts are "insignificant" and have been adequately mitigated, Reuters wrote. The study adheres that the risk of collapse was taken into account in the engineering of the tracks and that the area will be observed through a "prevention" program.

However, dozens of scientists disagree, writing in open letters that the assessments are riddled with problems, including outdated data, the omission of recently discovered caves, and a lack of input from local hydrology experts.

"They don't want to recognize the fragility of the land," said Fernanda Lases, a Merida-based scientist with UNAM, calling the problems identified "worrisome." And adding insult to injury, the names of the 70 experts who participated in the government study were redacted from the publication.

Bulldozer Clearing Land in Puerto Morelos (Photo AP)

Monroy-Rios said his research highlights the need for extensive surveillance and monitoring for any infrastructure project in the region, and this has not happened. "I guess their conclusions were pre-formatted," he continued. "They want to do it fast and that's part of the problem. There is no time for proper exploration."

The railway has deeply divided Mexicans and the controversies surrounding the construction exemplify struggles developing countries across the globe face to balance economic progress with environmental responsibility, Reuters wrote.

LOOMING MILITARY

López Obrador has already given the military more tasks than any other recent Mexican president, with armed services personnel doing everything from building airports to transporting medicine to running tree nurseries. The army will operate the train project once it is built, and the proceeds from that will be used to provide pensions for soldiers and sailors. The president said the army is among the most trustworthy and honest institutions in the country.

For more than two years Maya communities have been objecting to the train line, filing court challenges arguing the railway violated their right to a safe, clean environment, and that they be consulted. Back in 2019, the Mexico office of the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights found that the consultations the government did prepare were flawed.

How will it all play out? As of February 28, the military-controlled Tren Maya S.A. de C.V. announced the passenger and cargo rail route will begin operations on December 1, 2023.

"It will be one of the best rail systems in the world," said Javier May Rodriguez, general director of FONATUR. "Its trips will be safe because it will have state of the art technology." 

December 1 marks the date of the fifth year anniversary of Amlo's presidency. Auspicious timing? Or not. Time will tell. 

Cenote Choo-Ha in Yucatán (Photo Sandra Salvadó)

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.