Ek Balam Gateway to the Underworld (En-Yucatan Travel) |
Jeanine Kitchel writes about Mexico, the Maya and the Yucatán. Her travel memoir, Where the Sky is Born: Living in the Land of the Maya, details how she bought land and built a house in a small fishing village on the Mexican Caribbean coast. Her debut novel, a narco lit thriller, Wheels Up—A Novel of Drugs, Cartels and Survival, is available on Amazon as is book 2 in the trilogy, Tulum Takedown.
Sunday, April 18, 2021
DAY TRIPPING TO THE MUST-SEE MAGNIFICENT MAYA PYRAMIDS AT EK BALAM
Saturday, April 3, 2021
WHY WAS FRANK LLOYD WRIGHT OBSESSED WITH THE MAYA?
Frank Lloyd Wright, considered by many to be the greatest architect of all time, never attended a formal architectural school. Wielding an avant-garde edge, he thought of interior and exterior places as one. This concept extended to his building forms and construction methods. Wright's signature on a certain type of architecture became not only an embellishment but a trademark.
During a career that spanned 70 years, he designed over 1000 structures, created in harmony with humanity and the environment in a philosophy he dubbed organic architecture. His early beginnings were in the midwest where he was born and raised. That too is where he began his formal career as an architect in Chicago in 1893, after moving from rural Wisconsin.
Coonley House/Prairie Style (Curbed Chicago) |
1893 WORLD'S PRE-COLUMBIAN EXPOSITION
Though it's believed that Wright never stepped foot on the Yucatán Peninsula, home to numerous Maya pyramids, when he arrived in Chicago, lore has it he was inspired by the display of Maya artifacts and replicas at the 1893 World's Pre-Columbian Exposition in Chicago. It was there he glimpsed plaster castings from major Maya sites, Chichen Itza and Uxmal. A feature of the lesser known Labna site, in the Pu'uc Region in southern Yucatán, became important to his work due to his recurring use of its meaningful arch.
Nunnery Quadrange, Uxmal site (Archeology.eu) |
Wright's interest in the Maya was piqued early on, from childhood. He was drawn to the Maya world when his mother showed him pictures in books about Central America and Mexico."Those images stayed in his mind most of his life," said Thomas Hines, UCLA architectural historian.
INCIDENTS OF TRAVEL BEST SELLER
Las Monjas, Chichen Itzá (Frederick Catherwood) |
In the 1840s, two books about Central America archeology became 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. The 1893 exposition's display of the ancient Americas lauded the indigenous people who first called this continent home. It was one of Stephens' books that drew Wright into the world of the Maya.
GOLDEN DOORWAY
Wright and his employer, Louis Sullivan, had contributed a monumental golden doorway for the Transportation Building at the fair and during his many visits to check on it, Wright would have seen Stephens' casts and photos of the Maya buildings. Both he and his employer were drawn to the style which would eventually be known as Mayan Revival; they both distained the European Neo-classical style that dominated other buildings at the expo.
Golden Doorway for Transportation Building |
Eventually Wright broke from his employer and established his own firm in Oak Park, Illinois, where he designed numerous commissions, gaining ground and at times notoriety with many well-heeled clients. By this time he was married. With his wife, Catherine, and their six children, he settled into a white picket fence existence.
Edwin and Mamah Cheney house (compositiondelascasa.com) |
TALIESIN
Love and happiness, however, were short lived. At a nearly completed Taliesin in 1914, his lover Mamah Bothwick Cheney 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.
Mamah Borthwick Cheney (history.com) |
Though the displays were based on a Maya fantasy world, they 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."
WRIGHT IN LOS ANGELES
"A place where the living could communicate and remember the dead," said Hines. "And after the loss of his lover, Mamah Cheney, death was much on the architect's mind. The exceptional architectural style of the Maya sites must have greatly intrigued him, for it was an outsized influence on his Los Angeles architectural style," continued the UCLA historian.
A.D. German Warehouse (franklloydwright.org) |
Prior to his exodus to LA, Wright tried out his Mayan Revival style on a Richland, Wisconsin commission in 1915, —the A.D. German Warehouse. On completion, the site hardly looked like something that would house the wares of a green grocer in a small Wisconsin town—it more resembled a temple pulled from a Catherwood drawing of the Maya Nunnery at Uxmal.
This commission helped test the Maya motif that would become the basis of his residential work in Los Angeles. On completing Wisconsin, he accepted an offer to design the Imperial Hotel in Japan.
Hollyhock House (photo Curbed LA) |
MAYAN REVIVAL STYLE
Today five iconic LA houses render his Maya look. While constructing the first, Hollyhock House, he worked simultaneously in Japan on the Imperial Hotel which helped shape his vision as an architect.
Though the houses Wright designed in Los Angeles pre-dated the Art Deco movement that began in the 1920s, they have the undeniable air of deco. We'll never know if Wright influenced the movement or vice versa. And though the Mayan Revival style itself had begun at the turn of the 20th century, its popularity accelerated once Wright got on board. This style is most notably seen in his Southern California open-concept layouts built from concrete stackable blocks molded with local materials and natural color schemes, and stamped with bold geometric motifs.
Hollyhock House, his first LA commission, was completed in 1921 for oil heiress Aline Barnsdall who had purchased 36 acres on the eastern edge of Hollywood. Wright's finished design was above all a Maya temple. Barnsdall had planned on a multi-arts center, and never intended it for residential use.
The hearth at Hollyhock House (photo Curbed LA) |
HOLLYHOCK PLUS FOUR
With its 17 rooms and seven baths, it's often noted as a bridge of Wright's two prominent styles: Mayan Revival, with textile blocks inspired by temples from Palenque, and Prairie Style, with its low-pitched roof line.
In 1927 she 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 Kathryn Smith, Los Angeles, he strove to define an original American architecture and shied away from Victorian and Spanish colonial styles. Though of Welsh origin, he believed an indigenous architectural style would better suit the Americas rather than a European style architecture.
Kathryn Smith said he sought out traditional materials on the lands where he was building, making the concrete blocks from sand and granite, stamping them with motifs resembling Maya symbols. His open concept layout led to massive rooms and enormously high ceilings, in some cases creating the feeling of a mausoleum, as people who actually lived in his houses had been known to say.
Next came the Alice Millard commission on one acre in Pasadena, La Miniatura. This is where he truly refined the concrete molecular block system, with his stamped Maya patterns. Flat-roofed and mysterious, a wall of blocks stamped with equi-distant diametric crosses greets one at the property's edge. One historian said the cross is a reference to the MesoAmerican understanding of the cardinal directions, pointing to the cardinal elements that establish the shape of the universe. Some called the Millard House a small temple in a eucalyptus grove.
The Millard House |
The placement of the house is in a ravine, with two towering eucalyptus trees standing nearby, and gives the feel of being at a jungle pyramid site, much like Palenque.
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. It's believed that this house was built on spec. It was owned by Joel Silver, Hollywood producer, from 1984 until 2002. He gave it a thoughtful renovation including a pool that had been in the original plans. Brendan Gill, one of Wright's most thoughtful biographers, said it was more like a home for a Mayan god.
The Storer House (Californiahomedesigns.com) |
Probably the best known FLW house in Los Angeles is the Ennis House, built also in 1923, for Charles and Mabel Ennis. It very much appears to be another Maya grand palace, but the Ennis' insisted that Wright incorporate some of their desires into his design. Notably seen in a handful of movies—Blade Runner, Day of the Locust, The House on Haunted Hill—it overpowers the environment and looms over the neighborhood like an ancient ruin, visible for miles around.
The Ennis House (TripSavvy.com) |
Gravestone for Mamah Borthwick Cheney in Spring Green, Wisconsin |
Saturday, March 20, 2021
WHAT IS THE EQUINOX?
Friday, January 8, 2021
HOW THE CASTE WAR OF YUCATÁN GAINED MOMENTUM FROM A SPEAKING CROSS IN THE JUNGLE
CASTE WAR
PART 2
The Caste War of Yucatán began in 1847 and dragged on for decades. Tired from years of struggle, the Maya regained confidence from an unlikely source: a talking cross found deep in the jungle near a cenote. Revolutionary Jose Maria Barrera, driven from his Yucatán pueblo, led his band of people to an uninhabited forest and to a small cenote called Lom Ha (Cleft Spring). It was there he discovered a cross that was carved into a tree. The cross bore a resemblance to the Maya tree of life, la Ceiba, and a new religion formed around it, the cult of the speaking cross.
JOSE MARIA BARRERA
Barrera said the cross transmitted a message which was later given as a sermon by Juan de la Cruz (of the Cross), a man trained to lead religious services in absence of a Maya holy man. Barrera also used a ventriloquist, Manuel Nahuat, as the mouthpiece of the cross, and through this directed the Maya in their war effort, urging them to take up arms against the Mexican government, assuring the people of the cross they would attain victory. All withstanding, the talking cross served as a symbol of hope for the Maya.
Painting by Marcélo Jiminez from Caste War Museum |
CRUZOB MAYA
From this speaking cross a community evolved—Chan Santa Cruz (Little Holy Cross)—and its inhabitants came to be called Cruzob, or followers of the cross. By chance, the cross bore three elements sacred to the Maya: the Ceiba tree, the cenote, and a cave. The cross was found growing on the roots of a Ceiba tree that sprung from a cave near a cenote. As explained by Nicoletta Maestra, the most sacred tree for ancient Maya is la Ceiba. According to their mythology, it is the symbol of the universe. Its roots are said to reach down into the underworld, the trunk represents the middle world where humans live, and its branches arch into the sky symbolizing the upper world and the thirteen levels of the Maya heavens. The Maya viewed caves as the entrance to the underworld and the domain of the rain gods.
Reproduction of the World Tree in Madrid Codex, Museo de Madrid (photo Simon Burchell) |
TALKING CROSS
It wasn’t a far stretch for the Maya to believe the cross spoke to them. In the ancient Maya text, Chilam Balam, priests were said to have heard voices from the gods. So even this aspect of mysticism fell into acceptable practice for the Maya. To the Chan Santa Cruz, the voice of God came from that cross in that tree. It told the war chiefs that the battle should continue and the people should be patient in their fight.
Chan Santa Cruz rebels (photo Ambergriscaye.com) |
To the Cruzob, even though the cross was inspired by a shamanic ventriloquist, the man speaking to them through the cross was God’s chattel, a mouthpiece of the gods. The Cruzobs believed this tree and this cross were connected underground, one hundred kilometers from Lom Ha cenote to Xocen—the center of the world—where the first speaking cross came from. As more and more people heard about the cross, a new religion was born.
Four crosses are said to exist at counter points—tips of the cross—marking the boundaries of the Cruzob Maya. The religion is still practiced and ceremonies performed in these four sacred shrine villages: Tixcacal Guardia, Chancah Veracruz, Chumpon and Tulum, whose geographic positions roughly describe the territory of the Cruzob Maya. In 1935, the Chan Santa Cruz from these last holdout villages signed a treaty of sorts which allowed the rest of Mexico to rule them. The jungle-wise Maya had kept the Mexican government at bay for nearly one hundred years.
COUNTER POINT IN TULUM
I visited the church of the speaking cross in Tulum years ago. Hiding in plain sight and sitting very near el Centro, it was a humble white-washed structure surrounded by trees. A narrow path with overgrown shrubs on either side disguised the entrance that led up to it. Before entering the churchyard, I passed through an enclosed area where a custodial guard sat. He gave a nod and I continued on towards the church. A posted sign instructed that shoes and hats were forbidden, as were photos.
Inside votive candles were lit and the musky scent of copal wafted through the darkened church. The interior was a large open room with seating. Straight ahead, three crosses covered in small white huipil-like veiis sat on an otherwise barren altar. The room held little else except for a Maya woman kneeling on a blanket in a rear corner. Eventually I stepped back outside into blinding Yucatán sunshine.
Huipil covered crosses (photo by Marina Hayman) |
ORIGINAL CROSS
Of the four crosses held at the counter points, one is said to be the original. Tixcacal Guardia village elders fiercely guard what they swear is the original speaking cross and let no outsiders near it. It's kept in a city within a city, much like the Vatican, according to blogger Logan Hawkes, safely hidden away from all save the Cruzob spiritual leaders—a head shaman and a circle of elders. For generations, Maya have flocked to these outposts to worship a wooden cross that became a dynamic part of their history during the Caste War of Yucatán. In Tixcacal Guardia, the church which houses the cross is open to the public on feast days only, but even then it's said the artifact is not on display. It's located on an altar covered with veils in a blocked-off section called La Gloria. No one is allowed to enter the inner sanctum and the cross is guarded day and night by Maya from the region.
Image by Sac-be.com |
FELIPE CARRILLO PUERTO
Even though Chan Santa Cruz, the rebels' capital city, now Felipe Carrillo Puerto in southern Quintana Roo, is not one of the counter points of the cross bearers, it was the main stronghold of the Cruzob Maya rebels during the war. To this day a rotating team of followers keep one week vigils at a local chapel where a flower-adorned shrine is set up in honor of the cross. Tihosuco, an hour to the northwest, is home to the Caste War Museum.
Caste War Museum in Tihosuco |
With history this unique, it's not hard to realize that the newly founded Riviera Maya is but a shell for a more mysterious land of an ancient, respected people who have had an ongoing conversation with the gods and the universe for more than a millennium.
For more information on the Maya and my writing, check www.jeaninekitchel.com. Where the Sky is Born: Living in the Land of the Maya, is available on Amazon as are books one and two in my Mexico cartel trilogy, Wheels Up—A Novel of Drugs, Cartels and Survival, and Tulum Takedown. For you Mayaphiles, my journalistic overview of the Maya 2012 calendar phenomenon, Maya 2012 Revealed: Demystifying the Prophecy, is also on Amazon.
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