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.

TRAGIC ROMANCE OF THE YUCATÁN—FELIPE CARRILLO PUERTO AND ALMA REED

 

Two names forever linked to the Yucatán are Felipe Carrillo Puerto, Yucatan’s progressive governor, and San Francisco journalist Alma Reed. Their love affair fueled pages in newspapers on both sides of the border but the unlikely outcome of this very public romance enlisted all the elements of Greek tragedy.

Reed, born in San Francisco, became one of the city’s first women reporters.  An advocate for the poor, she assisted a Mexican family in commuting their 17-years old son’s death sentence in 1921. The story was picked up by the Mexican press. Due to heightened publicity, Mexico President Alvero Obregon invited Reed to visit his country.

ENTER EDWARD THOMPSON

As a stringer correspondent for The New York Times, Reed was sent to meet Edward Thompson, lead archeologist excavating Chichen Itza.  During the visit, Reed met Felipe Carrillo Puerto, governor of the State of Yucatan.

Carrillo had commissioned a road from Merida to Chichen Itza, opening the budding archeological site to tourists and scientists.  To commemorate the event, he organized a welcome ceremony inviting North American journalists and archeologists.

UXMAL AND CARRILLO

At the ruins, Reed interviewed Thompson who’d traveled to Yucatán specifically to excavate Chichen Itza. Thompson took a liking to Reed and recklessly divulged he had dredged Chichen Itza’s sacred cenote and had taken gold and jewelry from the sacrificial victims. Astonished by the enormity of his admission, like the true-born paparrizis she was, Reed asked Thompson to sign a confession. He did.

Felipe Carrillo Puerto in Yucatán

After Chichen Itza, the entourage left for Uxmal. During this leg of the journey Reed and Carrillo got acquainted. Reed was fascinated with the charismatic Carrillo who had been called both a Bolshevik and a Marxist for his sweeping reforms.

In Reed’s interview, Carrillo explained Yucatan had been inhabited by a handful of powerful families dating to Merida’s founding in1542. These wealthy landowners were basically slave masters and notorious for their cruel treatment of the Maya. 

REVOLUTIONARY IN THE MAKING

 In 1910 Carrillo had fought alongside Emiliano Zapata in Central Mexico. From their association he took Zapata’s battle cry, Tierra y Liberdad for his own. Back in Yucatan, Carrillo claimed part Maya, part Creole heritage and began his reforms by setting up feminist leagues that legalized birth control and the first family planning clinics in the western hemisphere. As governor he seized uncultivated land from powerful hacendados and distributed it to the Maya, stating it was their birthright. He built schools. He reformed the prison system.

It was no small wonder Reed named him the Abraham Lincoln of Mexico. As a liberal she agreed with his reforms; on a personal note, she was smitten. But as a divorceé and Catholic she tried to ignore feelings she was developing for the married father of four. She left for the U.S., vowing never to return, hoping to severe ties in what was becoming amor calido (romance of the steam).

The New York Times had other plans however, and sent her back to Mexico to cover the archeology scandal that erupted due to Edward Thompson pillaging the Chichen Itza cenote. Reed had a job to do.

On her second round in Mexico, neither Reed nor Carrillo could ignore their feelings. In the ultimate taboo, Carrillo divorced his wife to become engaged to Reed. He even had a romantic song composed for her, La Peregrina (The Pilgrim).

The two idealists prepared for their wedding that would take place in San Francisco.  Reed hastened back to the City to make arrangements before her permanent move to Mexico.

SEND LAWYERS, GUNS AND MONEY

Shortly after Reed’s departure, however, another revolution seemed imminent. Fighting had broken out in the Yucatan. Henequen planters and hacendados wanted to overthrow Carrillo. President Obregon’s right hand man, de la Huerta, was opposing him and because Carrillo backed Obregon, he was also at risk. Carrillo was forced to find guns to fight both the planters and de la Huerta’s forces. To make matters worse, he now had a $250,000 reward on his head.

To secure guns and ammo, Carrillo went by night to the Progreso coast with three brothers and six friends as guards.  Just as they waded out to the launch they would sail to New Orleans where they’d acquire firearms, a Navy captain signaled to soldiers lying in wait on shore.  The soldiers rowed out and captured Carrillo who told his small group not to fight, but to go peacefully.

 De la Huerta’s forces took them back to Merida, jailed them for the night and planned an arraignment in the morning.  Carrillo refused to make a plea. He was, after all, governor of the Yucatan, and refused to recognize a kangaroo court.  He was condemned on January 3, 1924, and taken to Merida Cemetery where he, his brothers and friends were lined up against the wall to await the firing squad.  The first round of volleys was sent over their heads; the soldiers didn’t want to kill them, so fiercely local were the Yucatecans to Carrillo.

The commander ordered those soldiers to be shot, and over the dead bodies of the first soldiers, Carrillo, his brothers and friends were executed as they stood with their backs against the cemetery wall.

A MARTYR'S DEATH

 In San Francisco, Reed had been alerted that trouble was at hand. She heard the news shortly after Carrillo had died a martyr’s death, at 49.

Grave Carrillo Puerto. Photo Barbra Bishop

She returned to Merida to see the spot where Carrillo fell.  She stayed but briefly, and on arriving back to New York, was sent on assignment to Carthage to explore ancient ruins.  She would never re-marry. Her reporting life took her back to Mexico where she helped establish the artist José Clemente Orozco.

One of Reed’s fears was that Obregon had a hand in Carrillo’s death.  He had, after all, assassinated Emiliano Zapata after luring him to a truce with Pancho Villa. Reed thought Carrillo’s radicalism may have aroused opposition from the Mexican president, but she could never prove it.

The pueblo Chan Santa Cruz, south of Tulum, changed its name to honor the governor, and now is known as Felipe Carrillo Puerto.  Alma Reed died undergoing surgery in Mexico City, November, 1966. She was 77.  

Statue at Assassination Site of Felipe Carrillo Puerto. Photo Barbra Bishop

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.

WOMEN IN ARCHEOLOGY: LINDA SCHELE—MAYA SCHOLAR, ARTIST, AUTHOR—GONE TOO SOON

 

Linda Schele at Palenque (Photo Justin Kerr)

It's hard for me to write about Linda Schele. Not just because she was so central to the study and understanding of the Maya culture, their writings, civilization and how the world came to view them, but because she was my gateway into understanding the Maya. Just several short months after I'd 'discovered' her by reading her works in my bookstore smack dab in the middle of Maya country, she died at 55 from pancreatic cancer in 1998 in Austin. Since it was pre-internet days and we were in rural Mexico I didn't learn of her death until five months later—a customer broke the news. I was devastated. Even though I only knew Linda Schele through the printed page, I felt I'd lost a friend.

A FOREST OF KINGS

Schele became my Maya mentor for a number of reasons. By way of introduction, A Forest of Kings: The Untold Story of the Ancient Maya, co-authored with David Freidel, held me rapt for days. Not only was she an author, she was a woman studying and doing, taking chances in archeology, predominantly a man's world at the time (and who's to say, probably still is). She was vibrant and exciting and wrote beautiful volumes about this mysterious civilization which bordered on the mystic but were firmly rooted in science. First and foremost an artist, she wove a story about the ancient Maya, who at the time were lauded yet elusive. Her work and writings were approachable. She made remarkable progress in a short period of time. She learned the names of Maya rulers, a true breakthrough. Along with fellow scholars Floyd Lounsbury and Peter Mathews, they were first to decode a Maya king's name, Pacal, in 1973, at Palenque's Mesa Rodunda. It was the first meeting of Maya archeologists, scholars and admirers, also known as the Maya Roundtable. Pacal, by the way, was Palenque's greatest and longest running ruler. Nothing like starting at the top, Ms. Schele.

THE CALL

How did Linda fall under the spell of the Maya? A graduate from the University of Cincinnati with degrees in education and art, she was teaching studio art at the University of Alabama. In 1970 she traveled with David, her husband, to photograph Mesoamerican sites in the Yucatan for the University's collection. The next year they returned to Mexico in an obligatory visit to Palenque. "When they arrived at Palenque, she was mesmerized," wrote famed Maya photographer, artist and scholar Merle Greene Robertson, who lived and worked on site.

Palenque Temple of Inscriptions (MacDuff Everton)

"The morning they left for Uxmal we said good-bye and hoped to see each other again" said Robertson. "At five p.m., guess who appeared at the door, Linda. They'd been to Uxmal but turned around and returned to Palenque. It was the beginning of a long, dear friendship."

Meeting Robertson, her most important mentor during the early stages of her new voca-tion, drew Schele into the world of the ancient Maya, their art and their system of hieroglyphic writing, at the time not fully understood.

Schele described her trajectory like this: "I was a fair to middling painter who went on a Christmas trip to Mexico and came back an art historian and a Mayanist."

UNVEILING A DYNASTY

Schele went on to become world famous and a leading authority in her new field. She believed her background in art assisted in seeing the Maya writing in an unencumbered, less scientific manner. Soon Linda's speciality was decoding Maya hieroglyphics, especially after the 1973 Mesa Rodunda at Palenque. Prior to that, though greatly studied by epigraphers and iconologists, no one had much luck deciphering them. 

How Glyphs Were Read by Schele and Others

Concerned that Maya research was limited to a few experts with special access to key resources, Robertson's brainstorm for the Palenque gathering drew authorities, students, and local Mayanists together to hash things out. Schele, along with Mathews, an undergraduate who'd spent a year working on famed archeologist Eric Thompson's T-numbers—the only 'de-coding' attempt so far at breaking the Maya glyphs—began piecing together Palenque's history using what was called the Tablet of 96 Glyphs. Researchers understood this to depict a line of royal accession, and within hours, through a combination of luck and Mathew's intimate knowledge of glyphs, they unveiled most of Palenque's dynastic history, including the aforementioned ruler Pacal. This achievement became the stimulus that led to many later discoveries by Schele and other scholars. 

Merle (center), Fellow Scholars and Linda (right)

VERTICAL ASCENT

Schele's accomplishments moved vertically. In 1975-76 she was a fellow in pre-Columbian studies at Dumbarton Oaks, D.C., while also working with fellow scholars to accelerate the process of Maya hieroglyphic decipherment through word order in Maya inscriptions. In 1980 she was awarded a Ph.D. in Latin American Studies and her dissertation, Maya Glyphs: the Verbs, 1982, won The Most Creative and Innovative Project in Professional and Scholarly Publications, by Association of American Publishers.

In 1977 she founded the Maya Hieroglyphic Workshop at Texas. These meetings, held at UT/Austin, have become a major source for many significant epigraphic discoveries made about ancient American civilization over the last two decades.

In 1981 she continued her teaching career in the Department of Art/Art History at the University. In 1988 Schele was named the John D. Murchison Professor of Art at University of Texas.

In 1986 she organized a ground breaking exhibition of Maya art, The Blood of Kings: Dynasty and Ritual in Maya Art. The catalog, co-authored with Mary Miller, continues to be used as a major text for the field and was awarded The Alfred Barr Award of College Art Association for the Best Exhibition Catalog/1986.

CONTEMPORARY MAYA

Also in the mid-80s she expanded her academic interest to include the culture of the contemporary Maya. Along with two colleagues, she organized and presented 13 workshops on hieroglyphic writing to Maya speaking peoples of Guatemala and Mexico in order to re-introduce hieroglyphic writing and interest of the ancient Maya to the modern Maya. The Maya trained in these workshops are now actively engaged in the translation of the writings of their ancient ancestors and tutoring others to do so. Working with young Maya was her most cherished activity.

For general public interest she actively promoted making scholarly research accessible to the general public which included the annual Maya Meetings at Texas. She made numerous speaking arrangements around the world, took tours of Mesoamerican sites by Far Horizons, and wrote three more books: Maya Cosmos: Three Thousand Years on the Shaman's Path, co-authored with Freidel and Joy Parker, 1993; Hidden Faces of the Maya, 1997; and The Code of Kings: The Sacred Landscape of Seven Maya Temples and Tombs, co-authored with Peter Mathews.

Code Breakers Peter Mathews and Linda Schele, Palenque 1973 (R. Thornton)

In a 25-year period, Schele produced a number of important works on ancient Maya art, culture and writing. But she was also a hands-on Mayanist who traipsed to and explored numerous pyramid sites from Mexico to Belize and Guatemala, looking at each Maya cityscape for symbols, clues to their astronomy, meanings of rituals deciphered from hieroglyphs, and the legacies the Maya left behind. Schele's unique combination of art, history and teaching gave her a fresh and unique overview of the civilization she came to love, know, and help bring to light. Her influence on how the world views the ancient Maya is unparalleled. RIP Linda Dean Richmond Schele.

Linda Schele and Bust of Pacal

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 TRAGIC LOVE STORY OF THE YUCATAN—ALMA REED AND FELIPE CARRILLO PUERTO

 

Felipe Carrillo Puerto and Alma Reed (By Merida de Yucatan)

Star Crossed Lovers, Part 2

Felipe Carrillo Puerto, Yucatan's progressive governor of the Yucatan, and San Francisco journalist Alma Reed are two names forever linked to Yucatan history. Their romance fueled pages in newspapers on both sides of the border, but the unlikely outcome of their very public romance enlisted all the elements of Greek tragedy. 

Reed was born in San Francisco and became one of the city's first women reporters. An advocate for the poor, Reed assisted a Mexican family in commuting the death sentence of their 17-year old son in 1921. The story was picked up by the Mexican press and due to heightened publicity, Mexico President Alvaro Obregon invited Reed to visit his country.

ENTER EDWARD THOMPSON

As a stringer correspondent, she also reported for The New York Times and was sent to meet Edward Thompson, the leading archeologist excavating Chichen Itza. During the visit, Reed met Felipe Carrillo Puerto, dynamic governor of the State of Yucatan, also known as an agrarian reformer.

Felipe Carrillo Puerto, Agrarian Reformer

Carrillo had commissioned a road to be built from Merida to Chichen Itza, opening the budding archeological site to both tourists and scientists. To commemorate the event, he'd organized a welcome ceremony inviting North American journalists and archeologists. 

UXMAL AND CARRILLO 

At the ruins, Reed interviewed the famed Thompson who had gone to Yucatan specifically to excavate Chichen Itza. Thompson took a liking to Reed and divulged he had in fact dredged Chichen Itza's sacred cenote, garnering gold and jade jewelry and ornaments he'd taken from the sacrificial victims. Astonished by the enormity of Thompson's admission, like the true-born paparazzi she was, Reed asked Thompson to sign a confession, which he did.

Chicen Itza (By Frederick Catherwood)

After Chichen Itza, the assembled entourage went on to Uxmal. During this leg of the journey, Reed and Carrillo got acquainted. Reed was fascinated with the charismatic Carrillo who had been called both a Bolshevik and a Marxist for his sweeping reforms.

Caught in the Act, Thompson Dredging Chichen Itza Cenote

In her interview with the governor, Carrillo explained Yucatan had been inhabited by a handful of powerful families dating back to 1542 when Merida was founded. These wealthy landowners were basically slave masters and notorious for their cruel treatment of the Maya. 

REVOLUTIONARY IN THE MAKING

In 1910 Carrillo had fought alongside Emiliano Zapata in Central Mexico. From their association he took Zapata's battle cry, Tierra y Liberdad, (Land and Liberty) for his own. Back in Yucatan, Carrillo claimed part Maya, part Creole heritage and began his reforms by setting up feminist leagues in Merida that legalized birth control and the first family planning clinics in the Western Hemisphere. As governor, he became an agrarian reformer: He seized uncultivated land from powerful hacendados and distributed it to the Maya, stating it was their birthright. He built schools. He reformed the prison system. 

Carrillo Puerto Amongst His People (By Instituto de Anthropologia)

No small wonder Reed named him the Abraham Lincoln of Mexico. As a liberal she agreed with his reforms. And besides that, she was smitten. But as a divorced woman and a Catholic, she tried to ignore the feelings she was developing for the married father of four. She left for the U.S., vowing never to return, in hopes of severing ties in what was becoming amor calido or steamy romance as the English translation went.

Two months later, however, The New York Times sent her packing back to Mexico to cover the archeology scandal involving Edward Thompson and his dredging of the Chichen Itza cenote which she exposed. She had a job to do.

Carrillo Puerto and Reed (By Forasteros)

On her second round in Mexico, both Reed and Carrillo's feelings couldn't be ignored. In the ultimate taboo, Carrillo divorced his wife to become engaged to Reed. He even had a romantic love song composed for her, still popular today, La Peregrina (The Pilgrim). 

It seemed a match made in heaven. The two idealists prepared for their wedding which would take place in San Francisco. Reed hastened back to the U.S. to make arrangements before her permanent move to Mexico. 

SEND LAWYERS, GUNS AND MONEY

Shortly after her departure to the U.S., however, another Mexican revolution seemed imminent. Fighting had broken out in the Yucatan and henequen planters and hacendados were trying to overthrow Carrillo due to his reforms. President Obregon's right hand man, de la Huerta, was opposing him and because Carrillo backed Obregon, he was at risk. Carrillo was forced to find guns to fight both the planters and de la Huerta's forces. And to make matters worse, he now had a $250,000 reward on his head. 

To secure the guns and ammunition they would need to do battle, Carrillo went by night to the Progreso coast with three brothers and six friends as guards to catch a boat to New Orleans. Just as they waded out to the launch that would take them to the U.S. where they'd acquire the firearms needed for their revolution, a Navy captain signaled to soldiers lying in wait on shore. The soldiers rowed out and captured Carrillo who told his small group to not fight but to go peacefully.

De la Huerta's forces took them back to Merida and jailed them overnight for an arraignment in the morning. Carrillo refused to make a plea. He was, after all, governor of the state and refused to recognize a kangaroo court. He was condemned on January 3, 1924, and taken to Merida Cemetery where he, his brothers and friends were lined up against the wall to await the firing squad. The first round of volleys was sent over their heads—the soldiers didn't want to kill them, so fiercely loyal were the Yucatecans to Carrillo. 

The commander shouted that those soldiers were to be shot, and over the dead bodies of the first soldiers, Carrillo, brothers and friends were executed as they stood with their backs against the cemetery wall.  

Merida Cemetery Where Carrillo Puerto Is Buried

A MARTYR'S DEATH 

In San Francisco, Alma Reed had been alerted that trouble was at hand. She heard the news shortly afterwards that Carrillo had died in Yucatan, a martyr's death, at 49.

Reed insisted on returning to Merida to see the spot where Carrillo fell. She stayed but briefly in the Yucatan and on arriving back to New York, was sent on an assignment to Carthage to explore ancient ruins. She would never re-marry. Her reporting life eventually took her back to Mexico where she helped establish the artist Jose Clements Orozco. 

One of Reed's fears was that President Obregon had a hand in killing Carrillo. He had, after all, assassinated Zapata after luring him to a truce meeting along with Pancho Villa. Reed thought Carrillo's radicalism may have aroused opposition from the Mexican president but she could never prove the link. 

Isignia of Pueblo Felipe Carrillo Puerto

The pueblo of Chan Santa Cruz, south of Tulum, changed its name to honor the Yucatan governor, and goes by the name Felipe Carrillo Puerto. Alma Reed died in Mexico City at age 77 in November, 1966, while undergoing surgery.

Antoinette May's book The Passionate Pilgrim, the Extraordinary Life of Alma Reed, tells the story of Reed and Carrillo Puerto as does Alma Reed's Peregrina: Love and Death in Mexico.

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.