MAYA TRAIN MAKES INAUGURAL VOYAGE ON YUCATÁN PENINSULA

 

Tren Maya

Tren Maya, a high-caliber, high-cost infrastructure project connecting both the eastern and western coasts of the Yucatán Peninsula while crossing five states in southeastern Mexico inaugurated its first phase of the 1,525 kilometers of railway tracks on December 15. 

Beginning in Cancun and ending in the Gulf city of Campeche, Mexican President Andrés López  Obrador (Amlo) projected it will provide travelers an alternative to driving long distances between major attractions on the Peninsula and initiate new jobs in the process, lifting southeastern Mexico’s economy. 

With one phase partially ready and two still incomplete, the $28 billion dollar train, originally estimated to cost $9.8 billion USD, remains highly controversial. On completion, the rail will feature 34 stations-five states.

Depending on who you talk to, it’s either “the greatest railway project built anywhere in the world,” (Amlo) or “an attack on the environment and the Mayan identity,” (Pedro Uc, member of the Assembly of Mayan Territory Defenders, Múuch X’ilinbal).

At first the cries were but a whimper, with conservationists, the occasional archeologist, or Riviera Maya environmentalist sounding alarm. But now, after nearly three years of overwhelming construction and forest purge, the cries of elimination and contamination have been heard from as far off as The South China Post, Japan Times and New Delhi Times to newspapers much closer to home. This 'feat' promised by the Mexican president has been both lauded and maligned in media coverage everywhere. 

LARGEST JUNGLE IN THE AMERICAS

The Riviera Maya, which the train passes through, is the largest jungle in Americas after the Amazon and the 947 miles of tracks resulted in cutting of 3.4 million trees, according to the Mexican government. Environmentalists suggest the real number is closer to 10 million, as reported by The Guardian.

Tren Maya Route Map

With little transparency and a near delinquent lack of geological testing, an unknown amount of underground caves and ancient Maya cenotes, fresh water sinkholes sacred to the Maya but also an intrinsic part of their water requirements, are at risk. 

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.

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 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.

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."

When interviewed by NBC Latino, Lidia Camel Put, a resident of one area being cleared said, "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," she said.

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."

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.

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.

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. 

Tracks Outside Valladolid

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.

MEXICO'S MARVELS—CENOTES OF THE YUCATAN

 

Cenote in Yucatan 

Tangled green vines brush against my face as I trek behind our guide deeper into the low-lying Yucatan jungle. The narrow, gnarly path—recently cut by machete—oozes damp, musty smells.

It is July, rainy season in Mexico, and temperatures are in the nineties, a veritable heat wave. We’re in search of a cenote, a clear fresh water pool, also known as a sinkhole here in the Yucatan, a place the Maya named Sian Ka'an or Where the Sky is Born.

Although the Maya used these ancient wells as their water source in an arid land that offered few rivers, our search is for recreational purposes. We plan to cool off in the cenote’s crystal waters, to swim and maybe snorkel.

Traipsing through thick forest growth alongside a mangrove swamp, little did I realize this jungle spot forty miles south of Cancun and just seven miles north of Playa del Carmen (Tres Rios) would many years later become a major resort. With a wave of the hand, our guide motions us to follow.

Tres Rios cenote (haciendotresrios.com)

We ford the stream behind him and into a clearing. Now surrounded by brilliant green foliage, the scene becomes a primeval forest. The clarity of the cenote is beyond comparison. Gazing into it I see mangrove tree trunks reaching up from the pool’s bottom, breaking the waterline and stretching high into the tropical sky. 

Cenotes are plentiful in this part of Mexico and have become a favorite tourist attraction as vacationers discover they’re an ideal place to cool off in the sultry climate of the Riviera Maya. Nearly five hundred are known to exist in the Northeastern Yucatan where Maya civilization flourished for 3500 years from 2000 BC to 1521 AD. 

Cenote Bang by USGS.gov

To the Maya, a culture made great by ruling dynasties and strong religious beliefs, cenotes were more than just a water source. The Maya believed cenotes were the sacred entrance to the underworld of spirits where Chaac, the rain god, lived. On a parched peninsula, Chaac ruled in a long line of spiritual dieties. Water is life.

Of the Yucatan’s numerous cenotes, perhaps best known is the Sacred Cenote at Chichen Itza, a ceremonial center known for towering pyramids and spring and fall equinox displays of shadow and light. The vertical wall cenote has a diameter of 160 feet and measures 60 feet from its lip to the water surface below. Made famous by archeological explorer Edward H. Thompson, this well brought forth its diabolic history when Thompson dredged it in 1904.

Thompson knew Maya life intertwined agriculture, religion and water. Due to agricultural needs to feed a burgeoning  population, the Maya calendar was developed to determine auspicious dates for planting and harvesting. Thompson also knew the calendar was interpreted by the priests, but as their promises failed to bring rain, he’d heard human sacrifices were thrown into the cenote to appease Chaac. He was also positive that along with the maidens, other offerings would also have been made.

The Boston explorer tested his theory by creating a diving aparatus and taking diving lessons, hiring a Greek diver to assist him, traveled to Boston to buy a derrick and thirty-foot boom, designed his own diving apparatus, and shipped it all to the Yucatan.

Edward H. Thompson (photo americanegypt.com)

On his return, he dove and dredged the Sacred Cenote daily. Finally, about six weeks in, he came up with gold and copper discs, figures of Maya gods and the clincher, human skeletons. His exploration of the cenote proved that human sacrifice was indeed a part of Maya life, with human sacrifice hopefully giving them access to the rain god and his whims.

Chicen Itza's cenote is but one of many in the Yucatan. Part 2 will explore how cenotes were formed and give details on some of the more popular ones on the Peninsula. Stay tuned.

For more information on the Maya, Mexico and the Yucatan, check out my website, www.jeaninekitchel.com. My travel memoir, Where the Sky is Born: Living in the Land of the Maya, is available on Amazon.com. Also on Amazon, are books one and two in my Mexico cartel thriller trilogy, Wheels Up—A Novel of Drugs, Cartels and Survival, and Tulum Takedown. Subscribe to my blog above for my writings on Mexico and the Maya.