CAN MEXICO KEEP ITS JOURNALISTS ALIVE?

                                             "Being a journalist is like being on a black list."

                                          

Javier Valdez Cárdenas (theguardian.com)

MEXICO JOURNALISTS

PART 2

Mexico reporter and author Javier Valdez Cárdenas said, “The government's promises of protection are next to worthless if the cartels decide they want you dead.”

And that proved to be the case on a May day in 2017 in Culiacan, Sinaloa, where the fifty-year old journalist was dragged from his car at noon and shot 12 times in front of Riodoce, the newspaper he co-founded in 2003.

As Valdez had presciently stated, “Even though you may have bullet-proofing and bodyguards, the gangs will decide what day they are going to kill you.”

Valdez, well-known for his amiable nature, wide smile and Panama hat, was one of 119 Mexican journalists assassinated since 2000 because they dared to report news about the cartels. 

INTERNATIONAL PRESS FREEDOM AWARD

Valdez accepting International Press Freedom Award (cpj.org)

In a three-decade long career, the award winning reporter chronicled not only stories of Mexico’s organized crime, narco-trafficking, and the corruption of government officials, but also the unseen side—tales from musicians who composed the narco-corridos, mothers whose sons had been murdered, kids from unknown pueblos who dreamed of becoming hitmen. He spoke at a reception in 2011 when he received an International Press Freedom Award by the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) where he was introduced as a writer who “combined the grit of a battle hardened reporter with the soul of a 19th century romantic poet.”

In his acceptance speech he said, “The youth will remember this as a time of war. Their DNA is tattooed with bullets and guns and blood, and this is a form of killing tomorrow. We are murderers of our own future."

THIS IS A WAR

“This is a war,” he continued, “one controlled by the narcos, but we the citizens are providing the deaths and the governments of Mexico and the US, the guns.”

Javier Valdez Mural (by Julio Cesar Aguilar, theintercept.com)

He watched as mayhem ensued, recording in his writings the sins and violence inflicted by cartels on his native citizens. He wrote about countless colleagues’ deaths, but somehow, he carried on. What may have secured the nail in Valdez’s coffin occurred shortly after El Chapo Guzman, notorious Sinaloa Cartel drug lord, was extradited to the US in January 2017, after his third arrest. 

Though Valdez’s reporting on the cartels had been tolerated prior to Chapo’s extradition, his attempt to explain the power struggle taking place inside the Sinaloa Cartel after Chapo’s departure may have pushed his once untouchable status to the limit. The splintering, Valdez reported, occurred because there were now two factions in the Sinaloa Cartel. Two of Guzman’s sons, known as the Chapitos, led one faction, while Damaso Lopez, a prison warden and right hand man who helped Chapo in his first prison escape in 2001, led the other. Infighting raged well into February.

DANGEROUS LIASONS

In March a man called the Riodoce offices and spoke to Valdez, requesting a meeting after explaining he had important information. Valdez agreed to meet the man in a car in a parking lot, a risky endeavor. The man was a lieutenant of Damaso Lopez, and while sitting in the car, called his boss then passed the phone to Valdez. Lopez claimed he had not betrayed El Chapo, stating he “loved and admired” his boss. But Lopez also criticized Chapo’s sons, the Chapitos, saying they were “sick with power.”

Remembrance for Javier Valdez (cps.org)

In his career spanning decades, Valdez had reported from deep within the narco world. Most of his sources were lower down on the food chain, and Valdez protected their identity with anomynity. Printing the words of someone higher up the chain of command, like Damaso Lopez, raised the stakes, pulling Valdez and his paper into the fight. In the end, Valdez decided to print the story, believing the information was important for the public to know.

THE CHAPITOS' END GAME

Before the issue ran, he received a call from a representative of the Chapitos, requesting a meeting at a nearby cantina. The Chapitos’ envoy said that the interview with Lopez could not be published because Lopez was a cartel insurgent. Valdez said it was too late—thousands of copies had already been printed and would go on stands the next day. The next morning when delivery trucks began dropping off papers, cartel affiliates followed, buying up every copy. Few copies were seen by the public.

With that action, Valdez realized he may have reached his expiration date with the Sinaloa Cartel. He contacted the Committee to Protect Journalists and discussed relocating. He ultimately decided against the move however, thinking it would be too difficult for his family, and in the next few weeks, the problem seemed to dissipate.

In an interview with Index on Censorship just a month before his death, he explained some journalists had to flee Mexico under threat of death. In his book, Narco Journalism, he described the Mexico journalist's plight: exiled, murdered, corrupted, terrorized by cartels or betrayed by police or politicos in bed with the cartels. 

"Now they kidnap, extort, control the sale of arms, beer, taxis. They control hospitals, police officers, the army, people in government and those who finance them. The omnipresent narco is everywhere.”

Even in the newsroom. In his book Narco Journalism, he wrote that local newspapers hired the occasional reporter on payroll who was a narco plant. “This has made our work much more complicated. Now we have to protect ourselves not only from politicians and narcos, but even other journalists,” he wrote.

Valdez’s final article was about a protest in Culiacán against the deadly attacks teachers face by traveling and working in some of Sinaloa’s most dangerous areas. At least six teachers had been killed in the state that year, 2017.

NO TO SILENCE

In spite of his international profile, Valdez knew he was not protected. After fellow journalist Mirosalva Breach was shot in front of her son in Chihuahua, he tweeted, “Let them kill us all, if that is the death penalty for reporting this hell. No to silence.”

Valdez was silenced forever on May 15, 2017, gunned down in the street as he was leaving to have lunch with his wife.   At first the murder was attributed to Damaso Lopez, but Lopez testified under oath during Guzman’s trial in New York City in 2019 that neither he nor his son, Damaso Lopez Serrano, murdered the journalist. He attributed the assassination to the Chapitos, El Chapo’s sons.

But with Mexico's appalling track record on closing out cases, Valdez's true killer may never be known. Suffice it to say it was cartel related.

Valdez’s last book, The Taken—True Stories of the Sinaloa Drug War, tells the stories of ordinary people, caught in a terrifying net—migrant workers, teachers, teens, petty criminals, police officers and local journalists. Building on a rich history of testimonial literature, he recounts stories from people whose world did not center on drugs or illegal activities but on survival and resilience, and how they dealt with fear, uncertainty and the guilt that afflicts survivors and witnesses. His last book was a testament to the people of Mexico.

RIP Javier Valdez.

Javier Valdez (assassination.globalinitiative.net)

For more information on my writing, check out my website www.jeaninekitchel.com. My first book, a travel memoir, 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. Subscribe above to keep up to date with future blogs on Mexico and the Maya and the Yucatán.

STAYING ALIVE—ARE MEXICO JOURNALISTS AN ENDANGERED SPECIES?

 

                              "We are not war correspondents. The war came to us."

Reporters holding photos of murdered colleagues (photo Rio Grande Guardian)

Since 2000, 119 journalists were murdered in Mexico because they dared to write about cartel violence and corruption. Thirty-five remain missing. A 2019 report by International Institute for Strategic Studies states 23,000 were killed due to the country’s “War on Drugs,” christened as such by President Felipe Calderon in 2006. Since 2000 due to cartel violence, nearly 200,000 are dead.

Mexico is the most dangerous country in the world for journalists, according to Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ). Last December alone, three Mexican journalists were shot within ten days.

“You want to kill a journalist, you can do it without much of a chance that you’ll be caught,” said Jan-Albert Hootsen, Mexico representative of CPJ.

The Cartel Project (photo Forbiddenstories.org)

THE CARTEL PROJECT

In response to the disturbing rise of Mexican journalist murders, The Cartel Project, a global network of investigative journalists coordinated by Forbidden Stories, emerged to continue work by reporters who had been threatened, censored, or killed. Working together across 18 different countries over a ten-month period, they investigated the global networks of Mexican drug cartels and their political connections around the world.

The cornerstone of this collaborative work is Regina Martinez, journalist for Proceso, a national investigative weekly out of Veracruz. Eight years after her death in April 2012, The Cartel Project’s reporting team picked up where her work left off. Throughout her tenure at Proceso, she wrote scathing commentaries on two successive governors in Veracruz who looted the treasury and allowed cartels to operate freely with help from local and state police.

MARTINEZ'S MOXY

Martinez was on the verge of publishing a blockbuster of a story. Her reporting would disclose that traffickers and their accomplices had executed thousands of people: teenage dealers, their families, farmers, politicians, even young women who attended cartel sex parties. She’d discovered an exponential rise in the number of bodies being buried in pauper’s graves. She believed that public cemeteries were being used to dispose of victims of forced disappearances. 

Martinez interviewing AMLO, 1992 (photo Alberto Morales Garcia)

The Cartel Project noted that Martinez told a friend it was the most dangerous investigation of her career. Shortly after that confession, she was murdered in her Xalapa home, beaten then asphyxiated with a dish towel. This killing of a high-profile correspondent for a national magazine set off a wave of targeted violence throughout the country. Martinez was one of the few reporters who dared to refuse bribes or to ignore cartel threats aimed at censoring the news. She paid for it with her life.

JOURNALISTS AS TARGETS

In their investigation, the Cartel Project found that before her death, Martinez was one of a group of journalists targeted by a sophisticated espionage unit run by the Veracruz Public Security Ministry. The unit used surveillance technology and a vast network of informants to gather information, monitoring those believed to be political opponents of the governor. Leaked reports showed analysts maintained files for decades on hundreds of targets, their family members and co-workers, including info on their hangouts and political affiliations.

Martinez’s looming bombshell of an investigation was her death sentence. “She was becoming very inconvenient for people in power,” said a fellow journalist.

She was killed before her story came out. The murder investigation of her death was botched and investigators ignored the fact that her death had been caused by her investigative work. The final report stated she had been killed in a robbery gone wrong. During the ten-month open investigation, murders of journalists escalated, with ten more reporters killed in that time.

Regina Martinez (Elfaro.net)

LA CHAPARITTA

"Fearless,” said Jorge Carrasco, director of Proceso where Martinez worked as a correspondent from 2000 until her death in 2012. “Everything the local press didn’t dare to publish was published via Regina Martinez."

Born into a family of 11 children, Martinez studied journalism and began reporting news for a local Veracruz TV station in 1980. Called Chaparrita, or “little woman,” in reference to her height of 4 feet, 11 inches and 100 pound frame, she made a name for herself in the field.

“Her work was her life," said fellow journalist and friend Norma Trujillo. “She was really interested in social issues, human rights violations. She was close to the people. That was her superpower.”

It also didn't hurt that she was a gifted reporter, going after the tough stories. Three years before the H1N1 crisis exploded in 2006, she covered the horrible sanitary conditions on pig farms in La Gloria, a Veracruz pueblo that eventually was named the probable epicenter of the virus. And one year later, she accused the Mexican Army of raping and killing a 72-year old indigenous woman.

                                                                                    

THE GOVERNORS

                                                                                                         

Call to action. (Dartcenter.org)

No matter how dangerous the road, she traveled it. Her doggedness led her to investigate the excesses of power and corruption in Veracruz. That, no doubt, was her undoing. Fidel Herrera and Javier Duarte, who served as back to back governors in Veracruz, became central figures under the pen she wielded like a sword in her investigative journalism.

Under these two governors, Veracruz became the world’s most dangerous place for journalists. Since 2000, 28 journalists have been killed there and another eight disappeared— half during the 12 years these men held office. 

The Cartel Project's reporting team discovered that law enforcement authorities in Mexico, the US, and Spain had opened inquiries into allegations that Herrera colluded with the Zeta cartel as governor and took money for his campaign. He also money laundered while serving in a diplomatic post in Spain, but to date has not been charged with a crime. Duarte is serving a nine-year sentence for embezzlement and money laundering.

Part two in the series will pay homage to other Mexico journalists who died while reporting on Mexico cartels. Stay tuned.

Check out www.jeaninekitchel.com. Books one and two in my Mexico cartel trilogy, Wheels Up—A Novel of Drugs, Cartels and Survival, and Where the Sky is Born: Living in the Land of the Maya, my memoir on expat life in Mexico.

HOW THE CASTE WAR OF YUCATÁN GAINED MOMENTUM FROM A SPEAKING CROSS IN THE JUNGLE

Caste War mural by Marcélo Jiminez

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.

Subscribe above to keep up to date with future blogs on Mexico and the Maya and the Yucatán.

THE MAYA STRUGGLE THAT LASTED GENERATIONS—THE CASTE WAR OF YUCATÁN

      

Original mural depicting Caste War from Belize.com at Corozal Board Building

                                               

Living in the land of the Maya one takes for granted the solemn undercurrent of a revered, majestic culture that built pyramids, developed the concept of zero, and for centuries, quietly held their ground against the Spanish when their Aztec cousins had succumbed to The Conquest in a heartbeat.

While sunbathing on endless white sand beaches, snorkeling off the Great Meso-America Reef or simply kicking back to enjoy Mexico’s gracious hospitality, it’s easy to forget to whom one owes allegiance in Quintana Roo. But just beneath the surface of a postcard perfect existence lies a Yucatán tale that isn’t much talked about but has set the tone for the past century: the Caste War of Yucatán.

When cultures collide, history requires a winner and a loser. But in Quintana Roo after the Caste War, which began in 1847 and ended first in 1901 and again in 1935 with a half-hearted truce, it’s difficult to determine who won the battle and which side lost the war.

UNSAFE PASSAGE

From 1847 until the 1930s, the Caste War made it impossible for a light-skinned person to walk into the eastern Yucatán or the territory of Quintana Roo and come out alive. This was a place where only indigenous Maya could safely roam. Anyone with light skin was killed on sight. What caused the fierceness of this Maya uprising that lasted nearly a century?

No single element alone instigated the rebellion, but as in most revolutions, a long dominated underclass was finally pushed to its limits by an overbearing ruling class that had performed intolerable deeds. Indentured servitude, land grabbing, and restrictive water rights were but a few issues that pushed the Maya into full-fledged revolt against their Yucatan overlords.

MEXICAN WAR AND THE MAYA

Mural of Caste War in Municipal Building in Valladolid

The history of the Caste War, not unlike Mexico’s dramatic history, is complicated. Mexico’s successful break with Spain led to changes in the Yucatán government, including arming the Maya to help fight the Mexican war against the US in Texas. Maya numbers were needed to assure victory. Armed with rifles and machetes, this tactic backfired in Valladolid, considered the most elitist and race conscious city in the Yucatán.

After a decade of skirmishes, in 1847, when the newly armed Maya heard one of their leaders had been put to death by firing squad, a long simmering rebellion broke out into full-fledged battle. The Maya rose up and marched on Valladolid, hacking 85 to death by machete, burning, raping, and pillaging along the way.

VALLADOLID MASSACRE

Merida braced itself, sure to be the next staging ground for what was fast becoming a race war. In retaliation for the Valladolid massacre, Yucatecans descended on the ranch of a Maya leader and raped a 12-year old indigenous girl. With this affront, eight Maya tribes joined forces and drove the entire white population of Yucatán to Merida, burning houses and pillaging as they went. So fierce was the slaughter that anyone who was not of Maya descent prepared to evacuate Merida and the peninsula by boat.

But just as the Maya tribes approached Merida, sure of victory, fate intervened when great clouds of winged ants appeared in the sky. With this first sign of rain coming, the Maya knew it was time to begin planting. They laid down their machetes against the pleadings of their chiefs and headed home to their milpas (cornfields). It was time to plant corn—a thing as simple and ancient as that.

YUCATECANS STAGE COMEBACK

In 1848 the Yucatecans staged a comback, killed Maya leaders, and reunified. But as the Maya harvested corn planted in hidden fields, they kept fighting, relying on guerrilla tactics to preserve the only life they knew.

Throughout it all, the Maya were pushed to the eastern and southern regions of the Yucatán Peninsula and Quintana Roo, as far south as Bacalar. Mexico slowly gained control over the Yucatán, but rebel Maya held firmly onto QRoo, using Chan Santa Cruz (Felipe Carrillo Puerto) as their base.

Tired from years of struggle, the Maya regained confidence from an unlikely source: a talking cross found deep in the jungle near a cenote.

CHURCH OF THE SPEAKING CROSS

Stay tuned for Part 2 of the Caste War of Yucatán—The Church of the Speaking Cross and the Chan Santa Cruz Maya, in my next post, January 8. To learn more on the subject, The Caste War of Yucatán by Nelson Reed, one of my reference materials, is an excellent read.

Painting by Mario Jiminez

Nelson Reed's The Caste War of Yucatán

For more information on my writing, check out my website at 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 of my Wheels Up cartel trilogy, Wheels Up—A Novel of Drugs, Cartels and Survival, and Tulum Takedown, also on Amazon. For you Mayaphiles, my journalistic overview of the Maya 2012 calendar is also on Amazon–-Maya 2012 Revealed: Demystifying the Prophecy. 

Subscribe above to keep up to date with future blogs on Mexico and the Maya and the Yucatán.

A MEXICO ADVENTURE TALE: THE LOST WORLD OF QUINTANA ROO

 

Today’s Cancun radiates luxury, flash, and all things civilized. When I first traveled there in the 1980s, though it wasn’t the sophisticated resort city it is today, it was no backwater. It had a Club Med, a spiffy hotel zone, and in 1989 played host to the Miss Universe pageant. At the time, Cancun, in the state of Quintana Roo, was not well known, but its clear turquoise waters and white sand beaches served as an enticing backdrop to a world-wide audience. Cancun was ready for its close-up.

Back then, you could venture a mere five miles north or south and find yourself traipsing through tangled jungles or walking alone on desolate beaches. Though I considered myself a seasoned Mexico traveler I’d never ventured to the Yucatán Peninsula, and my introduction to its eastern shores came unexpectedly. I found an out-of-print book, The Lost World of Quintana Roo, in a vintage book shop in Moss Landing, California.

Along with a compelling cover, the dust flap intrigued me. “This is the true story of a remarkable adventure. Michel Peissel, a young Frenchman with an international background, was stranded on the coast of Quintana Roo in eastern Yucatán, abandoned by boatmen he had engaged to take him southward.” 

I was hooked.

Peissel's tale was a tall adventure indeed. Sixty years ago he walked the land, and considered Quintana Roo to be "the most savage and wild coast on the American continent."

It was a mere territory, with no laws, no government, no roads— accessible only by sea or on foot.

In 1958 this was how Peissel, then just 21-years old, discovered it. Through a strange set of circum-stances, Peissel’s fate led him on a solo walk through thick mangroves and dense jungles from the northern tip of Quintana Roo to Belize.

MEXICO SABBATICAL

On graduating from Harvard in 1958, Peissel planned a six-month sabbatical in Mexico before entering grad school for a business career. After meeting a well-traveled German writer in Mexico City, he became fascinated with a little known territory on the Yucatán Peninsula, Quintana Roo. Peissel first headed to Merida, then Progreso, where he chartered a boat to Cozumel. From there he planned to sail down the Quintana Roo coast. After arriving in Cozumel he hired two young Maya boys with an 11-foot vessel, bamboo mast and rag sail, to take him to the QRoo mainland.

After a harrowing eight-hour crossing, they arrived at Puha, a coco plantation or cocal, on the mainland. At that time the coast was entirely uninhabited except for Puha, Puerto Morelos, and Tankah. Exhausted, Peissel fell asleep and missed the second half of the journey on the Maya sailboat, which left him with a fateful decision—how to get to Chetumal in a land with no roads and virtually no people. After being abandoned, his only hope to exit the jungle was to travel on foot from cocal to cocal, relying on the assistance of the Maya who lived there for food, water, and direction.

LONG JOURNEY

Wearing only sandals as his boots left with the boat, he began his two hundred mile journey through dense jungle and mangrove swamps. He was chased by chiclero bandits (chickle cutters for gum trees) and encountered Chan Santa Cruz Indians, who until then killed any light-skinned person on sight as the Caste War of Yucatán had ended just twenty years earlier. He partook in religious ceremonies with indigenous Maya and stumbled onto unknown pyramid sites. Peissel became the first person known to walk the coast of Quintana Roo, arriving in Belize forty days later.

RETURN TRIP

It would be three years before Peissel made a return trip and in that time he found many things had changed along the QRoo coast. In 1974 Quintana Roo became a state of Mexico and shortly thereafter the Mexico Tourist Council devised a project for a planned resort community which is now present day Cancun.

Years later Peissel again returned to Quintana Roo. He paddled and sailed his way down the coast on a Maya seagoing dugout canoe. After his early adventure to Quintana Roo, he abandoned his plans to become a banker and went on to write fifteen books and produce twenty documentary films. Because of his journey to Quintana Roo, journeying to other outback destinations like Tibet, Nepal, and Bhutan would become his life’s passion. Peissel died in Paris October 7, 2011. At 74, his was an adventurous life well lived.

On a personal note, I was contacted by the author after I wrote a review of the 1963 Lost World publication in 2000 for the Miami Herald. The review reached Peissel in Paris; he located me through email and thanked me for it. He mentioned the book was out of print and if f I knew of a publisher who might want to re-publish, to let him know. I had few publishing contacts, but I was excited to have been contacted by Peissel. I later heard from his brother Bernard who explained he'd read the review and forwarded it to Michel. We remained in contact and it was Bernard who informed me of Michel's passing.  

                                        

But my six degrees of separation with Michel did not stop with the review. I traveled to Paris and one of my stops was Shakespeare & Company. Owning a bookstore in Mexico as an expat drew me to this famous Parisian landmark. By chance I met the owner, George Whitman. Though an ocean apart, we were kindred spirits—expats with bookstores on foreign soil. When I told him about Alma Libre Libros, he asked what part of Mexico it was in.

I said Quintana Roo. And then the conversation got real interesting. "Quintana Roo? Quintana Roo! I walked Quintana Roo when I was young."

"You've been there?"

"Oh yes, in the thirties I traveled through Mexico. My visa ran out and I helped build a bridge between Chetumal and Belize to get my papers in order." 

"Have you read The Lost World of Quintana Roo?" I asked. "By Michel Peissel?" 

"Michel, of course. He'd come into the bookshop when he wa a student at the Sorbonne. We often talked about my travels in Quintana Roo."

So Peissel had piggy-backed onto Whitman's true life adventure. Whitman was his game changer as Peissel was mine. I'd come full circle, from finding an out-of-print book in California that became the heart of my Mexico desire, inspiring me to travel south and settle as an expat in Mexico. To top that off, I accidentally met Whitman in Paris, who connected the dots with Peissel. Aaah, life can be sweet.

Though the book is out of print, it's possible to find copies through various sellers. It's a compelling tale. Climb aboard and be ready for a fascinating armchair adventure. 

For more information on my writing, check out my website at www.jeaninekitchel.com. My first book, a travel memoir, Where the Sky is Born: Living in the Land of the Maya, is available on Amazon as are books one and two of my cartel trilogy, Wheels Up—A Novel of Drugs, Cartels and Survival, and Tulum Takedown, also on Amazon.

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 Vintage photographs are taken from The Lost World of Quintana Roo.