HOW SAN FRANCISCO IGNITED THE RIGHT STUFF IN EMERGING ARTIST FRIDA KAHLO

Frida Kahlo, Self-Portrait with Monkeys

THE EVOLUTION OF FRIDA

Though much has been written about Frida Kahlo, one of the most celebrated women artists of our time, little is mentioned of her travels in the United States and specifically San Francisco in the 1930s, a period that shaped her voice as an artist. Her year in San Francisco also made a lasting impact on the city's local art scene.

Frida in America*—The Creative Awakening of a Great Artist, by Celia Stahr, documents her time in Gringolandia, as Kahlo nicknamed her neighbor to the north. According to Stahr, no other author has explored her body of work while living in the States in depth and there hasn't been a major Kahlo biography since Hayden Herrera's in 1983. However, Suzanne Barbezat's 2016, Frida Kahlo At Home, does an excellent job portraying key aspects of the artist's life and works with many visuals. 

BY TRAIN TO SAN FRANCISCO

Shortly after her marriage in 1929 to Diego Rivera, known for both his art and politics, they traveled from Mexico City to San Francisco. Rivera had been commissioned to paint a mural at the Pacific Stock Exchange, now the City Club. This would be Frida's first trip outside Mexico. After a stop to see friends and art dealers in Los Angeles, they headed to San Francisco by train. The tracks followed the Pacific, and sitting in the train car she sketched a picture of San Francisco which she had dubbed long before seeing it, "the city of the world." This drawing, now lost, included a city scene with rectangular skyscrapers and the ocean along with a self-portrait.

In Montgomery Street Apartment by Paul Juley

At 23, more than 20 years younger than her world famous husband, she was a novice painter while Rivera was at the height of his creative powers. When they stepped off the train, Rivera recalled he was "almost frightened to realize her imagined city was the very one we were now seeing for the first time."

FAMILY TIES

Frida Kahlo's Parents, Guillermo and Matilde 

Born to Guillermo Kahlo, her German father, and Oaxacan/Tehuantepec mother, Matilde Calderón, Frida had long planned to go to medical school and studied at the Prepa in Mexico City. Her university plans changed abruptly in September 1925 while riding a city bus that was hit full speed by a trolley on her way home from a shopping trip. In the accident, a metal pole impaled her pelvis, leaving her spinal column broken in three places along with a broken collarbone, pelvis and some ribs. She was in the hospital in a full plaster body cast for a month, but returned home six weeks later. Though told she would never walk again, with fixed determination, she began to walk haltingly in three months. No doubt part of her rapid recovery after the excruciating accident was due to the strength training she received with her father's help after contracting polio at age six. Guillermo trained her to be a strong athlete which provided her the freedom that usually only came to males in that era.

THE ACCIDENT'S EFFECTS

Sketch by Frida Kahlo of Bus Accident, 1926

Kahlo's horrifying accident irreversibly changed the course of her life—from a former student studying medicine to a budding player in the creative world of art. After the interruption of her medical studies, her drawing and painting took on greater significance as her physical movements were curtailed. Before the accident, Frida always accompanied her father, a professional photographer, on his photo shoots. He suffered from epilepsy and Frida's presence was a safeguard for both her father and his equipment should a seizure occur while he was working. It created a very close father-daughter bond. While her father tested out various settings, she would often serve as a model and learned to pose at an early age which served her well in the future as she gained fame.

The Bus by Frida Kahlo, 1929

Because of her physical limitations from the accident, she could no longer assist her father. Her mother realized the girl needed a creative outlet and hired a carpenter to create a lap easel. Matilde also suggested placing a mirror atop the bed's canopy for self-portraits. Soon after, Frida began applying pigment to small canvases and began drawing what she knew best—her friends and family. One of her early influences was the art of Leonardo Da Vinci and she tried using his techniques and symbolism in her paintings and iconic retablos.

COMRADE FRIDA

Frida Kahlo Painting in Bed (Artzocam)

After the accident she was introduced to the Communist party through a friend, Tina Modotti, an Italian American photographer and political activist who'd lived in Mexico since 1923. Through Tina's influence, Kahlo committed herself to communism after extensive reading about the Russian Revolution. In Tina's group, she was re-introduced to muralist Diego Rivera. She'd previously met him while he was painting a mural at the Ministry of Education where she goaded him to come off his scaffold and look at one of her paintings. He was duly impressed and later said her painting revealed "an unusual energy of expression and precise delineation of character."

By 1928 they began seeing each other after his divorce from second wife, Lupe Marín. Though he was a notorious womanizer, something about Frida kept him coming back. It could have been her blunt honesty or her raw talent as an untrained artist, Stahr writes. Along with that, her unconventional beauty was combined with a quick mind and sharp wit. Their interest in both art and politics ignited the relationship, plus they were attracted to the importance of creativity, black humor, and a passion for social justice.

Diego Rivera's Murals in Ministry of Education
Where He Met Frida

MEXICANIDAD 

They'd see each other at Tina's meetings and Rivera would take her home. There they'd discuss painting and its importance to a new post-revolutionary indigenist movement, Mexicanidad, which was often a topic in Tina's magazine, Mexican Folkways, where Rivera served as art director. Mexican Folkways' articles discussed excavations of Aztec sites, regional crafts and music traditions, children's art, and photos of diverse people and regions in Mexico.

In 1929, as her relationship with Rivera evolved, she joined the Communist Youth League. It was at this time she went into her full gender-neutral fashion look, wearing overalls or work outfits, no dresses, completed by a little black iron and sickle pin she wore on her collar.

Frida's Casa Azul, Coyoacán

A NEW LOOK

But when they married late that summer, Frida stepped out with a new look. Her wedding ensemble was a long ruffled skirt, white peasant blouse, and rebozo shawl, considered to be simple street clothes. To Frida, this outfit aligned her with working class indigenous women, indicating she was part Indian, thanks to her mother's family roots. Soon after, she began wearing a prominent jadeite necklace engraved with an Aztec symbol, the olin, found on the carved Aztec Calendar Stone. The carved glyph represented movement or the movement required to shift from one world into another, said Stahr. 

METAPHYSICS AND SYMBOLISM

Kahlo was a student of metaphysics and revered alchemy, the transformation of matter. She was well aware of symbolism and how it could stir the masses. Her peasant blouse emphasized her leftist leanings as a woman of the people as well as her purity as a young bride. She identified as a mestiza who was proud of her country's revolutionary ideals. In her marriage dress and in her first portrait painted as a married woman, Self Portrait, Time Flies, she laid out an intricate mythic framework of her desired alchemical union with Rivera, author Stahr stated. Rivera came to mysticism through his father, a Freemason and Rosicrucian. Kahlo came to it through her studies in all schools of philosophy at Prepa and through books friends shared with her. Metaphysics was at its height worldwide in the 1920s and 30s and the inquiring mind of an intelligent teen was like a sponge in water. Frida soaked it up and went on to use many symbolic principles in her paintings and retablos.

In San Francisco, from the moment they stepped off the train, she literally stopped traffic. Her ensemble had locals halting mid-street to stare at her in her huaraches under a long peasant skirt, green striped shawl, and dangling earrings as they made their way to Montgomery Street, part of the old Barbary Coast where the artists' co-op they'd live in was located. "Even in this bohemian section of San Francisco," remarked photographer and friend Edward Weston, "the sight of this unknown Mexican woman created excitement."

Allegory of California by Rivera in the Pacific Stock Exchange, 1931

LA INDIA BONITA

Weston's photos of Frida during her San Francisco stay along with those of Imogen Cunningham would come to be known as the best taken of her in that period. Weston captured her physical strength in strong arm and back muscles, along with her political strength as an indigenous woman. His photos helped establish this important symbol of her identity. She proudly wore her rebozo which conveyed allegiance to indigenous women throughout Mexico. His photos showed a striking, thoughtful, indigenous woman.

"Frida was creating a new persona of the indigenous Mexican woman by combining the traits of beauty and intelligence," Stahr wrote.

Frida in Rebozo (Toni Frissell, 1937)

Some of Kahlo's caricature can be attributed to a beauty pageant that took place in Mexico when she was 15. A newspaper sponsored a beauty pageant for indigenous women called La India Bonita. Publisher Felix Palavicini, a former revolutionary, wanted to validate Indian female beauty and the pageant was the thing. A young Nahuatl-speaking 14-year old woman from Sierra Norte de Puebla won, becoming the new face for Mexican indigenous women. This inspired Kahlo. In San Francisco she solidified her "La India Bonita" persona and brought together indigenous pride with a modern twist. Her long peasant skirts also served another purpose: they covered up her right leg and injured foot.

Diego's studio was on the top floor of the co-op where he worked daily on sketches for his new mural. With Diego absent, Frida painted "quite a lot, almost all day long," she wrote her mother. She wanted to have an exhibition in San Francisco and worked hard to create enough paintings for one. From the beginning of their relationship, said Stahr, they related to each other as painters and things didn't change in San Francisco.

WOMEN ARTISTS

Frida in San Francisco
(Imogen Cunningham)

Rivera and Kahlo hung out with artists, rubbing shoulders with prominent writers and photographers. Kahlo met and bonded with Dorothea Lange shortly before her Depression era photographic journey through America. Meeting women artists was an additional benefit to Kahlo on their west coast sojourn. These friendships became a great source of strength. She made art weekly with two women from the co-op where they painted wildly inappropriate things, swore, smoked, and laughed. For Kahlo, this was a time of creative freedom allowing her to delve into taboo topics, helping her to find her own voice. San Francisco's MOMA stated "Her style moved from a broad, mural-like handling to a folkloric mode based on 19th century Mexican portraiture."

In that era, women had to take advantage of any opportunity that came their way. Soon Frida's experimentation would pay off. Though women were banned from the Bohemian Club where male artists gathered, they formed the San Francisco Society of Women Artists with organized exhibits at the Legion of Honor. Though not a member, Frida benefited. Her American art debut took place at one of the society's annual exhibitions and in it, she displayed her marriage portrait.

A PHYSICIAN WITH HEART

"Frieda" and Diego Rivera (Marriage Portrait)

During their time in the city which included long meandering walks, late nights, and hours of painting, her leg began to ache more and more. At this time she met Dr. Leo Eloesser, who from day one would become a stabilizing force in her life. He gave her thorough examinations and recommendations that proved beneficial to her physical and mental well being. The doctor clicked not only with Kahlo but with Rivera as well and their friendship was lifelong. Frida said he had the heart of a musician, which he was. With a medical practice by day, he played viola at night. He also spoke fluent Spanish making communication easy. 

Frida's most profound experiences on the west coast would occur north of the city. When neighbor and sculptor Ralph Stackpole and his girlfriend Ginette whisked the two away to Bohemian Grove in Monte Rio, 70 miles north, she was in awe. Though off limits to women, Stackpole would have been able to get Frida in as a guest. She wrote her mother that she felt reverence when she stepped onto the grounds, in the presence of thousand year old sequoia redwoods.

Frida and Diego at Luther Burbank's Gardens

LUTHER BURBANK'S INFLUENCE

Shortly after that adventure, Stackpole and Ginette took them to Luther Burbank's house in Santa Rosa. Though the horticulturist had been dead four years, his widow Elizabeth discussed at length her husband's legacy. Burbank had created more than eight hundred varieties of hybrid fruits; he had been inspired by Charles Darwin, writing, "Nature selected by a law the survival of the fittest...the fitness of the plant to stand up under a new or changed environment."

Luther Burbank by Frida Kahlo

They walked his gardens to feel his presence. The grounds were "magical," Frida said. Already an avid admirer of alchemy, "Luther must have seemed an alchemist, transforming existing varieties of plants into new ones," wrote Stahr. Back in her studio, Kahlo's mind went to work painting Burbank. Her 1931 Portrait of Luther Burbank shows him partly as soil and partly human, a major departure from any of her paintings up to that time. Many art scholars consider this work to be her creative breakthrough.

PERFECT STORM

Scholars also say that by living in a foreign country as she was beginning to define her artistic path, she was being exposed to a kaleidoscope of new sights, experiences, artists, and ideas. Her encounters at the Bohemian Grove's ancient redwoods and viewing Luther Burbank's gardens had a profound affect on her, along with the weekly creative experimentations she enjoyed with her women artist friends. Though her art drew upon a vast body of knowledge rooted in her Mexican upbringing, she synthesized it with new experiences she'd gained in California. It was the perfect storm for a creative-inventive-intuitive like Kahlo. Not only did San Francisco have the right stuff, but so did Frida Kahlo. 

Part 2 of Frida in America explores the next step in their U.S. journey as she and Rivera head to New York and Detroit.

*Frida lived in Mexico which is North America. The author Stahr's Frida in America refers to the United States of America.

If you enjoyed this post, check out my other works, Where the Sky is Born: Living in the Land of the Maya. It's available on Amazon with tales of expat life and living within 100 miles of four major pyramid sites. Also, check out my website at 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 available on Amazon where you can find my overview of the 2012 Maya calendar phenomenon, Maya 2012 Revealed—Demystifying the Prophecy. 

    

MAYA ARTIST AND SCHOLAR MERLE GREENE ROBERTSON'S IMPACT ON THE MAYA WORLD

Dos Pilas, Stela 16

Merle Greene Robertson was an artist, scholar, and Maya explorer, but these are merely labels. Her entrance into the study, portrayal, and exploration of the Maya culture was a catalyst for introducing the ancient Maya to the modern world through art, photography, and exploration of numerous Maya sites. After reading her autobiography, Never in Fear, she well could have been the glue that stuck it all together, and with fellow scholars, shaped an understanding of the Maya civilization. She galvanized others—as an organizer, planner, dynamo. She knew everyone in the field, from Eric S. Thompson and Alberto Ruz to Michael Coe, George Stuart, and anyone and everyone who came after.

INCIDENTS OF TRAVEL IN YUCATÁN

Her enthusiasm and limitless energy in regard to Maya culture made her a fulcrum at the very moment the Maya re-emerged on the world stage after an unduly long absence. The first European and American explorers who stumbled onto these pyramid sites in the 1840s were floored by what they saw. A blockbuster bestseller in 1846, Incidents of Travel in Yucatán, written by John Lloyd Stephens with drawings by Frederick Catherwood, two explorers who entered Maya sites at Uxmal, Chichen Itza, and Copan for starters, literally blew the collective mind of the world. No one had any idea that intricate stepped pyramids lay hidden, covered by centuries of vines and foliage, deep in Mexican and Central American jungles. Before the release of Stephens' and Catherwood's book, the word "bestseller" had not yet been coined. 

Frederick Catherwood Drawing

Incidents of Travel in Yucatán, Vol. One

The world clambered for more knowledge of this mysterious unknown civilization, hidden in southern rainforests of North America.

Stephens' concise writing along with Catherwood's magnificent drawings assisted in shaping the identity of one of the world's great civilizations—the Maya. Previously unknown, they were now in an iconic limited club along with other greats such as Egypt, Greece, Rome, China, India, and Persia.

ROBERTSON AND HER WORK

Robertson is nearly indefinable, so interwoven was the role she played with her Maya work over the past 50 years—from assisting in breaking the Maya hieroglyphic code, to co-founding the Palenque Roundtable talks, trekking to and exploring scores of pyramid sites in Mexico and Central America. Not to mention the body of work she left of an ancient archeological rubbing technique using Japanese ink on rice paper.

Robertson created beautiful reproductions of countless stela, columns, tombs, sarcophagus lids, often produced in the most unfavorable circumstances—trekking through rugged terrain and dense rainy forests crawling with snakes and bothersome mosquitoes, including the occasional close call with grave robbers. A life of leisure was never to be hers. She wouldn't have wanted it. Not unlike Frederick Catherwood's drawings, Robertson's sublime rubbings brought the Maya to the world visually.

Ixkun Stela 1 (Merle Greene Robertson)

ANCIENT TECHNIQUE

Finished Rubbing, Stela 16, Dos Pilas

Merle Greene Robertson was a legend in the world of Meso-American studies and Maya epigraphy. With over five thousand rubbings to her name and thanks to a generous heart, many of these gems have landed in museums and universities throughout the world. She not only explored these faraway Maya sites but shared her knowledge with others. Many expeditions included lucky students who accompanied her in what for each of them would no doubt become the experience of a lifetime.

As an anthropology student at New College of Florida, Carol Wheeler, anthropologist and writer from Guadalajara, Mexico, spent summer, 1977, in Palenque to prepare her undergraduate thesis. A former art major, she planned to do field drawings at the site. She explains how she met Robertson along with artist, author, and Maya scholar, Linda Schele. 

"Both Linda Schele and Merle Greene Robertson were in residence that summer," said Wheeler. "I followed them around like a puppy dog, earnest and annoying as only undergrads can be. They were so kind and gracious about it. Linda listened to my questions and explained their work in her Texas accent and Ms. Robertson invited us to her cottage in the afternoons for lemonade... In my mind, Howard Carter had nothing on these brilliant women."

Never in Fear

NEVER IN FEAR 

With a career that spanned close to 60 years, it will be impossible in this single post to condense all that Robertson accomplished. In reading her autobiography, Never in Fear,  I didn't expect to be so wowed—but I was. Turning page after page of her many accomplishments and explorations, it seemed she lived her life in warp-speed.

So, do we shape our lives, or are our lives shaped by our experiences and those we meet along the way? After stumbling onto Robertson's autobiography, it seems her future unfolded while she was growing up in rural Montana where she developed an interest in Native American culture.

EARLY BEGINNINGS

A Doubtful Handshake, Charles Russell 1910

Born in Great Falls, Montana, she lived on land flanked by the Rocky Mountains. Her interest in Native American culture was ignited when her father took her on visits to see Blackfoot Indian chiefs. She was also influenced by nearby Montana neighbor Charles M. Russell, one of the greatest western artists of the US. Both Russell and her father encouraged her interest in art and drawing. The duo of meeting Blackfoot Indians and watching Russell paint may have shaped her future early on. 

Eventually her family moved to Seattle. She attended university in California and graduated with a degree in art. Later she attended the Instituto Allende in San Miguel de Allende, Mexico, where she studied watercolors, oils, photography, and mural painting for three summers before earning her MFA from University of Guanajuato.

Afterwards she went to Tikal, Guatemala, to work on a University of Pennsylvania project where she made architectural drawings of the Central Acropolis. At that time she also started recording monuments by means of rubbings. The technique is an ancient one, with earliest known rubbings taken either from Buddhist texts on wooden blocks in Japan, 8th century, or from rubbings practiced in China, 2nd century. But Robertson brought it to an art form. Her perfection of the technique showed how rubbings could be a means of documentation of Maya relief sculpture.

SUMMER EXCURSIONS TO MAYA COUNTRY

Central Acropolis, Tikal (Afar)

Robertson's working life was as a teacher at Robert Louis Stevenson School in Pebble Beach, California, where she met her second husband, Lawrence "Bob" Robertson. In the summer of 1960 they began taking students to Guatemala and Mexico for summer vacation. The main purpose of the jungle trips was to record in photos and rubbings the magnificent monuments on which the ancient Maya carved. Even as early as the 1960s, the looting of Maya sites was becoming common and Robertson's desire was to record as much of the Maya civilization as possible before it was hacked to pieces or sold off to private collectors.

PALENQUE AND PACAL'S TOMB

Though Tikal initially stole her heart since it was her first jungle excursion, once in Mexico, Palenque replaced Tikal as her number one site. Her documentation of the site was revolutionary. She started with the Temple of the Inscriptions. In order to photograph it before beginning her rubbing, giant scaffolding needed to be constructed of mahogany beams and planks for her to stand on. Nothing she did was easy. Her rubbing of Pacal's sarcophagus lid, Palenque's greatest ruler, took super-human tenacity.             

Sarcophagus Lid of Pacal, Palenque

In her words, "The first thing I started on was the Sarcophagus lid, down in the crypt of the Temple of the Inscriptions. A rubbing had never been done before and for that matter, it had never been photographed head on, only at an angle, by Alberto Ruz...I worked locked in with only a lantern to see by. It was quite a trick getting myself on top of the lid. It took seven sheets of rice paper (1 x 2 meters) to do the rubbing. Also, I had to use oil paint instead of sumi ink; there could be no way I could work on so much space and keep an inked area from running into the sheet of paper next to it. After two weeks of working on the Sarcophagus rubbing, doing several parts of it over time, I felt that Pacal was not only my friend but a long lost relative."

After the lid, she began on the side. "I was ready to do the glyphs around the edge of the Sarcophagus lid...Standing in the water on the floor of the tomb, trying to do the rubbings and not getting the paper wet was no small feat, especially since the space between the walls of the crypt and the sarcophagus was barely wide enough for me to stand. All of the rubbing equipment had to be kept on top of the sarcophagus, making it difficult to reach when standing on the floor.

THE SCULPTURE OF PALENQUE

"Inch by inch, as different features of the ancestors of Pacal emerged, it was as though I was speaking with these dead kings—I now knew them, could call them a name. Being alone in the tomb was like being in their world long ago."

Temple of Inscriptions, Pacal's Burial Site

The results of her Palenque work in the 1970s was documented in a series titled The Sculpture of Palenque, in which she precisely detailed how the intricate structures were built, layer by layer. She searched out pigment sources in that region to exactly duplicate the colors used by Palenque artists, all those centuries ago. The impressive collection of Merle's rubbings represents a major archive of Maya stone monuments throughout the Maya world and has been a major resource for scholars studying the culture.

At Palenque, she met Moises Morales, head guide and major domo of the site. Her friendship with Moises and the Morales family would be a staple in her and Bob's lives for decades. At first they rented a room from him and later built a house next to his in the La Cañada compound in the 1970s.

Temple of the Sun
Reconstruction Painting

Merle and Bob worked together on the Maya projects—she as artist and he as jack of all trades, performing behind the scene duties that greased the wheels. Their presence in Palenque became an interest to traveling scholars and even tourists, and their house, Na Chan-Bahlum in Palenque, became a meeting place for every archeologist working in Chiapas, the Yucatán Peninsula, and Belize as their door was always open. Palenque is where Linda Schele and Merle met and became fast friends.

A MAYA ROUNDTABLE IN PALENQUE

 In 1973, much was beginning to gel in the Maya world. Through conversations initially with Linda Schele and soon with other Mayanists, an idea emerged, the story goes. Why not have a gathering of like minds? They put together a list and in September, sent out feelers for a get-together. Soon after the letters went out, Merle heard from famed archeologist Michael Coe. He suggested that December would be a good time. Not much notice. But the idea struck a nerve and the first Maya conference took place mere months later, mid-December, 1973, and through discussions, lectures, late nights, and visits to the pyramid structures footsteps away, it served as a beginning to breaking the Maya hieroglyphic code and figuring out just who the ancient Maya were. The conference was named Primera Mesa Redonda de Palenque.

The topics on the table ranged from art, history, chronology, iconography, early explorers, inscriptions, sacrifice, trade, and the surrounding area. Word soon got out and everyone came: guides, archeologists, scholars, artists, students. Fourteen universities from the US, Mexico, and Canada came and everyone was asked to have a paper ready to give as a lecture on the art, architecture, or iconography of Palenque. The second year, 1974, the governor of Chiapas, Gobernador Dr. Manuel Velasco Suarez, opened the ceremonies in Palenque's Municipal Auditorium, it had grown that much. The first had convened in Merle and Bob's house in Palenque, Na Chan-Bahlum.

Temple of the Inscriptions (Merle Greene Robertson)

BREAKTHROUGH AT FIRST CONFERENCE

That first year's highlight was the discovery of the names of Palenque's rulers by Floyd Lounsbury, Linda Schele, and Peter Mathews. The second year's highlight along with the governor presiding was the attendance of archeologist Dr. Alberto Lhuillier Ruz, famous for his discovery of the Tomb of the Temple of the Inscriptions where Pacal's sarcophagus was buried.

Eventually, through the melding of minds, the Maya hieroglyphic code was broken, the turning point being the first Roundtable in 1973. But that is another story. 

Robertson was asked to do The Florida Project and finished it in 1976—beautiful reconstructive color paintings of the Temple of the Sun and Palenque trade, six feet in height each. Other panels accompanied these as well.

Rubbing from the Platform of the Eagles and Jaguars, Chichen Itza

Bob and Merle lived in Palenque and helped host Mesas Redondas until Bob's death in May, 1981. Merle went on to do many more Maya rubbings in the Yucatán, specifically at Chichen Itza, where at Hacienda Chichen, Robertson was given her own suite which became headquarters for her crew. After the Chichen Itza project, Merle traveled the world, visiting other archeologists, artists, and friends while painting and walking ancient ruins everywhere on the planet. 

MAYA SITES VISITED

During her time studying and recording the Maya, these are some of the pyramid sites she worked at: Tikal, Sayaxche, Dos Pilas, Aguateca, Itsimte, Naranjo, Tamarindito, Ixkun, Ixtutz, El Peten, Seibal, Yaxchilan, Lubaantun, El Baul, Bilboa, Jimbal, Uaxactun, Lamanai, Caracol, El Palmar, Calakmul, Copan, Palenque, and Chichen Itza.

Merle Greene Robertson died at her home in San Francisco in 2011. She was 97 years old. 

If you enjoyed this post, check out my other works, Where the Sky is Born: Living in the Land of the Maya. It's available on Amazon with tales of expat life and living within 100 miles of four major pyramid sites. Also, check out my website at 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 available on Amazon where my overview of the 2012 Maya calendar phenomenon, Maya 2012 Revealed—Demystifying the Prophecy, can also be found. 

WHAT IS THE SOLSTICE AND WHY DID THE ANCIENT MAYA REVERE IT?

 

June 21 is the summer solstice and the longest day of the year. From now until winter solstice in December, we will lose sunlight each day. Due to the Earth's orbit and daily rotational motion, such as the wobble in the Earth's axis, the time and date of the solstice varies from year to year. Both the solstice and the equinox were important to the ancient Maya, and one cannot be explained without understanding the other. Here's why.

The Maya punched numbers and astronomical calculations that could make our heads spin, but nothing was more meaningful to them than the movements of the sun.

Maya Scribe (Latin America Studies Organization)

The Dresden Codex, one of three paperbark books that survived the mass destruction of Maya documents by Spanish zealots in 1562, is filled with numbers—mostly calculations for lunation cycles and Venus tables. And one of the Maya's main calendars, the Haab, is tied to the earth's rotation. They calculated it at 360 days, with five "extra days" at the end that were considered unlucky time. The Maya were naked eye astronomers, and through sheer volume, they assimilated countless facts about the planets and the impact of the earth's rotation through centuries of observance.

Portion of Dresden Codex (Frederico Custodio)

It's known that the number four held great importance to them. Some archeologists suggest it could be very basic: the body has four limbs with the heart at its center; a house has four corner posts; a milpa cornfield has four entrances; and the sun has four paths it takes on its seasonal journey—two solstices and two equinoxes. Other scholars suggest that the number four symbolized wholeness and is associated with Ahau, the Sun God. In K'iche', the word for day is the same word as sun, and a day is one complete passage of the sun.

Made with 2 images from Project Gutenberg
and CIA's World Facebook via MS Paint

The Maya also observed four cosmic points, which may possibly relate to the four posts of the sun's daily journey: sunrise, noon, the sun on the horizon at dusk, and lastly the nadir, just before the sun moves into the underworld. Scholars call these the four points of the Maya cosmos, and emphasize these are nothing like our cardinal directions of north, south, east and west.

The most relevant positions of the sun are the solstices and the equinoxes, even to us today. For the Maya sky gazers, these were of supreme importance and they paid homage to these positions.

If you've gone to Chichen Itza on a spring or fall equinox to watch the performance of the sun's descent from the top of Temple Kukulkan to the bottom of the staircase ending at the serpent's mouth, you've no doubt been awed by the experience. 

Chichen Itza at Equinox with Serpent's Shadow

Onlookers believe they share a moment in time with the ancient Maya, for legend has it that the Maya also witnessed the same image a thousand years ago. Kukulkan, one of the most monumental of all their sacred works, was the Maya god of rejuvenation and his effigy symbolized the renewal of life.

Why did the Maya immortalize the equinox in this bi-annual spectacle of astronomical showmanship? Although no one knows for sure, scholars believe rites of agriculture may have been the basis for the concept and design of Kukulkan's slithering serpent. Since Kukulkan symbolized rejuvenation, the March date coincides with planting cycles and a September date coincides with annual harvest, which in itself is a renewal of life, for it allows food for the winter months.

Native Corn in Mexico 

The equinox is unique because on that day, in March and September, night and day are equal.

The solstices represent a similar idea, as they are twice a year occurrences and on these days the sun reaches its highest or lowest altitude in the sky above the horizon at solar noon. 

Winter solstice, which we've just observed, is the traditional beginning of the earth's yearly cycle. Though I never adhered to the end calendar belief of the 2012ologists who claimed 2012 would be the end of time, John Major Jenkins, author of Maya Cosmogenesis 2012, had a point when he suggested the solstice was so important to the Maya that they placed  buildings in alignment with its zenith.

                                                   

Jenkins believes that a stela at Izapa (a site in southern Mexico that may or may not be Maya) leaves a code for us to decipher. In particular, Group F Ballcourt, which displays what Jenkins calls creation imagery, is aligned within one degree of December solstice sunset and the June solstice sunrise direction. He claims this could have been no coincidence.

Archeo-astronomer Anthony Aveni states there are at least 73 city alignments to the solstice throughout the Maya world. He thinks there is evidence for a solstice-based calendar. He leans towards June because it marks the time of the peak rainy season in the year.

El Caracol Observatory at Chichen Itza (Veteezy.com)

At Chichen Itza, the equinox is visible through a window in El Caracol Observatory's tower. And the great ballpark at Chichen Itza, the largest known ballcourt in the ancient Maya world, encodes many alignments involving the Milky Way and the solstices. The ballcourt was aligned with the Milky Way at midnight on June solstice 865 AD, and if one had stood in the center of the ballcourt on that night, the arc of the Milky Way could have been seen touching the opposed horizons to which the lengthwise axis of the ballcourt pointed. Overhead, one would have seen where the Milky Way and the ecliptic cross.

Picture of Milky Way (Discovery)

This incredible symmetry was planned on a grand scale. The why's and wherefores we may never know, but what we do know for certain is this: the Maya were well aware of the solstice and equinox dates and they paid homage to them in the most obvious way. They were so important that they commemorated them by building ethereal stepped pyramids that lasted for centuries that would align with both solstice and equinox, and are still viewed with wonder to this day. Today we view the solstices as the shortest and longest days of the year, and know once December comes, the earth will soon be tilting towards the sun, reaching for more light. 

If you enjoyed this post, check out my memoir, Where the Sky is Born: Living in the Land of the Maya. It's available on Amazon with tales of expat life and living within 100 miles of four major pyramid sites. Also, check out my website at 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 available on Amazon where my overview of the 2012 Maya calendar phenomenon, Maya 2012 Revealed—Demystifying the Prophecy, can also be found. 

Lead photo: Welcoming Winter Solstice, is from the Navajo-Hopi Observer.

UP THE RIO NEGRO, DOWN TO THE AMAZON

 

In 2008, I cruised the Amazon on a 90-foot 19th century replica of a Brazilian riverboat for seven days. Our journey began in Manaus, a Covid hotspot in 2020 and one of the world's hardest hit areas, where it was necessary to dig mass graves due to the high death toll. This article first appeared in the Sunday Living section of The News, Mexico City, March, 2008.

River Boat Tucano (My Brazilian Tours)

I sat with Edivan, one of our two jungle guides, inside the sunny, wood-paneled salon of the Motor Yacht Tucano, an elegant 90-foot, nine cabin replica of a 19th century Brazilian riverboat, and watched lush, pulsating rainforest float by as we headed up the Rio Negro. 

LAST OUTPOST OF CIVILIZATION

We were cruising through the world's largest river island system, the Anavilhanas Archipelago in the heart of the Amazon, sometimes called the lungs of the planet, and by mid-afternoon we'd be well past Manaus, Amazonas, a former frontier settlement with a population of 1.5 million, known as the last outpost of civilization. 

Map of Amazon Basin (Brazil Travel Guide) 

"Is there hope for the future of the rainforest?" I asked the serious, competent man who would show the 12 of us on board both the obvious and hidden beauties of the vast eco-system we were entering.

"That's like asking do you believe in God?" he countered. "You've got to have faith in something. Me, I have faith in the forest but I believe it can get better. We can get better. But people's ignorance always gets in the way.

"Today everyone is more worried about the state of the forest, not just for the trees, but for its food, its oil and it's vegetables."

"I read," I interjected, "in 2003, almost 150,000 square kilometers of Amazon's rainforest disappeared, about the size of New Hampshire. Is this ongoing?"

RUBBER AND SOY

Edivan, Our Guide

"Because of globalization," Edivan continued, as a shadow crossed his face,"we are all merged together. The future looks very dark but many things are happening. Before the problem was rubber."

"Like with Chico Mendes?" I asked. "The environmentalist who stood up to the rubber industry when 180,000 rubber trees were destroyed along with a million valuable hardwoods?"

"In 1988 Mendes was murdered for his beliefs," Edivan said. "Now it's not the rubber industry. It's not even cattle ranching. Now the threat is soy. If anyone stands up to the soy producers, they will die."

He sweeps his hand past the finely crafted mahogany windows toward the translucent green forest and that dark, flat river,

"See how thick the forest is? The Rio Negro, this part of the Amazon, has heavy sediment from falling leaves which creates a high pH balance and turns the water black. It makes it hard for life, for fish, to survive, unlike the Amazon where everything thrives. Maybe a thousand people live in this large region. Maybe. I don't think they can bulldoze it down here." Finally I saw the possibility of a smile.

I gazed out at 150-foot high trees. They're staggering in height although in reality, I thought they'd be taller. I was told by Aguimaldo, our indigenous guide, that farther inland, they are. Anything you can see from shore has already been cut, so this could be second or third generation.

HEART OF THE AMAZON

My dialogue with Edivan continued on this seven-day journey into the heart of the Amazon. Daily we divided into two groups, climbed into outboard rigged wood canoes, and took excursions up small tributaries and canals off the Rio Negro. We saw ringed kingfishers, pink dolphins, blue macaws, red macaws, white-throated toucans, three-toed sloths, squirrel monkeys, green ibis, reddish egret, wattled Jacanas, black nun birds, Amazon kingfish, yellow cacique, puffbirds, black collared hawks, white-tailed trojans, and crimson topaz hummingbirds. For starters.

Reflection of Trees on Amazon (Research Gate) 

We took forest walks wearing leather leg chaps from knee to ankle for protection against snakes. We saw buttressed trees, bullet ants, medicinal plants. We met a subsistence farmer and his wife who grow manioc root and process it into tapioca. We stopped at a boat building factory in a local village where the Tucano was built ten years ago. We saw the flooded forest where water levels will rise 20 feet in just a few months. We sat in canoes at dawn to watch the sun rise over the river. Occasionally we would get caught in a light, tropical rain storm.

Cruising the River 

In between excursions we came back to the boat to eat incredible food prepared by Gemma and Angelina, our cooks, from the smallest most cramped kitchen you can imagine. The dining room buffet at meal times overflowed with fresh salads and fruits—some which I hadn't seen before—along with rice and beans,  vegetables, chicken, occasionally a meat dish, and always a spectacular freshly caught fish.

Tucano Dining Room (My Brazilian Tours)

The desserts make me gain weight by proxy. Even at breakfast there's cake on the table and at dinner, not only cake but a Brazilian custard made with papaya, coconut, pineapple, or crème brulée or flan. Some nights there would be something conjured from manioc root, the food staple which takes shape in everything from cakes to breads. And no meal was complete without fresh squeezed juice.

WELCOME TO THE AMAZON

We'd landed in Manaus in the heart of the Amazon rainforest to begin this journey in late January. Copa Air dropped us from Miami into a small, dilapidated airport where one unruffled immigration officer diligently stamped tourist visas. On the side of the runway, four vine-covered DC 10s languished in various stages of mold and decay, a startling example of nature at work. Welcome to the Amazon. 

Convergence of Rio Negro and Amazon (by Isopada)

The Motor Yacht Tucano river trip would combine the best elements of the Rio Negro for 300 kilometers north before heading back to the Amazon, or Solimoes River, as it's known to the locals, where we'd see the confluence of the waters. The Rio Negro's black water converges just outside Manaus with the white or café au lait colored Amazon. It's a spectacular sight, this distinct color variation that stretches for seven kilometers.

I'd researched the trip intensely before deciding on the Tucano. It was either that or a people's ferry. The guidebooks I'd read all assured me I'd have everything stolen on the ferry plus I'd have to sleep in a hammock, possibly on an open deck, with strangers. No. No. No. Twenty years ago I wouldn't have thought twice about it, but this was now.

HOTEL TROPICAL

We arrived a few days early and checked into Hotel Tropical, a well-preserved, gentile grandy with 600 rooms, 13 kilometers from Manaus. Towering tress surrounded walled gardens that circled the hotel. Our drive passed the hotel zoo, the tennis courts, the carefully marked trees, on a wide asphalt road. I spot white columns rising over a sweeping entrance. Inside, a 40-foot atrium adjoins a long, L-shaped reception desk. Heavy dark woods prevail along with high-vaulted ceilings. I'm ensconced in my favorite type of luxury—colonial turn-of-the-century in a jungle setting. Heaven. 

Vintage Luggage Label, Hotel Tropical

In Brazil, size is not an issue: everything is huge. We walk what seems miles to our room; the bellboy shows us into an attractive 30 x 40 foot suite with French doors overlooking a terrace. Dark wood trim adorns all closets and mirrors as does the Brazilian granite—Jacinta, speckled grey-rose-black—that I will soon identify in every bathroom, every bar, every countertop throughout the country.

At this point I still haven't seen the water flush the opposite way as I've heard it does in the Southern Hemisphere. The hotel has low flow toilets but not so for the shower. With the mighty Amazon just 200 feet from our window, the shower blasts me with the force of a fire hose, filling the glass shower stall and floor so quickly I turn off the faucet a moment so the drain can catch up. We languish in this gracious spot two days before boarding the Tucano.

YOU CAN'T PICK YOUR NEIGHBORS

"Do you know what an alligator feels like? It feels like a purse, ha ha," laughed one of the less lustrous of our travel companions. "Or a pair of boots."

Thank God there were ten others who could drown out this bloke's personality disorder. On booking the cruise, my main fear was the human factor—not snakes, piranha, or jaguars. I feared the species Americana Erectus—the strident mouthpiece I seemed to never avoid, even by moving to Mexico. After a few days I removed myself from conversations and sought solace and found it. In the upstairs deck.

THE UPSTAIRS DECK

Painted spic-and-span white and peppered with lounge furniture I enjoy the balmy breezes and near 360 degree views of river and forest. In the morning the river is flat as a lake and Dante Inferno red. The perfectly mirrored reflection of trees in the water is apparent even under cloudy, mottled skies. From my vantage point I see a half moon of green wild rice, shockingly florescent in color, like a stubbled layer of beard on a man's chin. I hear a flock of scarlet macaws jabbering in the distance long before I see them; their brilliant feathered bodies jettison out of faraway trees, all the while squawking incessantly.

Author on Tucano's Upstairs Deck

I rejoin the group for most outings but now I've located my escape hatch and retreat back to it a few more times before the journey's end. Our last day is spent on the Amazon at the confluence of the waters. We're two degrees off the equator and a full moon rises that night in the tropical sky. Gazing out at large container ships in the distance, I'm glad I could take this journey into Amazonas, a place that is far from fully explored, where there is more Amazon rainforest and indigenous people than any other place in Brazil.

Living Section, The News, Mexico City 2008

RAINFOREST UPDATE: Deforestation Statistics in Brazil's Rainforest (Reuters) 

Year-to-date deforestation in Brazil remains nearly double what it was during January to August, 2018, before Jair Bolsonaro became president and took immediate steps to weaken environmental enforcement prompting a boom in logging. A Reuters news agency witness traveling in southern Amazonas state during August (2021) saw massive fires billowing smoke miles into the air with the haze blanketing the landscape. Many fires were near the edge of existing cattle pastures. Much of the burned land will likely become pasture too, with cattle ranching the main driver of deforestation, according to a draft of a landmark study compiled by 200 scientists and published July 2021.

Smoke from Burning Vegetation in Amazonas state (Reuters)

If  you enjoyed this post, check out my memoir Where the Sky is Born: Living in the Land of the Maya. It's available on Amazon with tales of expat life and living within 100 miles of four major pyramid sites. Also, check out my website at 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 available on Amazon where my overview of the 2012 Maya calendar phenomenon, Maya 2012 Revealed—Demystifying the Prophecy, can also be found. 

  

TRIBUTE TO A MERIDA TRADITION—ALBERTO'S CONTINTENTAL PATIO RESTAURANT

                                    

Plaque on Alberto's wall (Yucatán Times)

Since the holidays are upon us, what better time to reminisce about food and places we just couldn't get enough of. My pleasure with Alberto's Continental Patio restaurant in Merida went so far that I even wrote it into the story of Wheels Up—A Novel of Drugs, Cartels and Survival.

"Clay and Layla stopped in front of Alberto's Continental Cuisine, a white-washed mansion turned restaurant a few blocks from the main plaza. After a quick nod of acceptance from Layla, the couple entered. Inside they discovered an oasis filled with antiques and art.

The back wall displayed Madonna art, all in wood and brass next to an ethereal painting of a floating Guadalupe along with a twelve foot cross displayed amid Maya idols. They walked up polished marble stairs to where an older gentleman in a tired business suit stood next to a mostradore." 

Alberto Salum (by Joe Stines)

For the record, Merida is a city obsessed with food, from street vendors selling peso-tasty tacos and salbutes to high-end establishments sporting white tablecloths, silver candelabra, and old school wait staffs trained to anticipate your every need. Alberto's fell into the latter category.

ALBERTO SALUM

Though Alberto's Continental Patio has been closed since 2013, then reincarnated as Patio 57 until 2018, I'm sharing a memory of both the iconic restaurant and it's equally charming and loquacious owner, Alberto Salum. It is with great sadness I report Alberto died October 1, 2021, in Merida. He was in his eighties.

Outdoor patio, during Patio 57 reincarnation. (TripAdvisor)

His great-grandfather had migrated to Mexico from Syria in 1894, and Alberto and his brother José were Mexican born and bred, perfect delegates for the glories and grandeur of the country, city and peninsula they called home. Alberto's Continental Patio was an ode to not only their chosen city, Merida, but to foods native to Merida, the Yucatán Peninsula, and Syria, their family's homeland, though the restaurant's Lebanese dishes were borrowed from their great-grandfather's recipes. 

MENU POTPOURRI

What? you say. How does one combine shish kebab, baba ghanoush, and hummus with chicken pibil, gulf seafood, and margaritas? With innovation and grace, found in copious amounts at Alberto's. It's why, as stated in Alberto's obituary in the Yucatán Times, "the strikingly handsome dining spot was full of character, with an eclectic collection of antiques, paintings, and sculptures."

And oh, what an assortment of art! I stumbled onto the restaurant on an early trip to Merida in the late 1980s. Wanting to not be too near the main plaza, we began to make wider concentric loops around the tourist district and hit pay dirt when we fell upon Alberto's at Calle 64 and Calle 57. 

Foyer of Alberto's Continental but during Patio 57 years

We entered and climbed the marble stairs that stretched onto a long, welcoming foyer. Before us on the left we viewed a wall chock full of grand paintings. Directly in front of us was a massive credenza. Standing next to it was a tall older gentleman in a tired business suit. He smiled and made a slight bow. Could it be Alberto? Indeed it was!

"Dinner?" he asked, waving menus with a flourish. We nodded.

"Dining room?" He pointed to a well-lit room on his right filled with a long center table and a number of four-tops placed around it. Crisp white table cloths and silver candelabra lit by gorgeous glass chandeliers gave the room a patina of pageantry and decorum. "Or," and he paused theatrically as he pointed to his left, "The courtyard garden?" 

CHOICES

A difficult choice. I couldn't take my eyes off the lavish dining room with its sublime lighting, the pomp and circumstance.

He must have seen the pickle I was in. Glamorous dining room or jungly courtyard that bore a tumble of palms, orchids, bromeliads and dead center, the largest banyan I'd yet to see. White linen-draped tables surrounded the massive tree and an ornamental bar to one side boasted more art—but this time with crucifixes in every conceivable material. They cluttered the wall above a liquor-laden mahogany counter, a dueling oxymoron of sin.

Wall behind bar in a more recent iteration (Yucatan Times)

But that first night, I was drawn to the spacious dining room with its sublime lighting and decorum. An obliging smile crossed his lips. "First would you like a cocktail in the courtyard? A margarita? Then we'll move to the dining room."

We followed him as though he was the Pied Piper. He moved towards the Holy Bar to mix up a couple concoctions after seating us with another flourish at the perfect table. We were the only customers to be had. We fell on the drinks as though we'd spent a waterless month in the Sahara. A not wholly unexpected second round was to follow.

As we entered the dining room. Alberto found us another perfect spot. Only one other table was occupied at the far corner of the room and the couple appeared ready to depart. He brought menus, we ordered, and after we finished a delectable meal, he walked over to check if everything had been up to par.

AND SO IT BEGINS

Here is where the true story begins. Or as Alberto would often say, "And that's how my story began in the land of Yucatán."

"Would you like to see my private collection in the back?" he asked without fanfare.

Indeed we would. He took us down a hall crowded to near overflow with antiques and paintings into a small crowded room. The walls were crammed with oil paintings. Pre-Columbian style artwork sat on the floor—statues, plaques, artifacts. He had numerous stories about it all and we were rapt listeners as this highly unusual raconteur talked on. He told us the building itself dated back to 1727 and was adorned with some of the original stones from the Maya temple it replaced. The mosaic floors were from Cuba. I'm sure much more was said but one can only take in so much. (Damn those margaritas).

Mosaic floors in Patio 57 phase (TripAdvisor)

Perhaps this occasion of seeing his back rooms and hearing unbelievable stories of Merida, the art world, the Yucatán and his early life in nearby pueblo Sisal as a cloth salesman before opening the restaurant, a short stint in Palo Alto, CA, as a dentist, and archeological tales about pyramid sites—not to mention the great food—were what bequeathed him early on a successful business that was lauded by numerous and well-known reviewers. His secret: he treated the place as if it was his own living room.

THE HEYDAY

According to obit writer Lee Steele, Merida had already changed quite a bit from its 1960s, '70s and 80's heyday, back when it was listed in guide books and travels stories. In 1985, The New York Times food writer R.W. Apple Jr. included Alberto's "lime soup" and excellent Arab dishes in a nationwide list of recommended dining spots. And ten years later, Susan Spano, also of the Times, called Alberto's a "culinary institution."

"At my courtyard table there, I could see the stars between the branches of an ancient rubber tree snuggled against the wall. Candles glowed. A guitarist played. The menu featured Mexican, Yucatan, and Lebanese dishes—which make surprisingly happy plate mates," she wrote. Even Diana Kennedy, famous expat Mexican author, in her Essential Cuisines of Mexico cookbook clocked in when she described being in his kitchen and charbroiling a chicken for the recipe Pollo en Escabeche.

Outdoor patio (Yucatan Magazine)

Alberto's was a romantic restaurant of the old school. The curved Moorish arches, the mosaic floor. And, as stated by Yucatán Times, it's antiquity was underscored by the countless antiques and oils, archeological relics in this softly lit over-the-top charming hacienda.

What star was I born under that I could experience Alberto and his cuisine over and over again? Every chance I had I dragged our family and guests that three-hour drive from Puerto Morelos to Merida. We'd spend the night in the Gran Hotel in the historic district, play all day in Merida's many markets and shops and walk its narrow streets. Around seven we'd head over to Alberto's. It's still a fond memory for them all, I am delighted to say; you simply cannot forget Alberto. 

"No one met Alberto and left without a story, a memory, or artifact," said Joe Stines, a close friend.

Gran Hotel in Merida

If you enjoyed this post, check out my memoir Where the Sky is Born: Living in the Land of the Maya. It's available on Amazon with tales of expat life and living within 100 miles of four major pyramid sites. Also, check out my website at 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 available on Amazon where my overview of the 2012 Maya calendar phenomenon, Maya 2012 Revealed—Demystifying the Prophecy, can also be found.