THE DECLINE OF MEXICO'S MENNONITES: FROM AG POWERHOUSE TO CARTEL COURIER AND FOREST PILLAGER

 

Mennonites in Campeche at Harvest (Photo Reuters)

In Cancun we'd often see Mennonites in straw cowboy hats hawking cheese wheels at downtown stoplights. Smack dab in the middle of a thorough-fare, young men in Bib overalls would stand fearlessly on the center line, waving their products as cars zoomed by on both sides. We later learned the Men-nonites had a long history with Mexico and the Yucatán stretching back to the early 20th century.

The Mennonites trace their roots to a group of Christian radicals who emerged during the Reformation in 16th century Germany. They opposed both Roman Catholic doctrine and mainstream Protestant religions and maintain a pacifist lifestyle. They emigrated to North America to preserve their faith.

In the 1920s a group of 6,000 moved to Chihuahua in northern Mexico and established themselves as important crop producers. In the 1980s a few thousand moved to Campeche on the edge of the Maya Forest which is second in size only to the Amazon. According to Global Forest Watch, a non-profit that monitors deforestation, the Maya Forest is shrinking annually by an area the size of Dallas. In Campeche, the Mennonites bought and leased tracts of jungle land for farming, some from local Maya. 

Burning Fields in Campeche

In 1992 Mexico legislation made it easier to develop, rent or sell previously protected forest, increasing deforestation and the number of farms in the state. When Mexico opened up the use of genetically modified soy in the 2000s, Mennonites in Campeche embraced the crop and the use of Round Up, a glysophate weedkiller, designed to work alongside GMO crops, according to Edward Ellis, a researcher at Universidad Veracruzana.

Higher yields meant more income to support large families. For the Mennonites, a family of ten children is not uncommon. They typically live simple lives supported by the land and choose to go without modern-day amenities such as electricity or motor vehicles, as dictated by their faith. But their farm work has evolved to use harvesters, chainsaws, tractors. While most Mennonite communities remain in Chihuahua, now another 15,000 Mennonites also live in Campeche.

Mennonite Girls in Cleared Field (Photo Reuters)

Presently the tide has turned on deforestation in Mexico and both ecologists and the government that once welcomed the Mennonites' agricultural prowess believe the rapid razing of the jungle by these new ranches is creating an environmental disaster. The Maya Forest is one of the biggest carbon sinks on the planet and the habitat of endangered jaguars, plus 100 species of mammals to which the jungle is home.

A 2017 study published by Universidad Veracruzana showed that properties cleared by Mennonites had rates four times higher for deforestation than other properties. Under international pressure to follow a greener agenda, the Mexican government has persuaded some Mennonite communities to sign an agreement to stop deforesting the land. But not all communities have signed such an agreement.  

In speaking to Reuters, a Mennonite school teacher in a pueblo on the edge of the forest stated that the agreement has not impacted the way they farm. The Mennonites have signed on an attorney who states they believe they are being targeted by the government due to their pacifist beliefs while other land destroyers are not bothered.

Between 2001 and 2018, in the three states that comprise forest growth in Mexico, 15,000 square kilometers of tree cover was razed, roughly the size of the country Belize. With changing weather patterns and less rain, harvests are smaller in general for all concerned, both Mennonites and the indigenous Maya.

The Campeche Secretary of Environment, Sandra Loffan, clocked in stating the Mennonites did not always have the correct paperwork to convert forest land to farm land. An agreement was signed last year, 2022, to create a permanent group between the government and Mennonite communities to deal with land ownership and rights, and disagreements that arise including those from locals stating the Mennonites are abusing logging rights.  

Typical Mennonite Buggy

But this is only one of the Mennonites' problems in Mexico. Ten years ago connections between the community and Mexican cartels were exposed when a mule pipeline from Chihuahua to Alberta, Canada, was discovered. In this unlikely alliance, the pacifist Mennonites were growing tons of marijuana for the cartels and shipping it north, smuggling it in gas tanks, inside farm equipment and cheese wheels. For background, in an old ABC interview, Michael LeFay, Immigration and Customs Director in El Paso, stated a Mennonite network emerged long ago. What began with marijuana expanded into cocaine smuggling. When customs officials at the U.S. border looked into a car and saw Mennonites, he explained, officials waved them through. Mennonites were a common sight at the border and frequent travelers from Mexico to Canada because many Canadians from Manitoba and Ontario have Mennonite family members in Mexico. 

Mennonite Man with Cheese Wheel

Though the Drug Enforcement Agency's (DEA) issued a statement decades ago that only a few members of the Mennonite community had links to violent cartels, facts proved them wrong. In the 1990s not all Mennonite families owned land; they fell on hard times. At the same time the tenets of their faith drew questions from a younger generation raised in Mexico where there was no legal age restriction to buy alcohol or cigarettes. Vices began to creep in. It wasn't uncommon, an ABC newscaster reported, to see young Mennonite teens drinking Corona and smoking cigarettes after a Sunday church service once their parents left the church parking lot.

Reports started to trickle in: a Mennonite man was accused of smuggling 16 kilos of coke across the U.S.-Canadian border in 2012. Jacob Dyck faced charges of conspiracy to import $2 million of cocaine and possession for purpose of trafficking.

Then along came the Canadian TV drama Pure, earning a place in Canadian pop culture about Mennonites connected to the cartels. But DEA agents were still trying to get their heads around it, tsk-tsking the outrageous idea that Mennonites had a corrupt streak. DEA Agent Jim Schrant was quoted as saying a "large scale marijuana and cocaine distribution group run by Mennonites with cartel connections seemed bonkers." 

Though Schrant was aware that a huge drug distribution group was operating in Mexico and shipping large quantities into the U.S. he believed it was being run by individuals only. Then along came the story of Grassy Lake, Alberta, a rural town of 649 souls where 80 percent of residents were Mennonites. In time the DEA got wise and outed the town as the distribution hub for an international weed and coke smuggling operation linked to the Juarez Cartel.

31-Hour Drive from Mexico to Canada

A widely publicized case against Abraham Friesen-Rempel, 2014, had the DEA intercepting 32,500 phone calls believed to be linked to Juarez Cartel drug activity. Although Friesen-Rempel played only a minor role as driver, he'd delivered 1575 pounds of pot for the cartels. Convicted of smuggling drugs, he received a 15-month federal sentence. And so on, and so forth.

It's believed that the cartels lean on the Mennonites because they share a common bond of anti-government sentiment. Staunchly private, the Mennonites shun government interaction and their fierce sense of privacy aligns them with the philosophy of the cartels. Also, for decades they never got a second look at the border. The perfect cover for illicit border crossings. 

So now, though the drug implications are tamped way down, the government is extremely dissatisfied with the deforestation done by their farming tech-niques. Mexico's President Andres Manuel Lopez is pressuring them to shift to more sustainable practices. The government plans to phase out glysophate by 2024 which would lower harvest yields and their incomes.

"That's a consequence all farmers, Mennonites and locals, might have to pay to save the environment," said Campeche's Secretary of Environment Sandra Laffon.

If you enjoyed this post, check out  Where the Sky is Born: Living in the Land of the Maya, on Amazon. My website is www.jeaninekitchel.com. Books one and two in my Mexico cartel trilogy, Wheels Up—A Novel of Drugs, Cartels and Survival, and Tulum Takedown, are also on Amazon. And my journalistic overview of the Maya 2012 calendar phenomenon, Maya 2012 Revealed: Demystifying the Prophecy, is on Amazon.

EXPLORER AND PHOTOGRAPHER ALICE DIXON ADDS THE MYSTIC INTO MAYA EXPLORATIONS

Alice Dixon LePlongeon

At 22 years old, Alice Dixon met Augustus Le Plongeon, a world explorer of antiquities, in London, in 1871. Le Plongeon, 26 years her senior, traveled to Europe after successful journeys to South America and California. His extensive explorations in Peru and Chile led him to London to study Mexican and Maya artifacts and manuscripts at the British Museum where they met. 

Considered an amateur archeologist, Dixon, a second generation photog- rapher, photographed ruins at Chichen Itza and Uxmal alongside her husband.

Alice Dixon's father, Henry, was a copper-plate printer who became a successful photographer and was recognized for his development of panchromatic photographic for his photos of London architecture. Alice learned the principles of photography from her father and worked as his assistant in his studio.

SPIRITUAL INFLUENCES

Another family member with a strong influence on Alice was her uncle, Dr. Jacob Dixon, who practiced spiritualism. Alice became involved in that movement at a young age, participating in seances at her uncle's home.

As for Le Plongeon, in Peru he studied earthquakes and explored the country's archeological sites, including Tinhuanaco which he photographed while trying to assimilate clues as to who the builders of that empire might have been. In combination with his own Peruvian explorations, he'd read the works of John Lloyd Stephens and Frederick Catherwood, explorers of the Yucatan in the 1840s, and came to believe that civilization had early origins in the New World and he began to form philosophies on the world's great civilizations.

A few years into his South American sojourn, Le Plongeon heard of the California gold rush and jumped a ship to partake in that historic event, spending several years in gold country where he speculated on land and became a surveyor. There he managed to earn thirty thousand dollars in profits, enough to fund his trip to Europe as well as future South American travels. 

In Europe he stumbled onto a new photographic technique that used paper instead of metal and urged the inventor to teach him the process. This would serve him well when uncovering Yucatecan ruins, enabling he and Dixon to document their discoveries. Their photos of Uxmal and Chichen Itza remain some of the best ever taken as they show the pyramid sites as they stood for eons, long before archeologists re-discovered them.

HONEYMOON IN MEXICO

Soon after meeting, Alice and Le Plongeon were married. For their honey-moon they set sail for Cuba then onto Mexico, where they planned to explore ancient pyramid sites. They landed in Progreso, Yucatan, in 1873. 

A bout with yellow fever for Alice dampened their arrival but Le Plongeon nursed her back to health. During her recuperation the two studied Yucatecan Maya and became acquainted with local scholars. They believed communicating with present day Maya was an important step to interpreting the past. Alice remained a champion of the Maya her entire life, and wrote about them long after she left the Yucatan.

Alice in Palace of the Governors, Uxmal

Their first visit to see pyramids was at Uxmal, forty miles south of Merida. They were awed by the size of the site and camped in the Governor's Palace, sleeping on hammocks. They both took photos, cleared the land to better see the site and were determined to return again later.

Camping at Uxmal

CHICHEN ITZA

The number one item on the Le Plongeons' bucket list was Chichen Itza. He'd heard from a local that a sacred codex was buried there in a building with many chambers and he believed he could further his eccentric theory of Maya world supremacism if he could locate the text. Their timing overlapped the Caste War of Yucatan, and Piste, the pueblo nearby, was overrun with Chan Santa Cruz Indians. Le Plongeon, determined to search for the desired text, asked local authorities to post soldiers at the site as security.

He located the building, could not locate the text, but the building's lintel contained numerous glyphs which he believed could further his theory. He took 500 stereoscopic photos of the hieroglyphs, and he and Alice traced a number of murals and made molds of them in bas relief.

QUEEN MOO AND PRINCE CHACMOOL

They fixated on the Upper Temple of the Jaguars near the ball court. It was 1875. Workers discovered a large slab with carved figures holding outstretched arms. Le Plongeon called it Atlantis. Murals on the walls depicted village life, war scenes and rulers in court. The explorer concluded this was a generation of Maya rulers whose totem was an eagle or macaw. He declared it a symbol of a Maya princess who he christened Queen Moo (Maya for macaw). Her brother he named Prince ChacMool, powerful warrior, a reference to jaguar in Mayan. This flimsy attempt at a scholarly decision became the basis for his Maya myth as the center of world civilization and placed him squarely at odds with fellow archeologists of the time. His Maya "myth" led to much derision and plagued him his entire career.

The fabricated myth about a Maya princess and her warrior king brother who had been forced to flee Egypt, bringing their philosophies of the Maya with them, seduced the two at-one-time prominent Maya notables. They were viewed as the Maya world's "new age" scholars due to this far-fetched belief and the theory branded Le Plongeon as an eccentric crackpot, earning him disdain from those in his field. 

Excavation of ChacMool at Chichen Itza

Yet in spite of his oddball theories, Le Plongeon discovered the famous statue, ChacMool, five feet long weighing hundreds of pounds, which is virtually synonymous with Chichen Itza and the ancient Maya. Originally spelled Chaacmool, Maya for powerful warrior, the word was misspelled as ChacMool through a mis-translation by one of his missives to a benefactor. The ChacMool statue was lauded by the American Geographical Society as a great archeological find. The Le Plongeons struggled to bring the statue to the U.S. to display in Philadelphia at the America Centennial Exhibition but the president of Mexico denied their request. 

In the meantime, they sent other Maya artifacts to the U.S. to display at centennial ceremonies but the objects arrived too late. And in another spate of bad luck, the photos Le Plongeon had labored over were stolen by another archeologist who claimed them for his own. Soon even their main benefactor would give up on their excursions. At times they found it difficult to find money to eat, so dire was their situation. 

"SURROUNDED BY ENEMIES"

"Surrounded by enemies, Remington always at hand, death lurking in every direction," Alice wrote in a letter to a friend in 1877, describing their predicament. The Mexico government had refused to pay them for the extensive work they'd completed in not only raising the incredible ChacMool artifact but in delivering it to the pueblo Piste. With this final blow, they picked up and moved on to other ruins—Mayapan and sites in Honduras.

Their travels continued and in 1884 the Le Plongeons left Mexico and settled in New York. There Alice focused on her writing, both fact and fiction. She became well known for a series of articles written for the New York Times and other publications in which she romanticized the Maya world. Her best known work was Queen Moo's Talisman. Both she and her husband lectured non-stop in Europe and the U.S. promoting the Yucatan pyramids and the Maya. 

Queen Moo's Talisman

In A Dream of Maya, by Larry Desmond and Phyllis Messenger, Desmond explains if history had been kinder to the Le Plongeons, it would have depicted an extraordinary couple whose lifelong work had not been fairly appraised. The book gives deep insight into their lives and their controversial views and document their hard-nosed earnestness and early pioneering excavations—from digging up pyramid sites to drawing architectural floor plans and tracing murals to keeping detailed photographic records.

A Dream of Maya by Desmond and Messenger 

Their extensive explorations were done under the duress of the Caste War, yet they persisted and came away with great discoveries. 

Augustus Le Plongeon died in New York in 1908. Alice died in New York in 1910.

If you enjoyed this post, check out  Where the Sky is Born: Living in the Land of the Maya, on Amazon. My website is www.jeaninekitchel.com. Books one and two in my Mexico cartel trilogy, Wheels Up—A Novel of Drugs, Cartels and Survival, and Tulum Takedown, are also on Amazon. And my journalistic overview of the Maya 2012 calendar phenomenon, Maya 2012 Revealed: Demystifying the Prophecy, is on Amazon.

MEXICO'S FIRST WOMAN ARCHEOLOGIST— ISABEL RAMIREZ CASTENADA

Isabel Ramirez Castenada

Isabel Ramirez Castenada was the first Mexican woman to work as an archeologist and anthropologist in Mexico. Born in 1879 in Milpa Alta, a pueblo not far from Mexico City, she studied to be a primary school teacher and worked in pre-school for a number of years.

In 1906 she received a scholarship and was part of the first generation of Mexicans to study archeology, history and ethnology at the National Museum of Mexico, (Museo Nacional de Antropologia) the only institution offering these courses at the time. In 1907 and 1908 she worked for Eduard Seler and later Leopoldo Batres in the National Museum collections, classifying and cataloguing over 10,000 artifacts. She worked as an assistant and also taught archeology till 1911 when she joined the International School of American Archeology and Ethnology. The school, established to conduct research, also trained Mexican archeologists and ethnologists. Isabel secured a scholarship from the Mexican government and Columbia University to attend, as well as paid leave from the National Museum.

Around this time she accompanied Eduard Seler and his wife Caecilie Seler-Sachs on archeological expeditions to Palenque and the Yucatan Peninsula. She conducted fieldwork and did surveying while studying the site. She also participated in various ethnological field trips to the surrounding area of Mexico City and carried out the systemic collection of ceramics in the Toltec and Nahua city of Culhuacan.

Isabel at Palenque, 1911 (Archives)

Proficient in languages, she wrote and spoke Nahual, though it's not known if this was her mother tongue or if she learned it as part of her studies at the National Museum. Being bi-lingual enabled her to carry out important ethnographic work in her village, Milpa Alta, as well as other indigenous Nahua villages near Mexico City. Her primary ethnographic work consisted of compiling indigenous stories and myths which she later transcribed and translated into Spanish. These folktales, titled Ten Folktales in Modern Nahautl, were published in 1924 by Franz Boas, a mentor to Isabel who became known as the father of modern anthropology. 

The titles she translated were The Old Man of Teutli and the Rabbit, The Squirrel and the Prairie Dog, and The Fox and the Coyote. They read like Aesop's fables, usually with a moral at the end.

When the Mexican Revolution began, the International School closed down and the director left the country. Isabel was designated to secure the collections and transfer them to the National Museum. After the Revolution she remained in the museum's folklore section and became its head in 1918. Unfortunately the position lasted just one year due to lack of funding. She would not return for 20 years.  

Little is known about her during those years but on returning in 1936, she joined the education department, devising courses on archeology for teachers. Following this she continued to work for the museum in low-paying positions, mostly from her home due to poor eyesight.

Like other women in the field of archeology before the Revolution, Isabel had to fight for her place at the table, pushing boundaries to make room for her to work or study in the male-dominated emerging field.

Unlike other women who made up the Mexican archeological field, Isabel was born, raised and educated in Mexico which gave her a leg up, even though her family did not come from wealth. She had no affluent patrons supporting her work but despite challenges, she did valuable work, and became well known for compiling and analyzing indigenous knowledge and stories from Nahua communities.

Isabel Ramirez Castenada, 1908

She authored three papers of original research on the pre-colonial carved stones from the archeological and ethnographic collections at the National Museum and presented her research at the Tlalnepantla Parish church. These were on the folklore of Milpa Alta, traditional medicine, and superstition in the markets of Zumpango.

For decades her contributions in the development of archeology and anthropology were overshadowed due to criticism from male colleagues, especially Manuel Gamio. Though the discourse for the falling-out between Gamio and Ramirez is not clear, it appears it was based on a famous excavation in 1912 at a brickyard near Atzcapotzalco. Gamio, working for Boas as was Ramirez, originally outlined a document outlining the work and Ramirez followed up and elaborated on it. As the excavations continued to be carried out, dissertations were produced but apparently Gamio felt they were poorly published with mis-spellings that he blamed on Ramirez. At the same time, another excavation took place and a substantial collection of ceramics was found by Ramirez. Ramirez's accounts of both excavations were written up and as her find had been larger than that of Gamio, her accounts influenced the sequence that formed the basis of the Valley of Mexico chronology for years to come. Though never stated, Gamio may have felt slighted and retaliated by trying to discredit her achievements.

Shortly afterwards, while her group studied indigenous stories, they discovered that strong Spanish influences appeared in the phonetics. A common goal emerged to collect as much folklore and phonetic info as possible in order to compare both Spanish and Indian sources. Fellows threw themselves enthusiastically into the research and with Ramirez's understanding of Nahuatl, she became an integral part of the project, making contributions to the folklore from her native Milpa Alta. These investigations were one of the first attempts by anthropologists to deal with the problem of acculturation and its impact on New World cultures, a theme that would dominate the field in the 1930s. 

Even with her 20-year absence mid-career, Ramirez's star shines brightly as the first recognized woman archeologist in Mexico.

If you enjoyed this post, check out  Where the Sky is Born: Living in the Land of the Maya, on Amazon. My website is www.jeaninekitchel.com. Books one and two in my Mexico cartel trilogy, Wheels Up—A Novel of Drugs, Cartels and Survival, and Tulum Takedown, are also on Amazon. And my journalistic overview of the Maya 2012 calendar phenomenon, Maya 2012 Revealed: Demystifying the Prophecy, is on Amazon.

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.

TO BE IT YOU NEED TO SEE IT: WHAT IF INDIANA JONES HAD BEEN A WOMAN?

Merle Greene Robertson, Archeologist, Artist, Scholar

I've written about Maya women warriors and queens, women archeologists, anthropologists, epigraphers, authors and artists, all who've inspired the masses. After reading a Washington Post Op-Ed (A Woman to Reboot Indiana Jones? Yes, Please) by bio-archeologist Brenna Hassett when the latest Indiana Jones film starring Hollywood's favorite archeologist came out, she reminded us that overall, the study of archeology is dominated by men. 

Says Hassett, "This is what generations of girls—me included—saw when we saw archeology, and that's a problem. Because to be it, you need to see it."

So let's address women trailblazers in archeology who've carved a place for themselves and those who came after—the likes of Merle Greene Robertson and Linda Schele for starters. In her study of the Maya, Robertson lived as many adventures as the more famous Dr. Jones, traipsing through Central American jungles, crossing rivers, evading looters, working hours on end creating a multitude of life-size art rubbings in dam, cramped spaces. 

Linda Schele was a major scholar, author and trail blazer in the decipherment of Maya hieroglyphic writing and the study of ancient American civilization. Her death at age 55 in 1998 was a terrible loss to archeology and the study of the ancient Maya.

I'll begin with a previous 2022 post on Robertson, a larger than life presence in the world of Maya archeology and culture. Next will be Linda Schele and I'll then continue with women outliers in the global field of archeology and anthropology, several of whom I've already written about.

MERLE GREENE ROBERTSON

Merle Greene Robertson was an archeologist, artist, scholar and Maya explorer, but these are mere 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 I read Never in Fear, her autobiography, I realized she well could have been the glue that stuck it all together, the Gertrude Stein of the Maya world. Along with fellow scholars, she shaped an understanding of the ancient Maya civilization. She galvanized others, as an organizer, planner, dynamo and she knew everyone in the field from Eric S. Thompson and Alberto Ruz to Michael Coe, George Stuart and those 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, ushered the reader into Maya sites at Uxmal, Chichen Itza, and Copan for starters. The book literally blew the collective mind of the world. No one had a clue that intricate stepped pyramids lay hidden, covered by centuries of vines and forest, deep in Mexican and Central American jungles. The archeology world lay in the mid-east and far east. Before the release of Stephens' and Catherwood's book, the word "bestseller" had not yet been coined. 

Frederick Catherwood Maya Drawing

The world clambered for more knowledge of this mysterious 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, the Maya had joined an iconic club alongside other great civilizations: Egypt, Mesopotamia, the Indus Valley and China.

ROBERTSON AND HER WORK 

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

She created beautiful reproductions of countless stela, columns, tombs, sarcophagus lids, often produced in unfavorable circumstances after trekking through rugged terrain and dense forests crawling with snakes and buzzing with bothersome mosquitoes. Occasionally she and her crew had close calls 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.

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, thanks to a generous heart, many landed in museums and universities throughout the world. She not only explored these faraway Maya sites but shared her knowledge with others. Often her expeditions included lucky students who accompanied her in what would no doubt become the experience of a lifetime.

NEVER IN FEAR 

With a career that spanned close to sixty years, it's impossible in a single post to condense all that Robertson accomplished. Turning page after page in her autobiography, Never in Fear, it seemed she lived her life in warp-speed.

Do we shape our lives, or are our lives shaped by our experiences and those we meet along the way? After reading Robertson's autobiography, apparently her future unfolded while growing up in the rural West where she developed an interest in Native American culture.

EARLY BEGINNINGS

Born in Montana, she lived on land flanked by the Rocky Mountains. Her interest in Native American culture was ignited when her father took her to visit Blackfoot Indian chiefs. She was also influenced by nearby Montana neighbor Charles M. Russell, one of the greatest western artists of all time, who encouraged her interest in art and drawing. Meeting Blackfoot Indians and watching Russell paint may have shaped her future at an early age. 

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. This was her entry into recording monuments by means of rubbings. The technique is an ancient one, the earliest taken from Buddhist texts on wooden blocks in 8th century Japan, or from rubbings practiced in 2nd century China. 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 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 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 PAKAL'S TOMB

Though Tikal, her first jungle excursion, stole her heart, 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 was constructed for her to stand on. Nothing she did was easy. Her rubbing of Pakal's sarcophagus lid, Palenque's greatest ruler, took super-human tenacity.             

She wrote, "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. 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). Also, I had to use oil paint instead of sumi ink; there could be no way to work on so much space and keep an inked area from running into the sheet of paper next to it. After two weeks working on the sarcophagus, doing several parts of it over time, I felt that Pakal was not only my friend but a long lost relative."

After the lid, she worked on the side. "Standing in 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.

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

THE SCULPTURE OF PALENQUE

The results of her Palenque work was documented in a series titled The Sculpture of Palenque. She searched out pigment sources in that region to duplicate the colors used by Palenque artists centuries ago. Her impressive collection of rubbings represents a major archive of Maya monuments throughout the Maya world and has been a major resource for scholars studying the culture. 

Temple of the Sun Reconstruction Painting

At Palenque, she met Moises Morales, head guide and major domo of the site. Her friendship with Moises and his family would be a staple in her and Bob's lives for decades. At first he rented them a room and in the 70s built a house next to his in the La Cañada compound.

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 and their house, Na Chan-Bahlum, became a meeting place for every archeologist working in Chiapas, the Yucatán Peninsula, and Belize—their door was always open. Palenque is where Linda Schele and Merle met and became fast friends.

MAYA ROUNDTABLE IN PALENQUE

 In 1973, things were beginning to gel in the Maya world. Through conversations initially with Linda Schele and other Mayanists, an idea emerged— why not have a gathering of like minds? They put together a list and sent out feelers for a get-together. Soon afterwards, Merle heard from famed archeologist Michael Coe. He suggested December would be a good time. The idea ignited and the first Maya conference took place in 1973. Through discussions, lectures, late nights and visits to the pyramid structures footsteps away, the group was at the beginnings of breaking the Maya hieroglyphic code and figuring out who the ancient Maya were. The conference became known as Primera Mesa Redonda de Palenque.

Topic talks ranged from art, history, chronology, iconography, early explorers, inscriptions, sacrifice, trade and the surrounding area. Word 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 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.

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 Pakal's sarcophagus was buried. Eventually, through the melding of minds, the Maya hieroglyphic code was broken, the turning point being that first Roundtable in 1973. 

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. 

Stela 1, Ixkun, the Peten, Guatemala

MAYA SITES VISITED

During her time studying and recording the Maya, Robertson visited and 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. She could definitely compete with Dr. Jones. And to my women readers, I'd say she'd come out on top.

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

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.