How to use this Page

(continued from Jan. 4th's post)
On our way to a coastal village near the port of Progreso we pass lagunas of flamingos; signs read "Vívoras Venenosas", but our host and guide Tony assures us we're safe if we don't go looking for the slithery things. He introduces us to local fishermen whose primary source of income, the pulpo-catching season, has just ended. Ordinarily, they can subsist off the ocean, but don't prosper off-season.

Tony is assisting 15 families with an ecotourism project, to supplement their income without degrading the ecosystem. The men ferry us out in lanchas to remote beaches, where they tell us los cocodrilos won't bother us if we don't bother them. In a kayak my wife and I make our way past sandbars up to handmade fences that protect a bird refuge, from us. Most have migrated, but the pristineness of the place will one day make it a vacation destination.

The fishermen tell us the names of the fish, birds, other wildlife, in English, even. Despite their commercial means of income, their world is filled with cocodrilos y pulpos, the natural. I envy them, though I try to keep from noble-savaging their existence. When I see the new four-wheel black, American truck one of them purchased with his season's profits, any thought of noble savage disappears. Our influence of keeping up with the Joneses will ruin the place--which is why I won't reveal its location.

To head back to the village, I decide to change lanchas, though I don't know why. As the other boat begins disappearing on the horizon, I'm sure I took the wrong one. Until the dolphins show up. Unscheduled, unannounced and randomly leaping for only seconds. So, Ek Chuah, the Maya god of travelers, must have whispered in my ear. These descendants of ancient dolphins who once shadowed Maya pescadores stay with us long enough to determine our intentions harmless, I assume. The seawater stings our eyes, the wind threatens to take our hats, the small lancha teeters threateningly as it bounces hard over larger incoming waves, but however much I cringe at capsizing in dark waters, at least los delfines blessed our stopover in this bit of undeveloped world.

Profe's fishermen connection gets a restaurant opened just for us, no matter it's off-season. We're served pescado frito caught that morning, snails I've never eaten, and more ceviche than we can gorge, chased with rounds of Mexican beer. I could stay here forever.

The restaurant owners' young kids, Evelyn and Jasmine, run around with a large bundle wrapped in a blanket. I tease them until they unveil a huge, blonde, Anglo-skinned doll. Even unto the toys of poor, Yucateco children...

We return to Progreso for a service learning project, volunteering in the Comedor Comunitaria, a "soup kitchen" serving a meal a day to the needy, sometimes over a 100; today it's spaghetti and meat sauce. We have a great time preparing, cooking, and packaging. While we wait for the clientele, I ask the older women volunteers if I can photograph them, assuring them I have a setting that'll take twenty years off them. One of my targets responds I need a setting that takes 20 pounds, or more, off. I had them laughing before, but now we're all howling. This is not a vacation, it's life.

Another student and I get the task of giving out tickets at the door. It's embarrassing handing them to people who say gracias, as if I'd paid for the food. I replace de nada with éntrale, por favor, which sounds better, feels right.

A frisky, diminutive old woman in a homemade camouflage-material dress, bejeweled and made-up like she's headed to Sunday mass, is one of the last to leave. She puts us both in stitchs as she proceeds to hit on me like she's 50 years younger and I'm a lot less married, so I pretend the female student with me is my wife. This doesn't phase the viejita, who retorts she's only looking to borrow, not keep, me. Our profe shows up, his twice-her-size distracting her long enough to spare me the thrill of a Maya anciana romance. In certain ways, this can be dangerous country.

We spend an afternoon with residents of a Casa de Ancianos, a Church-run retirement home. Thankfully, we don't play bingo, but we do bring Santa Claus, Profe, all done up in sweaty costume, even though los Reyes Magos don't bring gifts until Jan. 6. Back home he might have been called Scrooge for handing out candies and bars of soap, but here, Santa's warmly received and applauded.

I chat with Ramos, a not-yet-ancient resident, who takes me out back, away from the crowd. He still does carpentry, earning money for personal items, and proudly shows me hurricane shutters he constructed. He's in charge of the housedog, and we trade stories about pets. When I gotta pee, he leads me to a nearby unit where a guy's snoozing in a hammock. On our return we run into one of the nuns who run the home. She gives me a forced smile. I think both guys are in trouble; one for not attending the activities, Ramos for letting me use a non-visitor bathroom. The nun needs him for some task, and I don't see him again.

I stay with the others, not wanting to get anyone else in trouble. A woman volunteer and her daughter tell me they take English classes to improve their chances of employment. We have fun practicing counting to 20, and they're not embarrassed by how badly they do, maybe because they must learn it to survive. The tentacles of tourism reach almost everyone.

Later I realize how the ancianos' response to bars of soap connects to my American privilege. The passage of NAFTA was calamity for them, forcing down Mexican fishing, agricultural and other prices, impoverishing many. Poverty rose considerably with the '95 devaluation of the peso; wages decreased 20 percent. This led to the Zapatista uprising and dramatically increased illegal immigration to the U.S.

I will hear about NAFTA's "benefits" many times. From a young mother whose son asked why she had to work the Sun. before Xmas; she explained because she could once buy herself 7 dresses a year, but this year, only 1. He understands because NAFTA took the home they been paying on for 8 years.

Or from university business professors who, despite their individual, entrepreneurial spirit and success, acknowledge NAFTA was detrimental to Mexico's lower classes.

Or from an older portly woman who survives from the tourism. One of her sons, an electrician, moved to California and rarely calls. She doesn't know his address, but hopes he's doing well. I ask her her impression of Americans' behavior: she hates how they never want to pay regular prices and always try to get her to lower her prices. If bartering is Mexican "tradition," maybe it's because of America's "traditional" economic leverage. After this, I don't bargain with any vendor; I don't want the association.

And as our chauffeur drives us down Avenida Montejo, he explains we're passing the homes of los ricos. I ask him what these houses cost, and he quotes a price equal to my middle-class American home. That fact emphasizes how interrelated my relative "wealth" is to Mexico's absolute poverty, exacerbated by NAFTA's continuation.

We go on until our driver takes a road meant only for four-wheels, to get us to a remote cenote. It is not open like those at the ruins, and we climb a ladder made of limbs and rope into the grotto where we briefly disturb the bats. The water's 150 feet deep, and if you dive for bottom you go on the last cruise of your life into an underground river that ends at Xibalbá. A limb and rope crucifix up top could be of such a swimmer. I didn't bring a suit, so I content myself with relishing a site used by the ancient Maya, and snapping photos. There's so many bared, pale gringo swimmers, I have to use the backlight feature.

Both at Dzilbilchaltún and Uxmal, we arrive too late for the winter solstice and the sun breaking through doors or windows. From the pyramid we are allowed to climb in Uxmal, we can see other monuments of Maya civilization, tourists below and the monte. They don't call it a selva, a jungle; those are further to the southwest, down into the Peten where the Maya began.

From up here, though, I get a sense of what these pyramids imparted to a people who lived thousands of years amid a growth of deep foliage. Yes, from the ground they could see the stars or stand on a beach where their world opened up, but only on these structures could they gaze at all the stars and overlook the canopy. The Rocky Mts. give this feeling, and going up a skyscraper mimics that. But I stand atop a pyramid closer to the first of 13 levels of the Maya heaven Caan. In repeated bursts I know I am feeling some of the same awesome sensations, the exhilaration the pyramid builders felt upon completing their work. If I sacrificed Mel Gibson for the distortion in his film, I'd let him stand quietly here, to learn one last thing.

Later we have drinks by the Xcanatun Hacienda pool, no lights on. The sky is different here, enough to disorient me, 17 degrees above the equator. Bats swoop low over the water. It's a quiet time, the students enjoying a chat. Everyone seems mellow. Our time together is almost ended.

We return to Uxmal for the light and sound show, a telling of a creation myth and another tale. It's our last night, and we load the cooler with beer to sneak in. I'm not surprised, since we've been immersed in ourselves as well as Spanish for a week; the hectic schedule wore on everyone. But I do wonder if these Americans of European heritage would drink beer at Stonehenge.

One place I never get to is the Experimentos Científicos being done of the Chicxulub Crater, the impact site of the K/T meteor that wiped out the dinosaurs 65 million years ago. It's on a drilling rig miles out in the Gulf. Profe suggests I hire a boat and go out there. What would they do if I just showed up uninvited?

But I'm old now, it's not Dec. 1974, and it's not easy doing daring deeds. (I later learn of a Chicxulub Scientific Drilling Project on the Yaxcopoil Hacienda, on the road to Uxmal.) I only wanted to sit at the site, relish its import, and take in the remnant ambience of a 10km.-wide, falling star smashing into the Earth; there must still be some. Then too, my second graders would have loved some impact breccias or melt spherules from the K/T boundary sediments. Next time.

Still, I return with special memories, but not of museums, mercados, merchandise, restaurants or architecture.
Because of the class curriculum, our Profe's adeptness in Mexican ways, the very cordial Maya people, a bit of luck--and by shedding some of my own verbüenza--I got to do more than visit the home of the Maya people.

© Rudy Ch. Garcia 2007

TOMORROW, Saturday, we post a review written by Chon Noriega about Mel Gibson's Apocalypto, which one of his UCLA colleagues thought Bloga readers should see. Check it out.

continued from Dec. 28th's post

Our hotel's a few blocks from Mérida's main plaza (referred to as a zócalo throughout Mexico). We hit the regular tourist spots: Artesania Craft Market, Parque Santa Lucia, Plaza de la Independencia, etc. It's a job we can't shirk; we're tourist-students: we must find and purchase bits of Yucateca arts and crafts to take home a whisp of our experience.

Not surprisingly, Mérida's downtown smells like New York City, given that it's more ancient, though not as densely populated. But these people are in no hurry--slowed by the humidity--and often take time to smile or greet us, sometimes in English. Of course their economy subsists on us tourists, but their amiability goes deeper than that.

Mexico's "white city" has a reputation for the overall light tones of its architecture and its cleanliness, some of it I think attributable to rains washing away the calles' trash, into the quickly filling sewers, up to street level; this peninsula is only a few meters above sea level. They have a slogan here I love: "Ponte chulo, Mérida," and trash bins are marked organic and inorganic in keeping with one of the most progressive recycling programs outside Costa Rica or Boulder, Colo.

A guide tells us the history of the main cathedral, of course built on the former site and from stones of a Maya pyramid that stood here, at the end of the 16th century. The altar's 21-foot, second-largest-in-the-world sculpture of Christ, carved by Maya converts, seems like an amateurish attempt by the conquering clergy to erase the pyramid's former grandeur.

The north floor is lined with stones engraved with the names of worshippers who restored the church after a fire. To get to the altar, at times we're forced to walk on the names, some of which are Chinese, many names already blurred from countless footsteps. At Chichén Itzá and Uxmal, you're no longer allowed to erode the pyramids' history with your shoes. In Mérida, the Catholic hierarchy lets us grind down these testaments to the sacrifices of the devout. Some institutions continue their conquerer attitudes.

During our stay, I repeatedly encounter one family of Maya vendors in traditional attire--a mother, two daughters, one of high-school age. She's one of few who carries a chip on her shoulder, maybe about tourists, maybe about having to degrade herself selling goods in public--I don't know which, but I share her disgust. But it's the daughter as old as my second graders back home who gets to me. My tourist guilt nets me a belt, purse and ten pulseras faster than my wife can grab my arm. By trip's end, we'll do more transactions with them, but never enough to assuage the older girl. In the long run, maybe no one can, except Marcos.

On the outskirts of Mérida at the Universidad Marista, we tour an aguaculture facility, a system integrating fish, fowl, water and crops, civilization's attempt to refine how Maya rural people feed themselves. It utilizes aboveground, four-foot-high concrete "ponds" the gov't built for the indigenes to store water. The Mayas gave up using them because of small children drowning in the rainwater. This new system keeps the level low, sparing the children, but deep enough for tilapia and ducks to thrive. The entire exhibit is about conserving, recycling valuable agua dulce to embellish the Yucateco diet.

I ask the techs if they considered using duck poop as pond sealer, as done elsewhere in the world. Over time, poop that sinks to the bottom solidifies and turns impervious. But there's little topsoil on the peninsula, limestone below, making digging difficult. This didn't stop the ancient Mayas from digging their own rain barrels. I don't understand why, with rented jackhammers and indigenous labor, such couldn't be done again, eliminating the cost of concrete, no doubt a burden on villagers.

But I'm just a tourist, not expected to know much, and either my poor Spanish or the camera around my neck prevent my words being taken seriously. I decide the techs maybe already considered the idea unfeasible and take a photo of the ducks.

Under a hut where beehives are housed, we get more info on the cycle of life, food and culture. A Maya gardener who's been trailing us while working begins explaining something. As the whole class listens, he transforms from university gardener into shaman-historian, describing indigenous practices still conducted in remote areas.

It is a tale of communal ritual, of elders sharing the harvest, their pueblo's wealth. It is a story of dark forces vented on those who violate the good of the community. It is a transcendental glimpse of the Mayas, maybe thousands of years old. Though this might be the gardener's usual spiel to thrill tourists, I let him take me, I accept his words as true, and for several minutes, I'm his willing receptacle--not of the words and story, which I've already lost, but of the "sense" of elsewhere. If I try, I can almost smell burning copal, hear the hombre espiritiste and make out quiet drums keeping time to a chant in an exotic tongue. Whatever his intentions, if only for moments, he's given at least me a different perception of the soil I stand on.

I'd prefer to stay for more, but we head into the university to hear a university professor's lecture on the Maya. Through no fault of his own, he will have a difficult time capturing my ear.

The Maya professor Jose speaks Mayan and laces his history of Maya civilization, their astronomy, math and study of time with Mayan words and phrases. It sounds more exotic and melodious than what I heard in the theater from Mel Gibson's cast. The film isn't available here, except pirated, until next year, so I don't ask him which sacrificial ritual should be used on Mel.

Jose gives us enough Mayan orientation that we'll go around for the next days sprinkling our speech with xmá (no), maló mac (ate well) and in caba Rudy (my name is). Half a million Mayas are bilingual, another 50 thou, monolingual in some dialect. We're not parroting a dead language. (Jose only taught us orally, so my spelling is probably a bit off.)

At lunchtime, the cafeteria is opened just for us, and we eat prepared Maya dishes with our host, the university professor Tony. I can't feel guilty about our privileged status, since I chalk it up to our Profe's skills at building personal relationships, the way it's still done in Mexico.

Wandering the almost empty campus (it's Xmas fiesta time), I hear construction workers talk about going to ask what our lunch would cost them. A couple go to the counter and return with ample plates. Then another half dozen go over. From the smiles on their faces, I think they got free meals since there's no one around to eat what we didn't; it would just go to waste. I feel good the presence of our tour inadvertently fed someone else.

Hugo, the artist in our bunch, is out too, with pen and pad in hand. I ask if he's going to draw a tree with huge, splendidly variegated gold and yellow leaves; he responds it would take him weeks. I snap off one of the leaves, press it between the pages of my spiral; it makes a better memento than most things I will purchase.

As part of our total immersion, each night at dinner we do oral presentations of the day's activities. I love this stuff--the opportunity to talk to a captive audience, in any language. After a seafood lunch on the coast (details in my next post) that shamefully equaled an ancient Maya lord's feast, we dine at La Casa de Frida, a Vegas-type recreation decked out with Kahlo reproductions, a poblano menu to match. For my report, I try combining recent events into un acertijo, a riddle: Qué pesa más que una puerta del Consulado Americano? Tres platos de ceviche en Progresso.

I think I'm being clever, but even the Profe can't understand the joke. Despite not having drunk more than soda, I have to explain literally every word, thus totally deflating my future propsects as a Chicano Cantinflas. I decide the remainder of my stay will be filled with fewer prosaic trabalenguas, but more of the Yucateco people, as detailed in my final installment.

© Rudy Ch. Garcia 2007

The last installment of this will appear tomorrow, Friday, in lieu of Ramos's regular post; he needed some time off.