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February 1st, 2005: Palenque

Palenque was first inhabited around 100 BC. The main structures of the royal Mayan city were built around AD 600-700, during the reign of K'inich Hanab Pakal and his son, Kan Balam II. Then, Palenque flourished as a trading center between Peten in Guatemala, the highlands of Chiapas, and the Grijalva Valley. Until today, some 500 out of 1450 known structures have been excavated.

Compared to Tikal, I feel Palenque lost some of its mystique. The area around the archeological site is more populated. Around the main structures, the jungle has been cut, replaced by a park with flowers, trees, and meticulously manicured grass. In places, handicraft sellers offer their work. Nevertheless, the site feels romantic. The buildings are light and elegant and a brook or a waterfall is never far away.



The most famous structure of the site is the Temple of Inscriptions, where in 1952, the secret crypt of the king Pakal was discovered.



The skeleton and jade mask were moved from the tomb to the Museum of Anthropology in Mexico City, but the giant, five tons heavy sarcophagus lid remains. The glyphs carved on the slab recount Pakals' reign. The meaning of the remarkable carvings portraying the king, snakes, and monsters, is still debated.

Palenque's palace is a big structure with a 25 meters high tower, four courtyards, and a maze of corridors and stairs connecting a large number of rooms.



By far the biggest room is the kitchen where hectoliters of hot chocolate and tons of maiz have been prepared.



While Pakal concentrated on his Temple of Inscription and the Palace, his son ordered for himself a group of buildings called the Group of the Cross.







The stone carvings in the temples show important events in the life of Kan Balam II. The one underneath portraits Kan Balam receiving the deity associated with the royal lineage in the underworld.



Further down the trail, the residential quarters of the upper classes are today inhabited by monkeys and bats.





Before exiting the site, the trail leads us through the emerald jungle to the pools of clear fresh water where the kings were bathing.

February 2nd, 2005: From Palenque to Tonina

The road twists and turns through the mountains with virtually no traffic. Narrow maiz fields hang on the steep slopes. Exotic birds play in the misty air. Cristal clear waters of Rio Bascan flow through jungle, then fall of the cliff in a series of waterfalls.





Steering higher, the road brings an increasingly dramatic scenery and cooler temperatures.



Roadside Mayan villages start to appear. The friendly colors of the huipiles women wear contrast with the suspicion reflected in the indigenous eyes. Life is hard and perceived as such.

I realize that the eight million Maya who live between Chiapas and Northern Honduras are a fairly heterogenous group. While the modern Maya have the same Olmeque origins, and share values such as the divinity of maiz or the strong respect for the ancestors, family and the community, it is visibly a group of great ethnic complexity, diverging views about modern life, and differing economic situation from region to region.

The ethnic diversity has its long historical roots. The isolated and autonomous city-states founded by Maya tribes around Mesoamerica only started to regularly communicate and exchange in the Classical Period, from AD 200 on. Before then, every city had its own ruling class, its local gods, its own language. Until today, the Chols, the Quiches, the Yucatecs, the Tzeltals, the Tzotzils, the Mams, the Cakchiquels, and other Mayan communities all speak a different language, which the linguists regroup into eight different language families. Until today, every village celebrates its own ceremonies and wears its own costumes.

But the differencies I spot in Maya communities are not only of ethnic nature. Compared to the Mayas of the Yucatan Peninsula, the Chiapan Mayas are visibly poorer, more traditionalist, and isolationist.

Eleven years ago, the world awoke to the problems of the Maya in Chiapas when the Zapatist rebels took up arms to get their voice heard. The left-wing Zapatist movement fought, and is still fighting, for the right of self-determination of the Maya indigenous, and for a land reform. The date chosen to start the revolution corresponded to the day of the creation of NAFTA. The political leader of the Zapatists, subcommandante Marcos, claimed that president Zedillo gave to the outside world a false image of political correctness while violating the Mexican constitution in which liberty and equality is granted.

President Zedillo's government sent in the army. The situation was further complicated by the anti-Zapatist paramilitary. Today, autonomous Zapatist communities still neighbour with military bases, although a lot of military checkpoints are empty and we were only stopped once to be reassured that the army is there to keep order.





Chiapas is on top of Vincente Fox' agenda, some land has been redistributed and the tensions may have eased, but the underlying problem of Chiapan Mayas poor living conditions and ethnic rights remains unsolved. Unfortunately, traditionalism and isolationism of the Chiapan Mayas do not help to fight the poverty. By firmly holding on to their traditional way of life, the Chiapan Mayas fail to learn from the others and to benefit from the contacts with the outside world.

As we approach Ocosingo, the atmosphere becomes more relaxed. People go about their jobs and smile more. Smaller kids do not run away when they see a stranger.



About fifteen kilometers from Ocosingo lies the exciting archeological site of Tonina.

February 3rd, 2005: Tonina

Apart from having been masters of astronomy and mathematics, and a civilization that invented the most elaborate writing on the American continent, the Mayas were also great architects. Without recourse to wheel, working animals, or hard metals, their achievements in Tikal, Palenque, or Tonina are highly remarkable.

The Mayan architecture traditionally had a taste for monumental. Having to build for gods in forests where the trees grew fifty meters high, the temple designers felt obliged to cut the space vertically and go as high as possible. The sanctuaries were put on the top of a number of terraces. They were topped by a high roof comb that carried the actual roof.

The Mayan architecture also paid a lot of attention to the symbolic representation of the elements of religious faith. For example, the roof of a temple represented the separation between the human world and the upper world. To prevent ordinary humans and bad spirits entering the upper world, the roof had to be, or at least to appear, massif. This by the way represented a problem for the stability of the construction because of weight, but the Mayas solved it using geometric holes in the roof combs and replacing stone with light stucco.

Another remarkable feature of the Mayan architecture are the light games. The Mayas used complicated calculations to get the sunlight produce special phenomena on certain days of the year. For example, in Chichen Itza in Yucatan, on the day of equinox, the sun rays and the shadows produce a snake body that moves down the Kukulkan Pyramide to join a stone snake head placed at the feet of the pyramid.

The ruins of Tonina show a good deal of the Mayan architectural genius. The main structures were built in the VIIth to the Xth century under the rule of a new cruel dynasty, Skull-of-Snake-Jaguar-Claw. This dynasty demolished the existing temples and palaces and started from scratch, using all the accumulated architectural know-how. Therefore, while Tikal is famous for its majestic temples and Coban for its baroque style statues, Tonina stands out for the complexity of its pyramidal structure.

This imposing structure is built over a semi-natural hill with a base of approximately 380 times 260 meters. The hill is shaped into seven main platforms, of which the bottom three are dedicated to the underworld, the middle one to the human world, and the three top to the upper world. On the top terraces stand thirteen temples. The highest temple, the Temple of Smoking Mirrors, peaks at 80 meters over the Gran Plaza. The central staircase from the bottom platform to the top one reaches a total of 260 steep steps.





The excavations at Tonina begun as late as 1979, and the site is not yet widely known by tourists. By and large, there are only three other couples apart from us on the whole site. The few written explanations around the site are in Spanish only. We take a local guide. We enter the pyramidal structure through a ritual labyrint of the underworld.



There are nine rooms in the labyrinth, dedicated to the seven gods of the underworld, of whom every one has a good and a bad side, hence the number nine. In case we loose your way, the architects left a map of the hell (;))



We find an internal staircase that leads us to the second platform.



We meet the mystical underworld animals such as the feathered snakes in different representations, as a staircase, stone carving, or statue. The stone carvings are surprisingly well conserved, still showing the original red color that Mayas made from the dyes of squashed insects or the typical blue.



We come to an impressive relief composed of four panels that represent the four suns or the four eras of humanity Mayas believed in. The relief was made at a time when Tonina was in war with Palenque and the Mayas believed they were living in the final era. The middle of every panel is occupied by a decapitated head of a prisoner. It is believed that one of the heads belongs to the Pakal's son, Kan Balam II.



A skeleton dances around the head of Kan Balam and rejoices in the good fortune.



On the platform devoted to the human world, we admire the bathrooms with a proper canalization system and panels portraying events such as the ball games.



From the tempels on the upper platforms, priests and nobles managed four regions of the sky, fought battles against darkness, and maintained order regarding celestial phenomena. The Temple of Equinoxe was instrumental in organizing the agriculture with the help of elaborate calendars and other time measuring instruments. The sanctuary is orientated so, that when for example the sun rays enter through two windows between 9 and 12 am of our time, and land on a predetermined sub space of the stone calendar, it is time to harvest.



The site is full of crypts and tunnels. One of the tunnels discovered on the upper platform is believed to have served as a secret escape for the Tonina rulers in time of war. It could only be excavated 30 meters down the pyramid and the issue is unknown. The contents of the crypts such as maiz shaped skulls, ceramics, objects made of jade, and other offerings, have been moved to the museum at the entrance or to Mexico City.







Incredibly elaborate statues were also found around the site.



Other surprises may wait as the excavations progress.

February 4th, 2005: San Cristobal de las Casas

The lovely town of San Cristobal lies in the middle of an aromatic fir forest at 2100 meters of altitude. Clean cobbled streets bordered by brightly painted houses are full of exotic charm.







There are a number of special churches that, while ordered by Christians, show more or less explicit messages left by the Mayan builders. The inspired facade of the Cathedral Nuestra Segnora de Asuncion is painted in red, white, black, and yellow, that represent the four directions of the Mayan universe. The big black wooden cross in front of the church is actually a holy ceiba tree.





In some churches, there are no sitting banks. The prayers and healing ceremonies are performed on the floor. In one church, a saint is holding his decapitated head in his hands. Not sure what the meaning of that is.

We go shopping on the splendid market around the Santo Domingo Church. The buyers and the sellers, predominantly women with kids, come here from different parts of San Cristobal and the surrounding villages, but also from the neighbouring Guatemala. The market is a wonderful place to admire the complete traditional costumes both sellers and buyers wear. On offer are colorful carpets, baskets, dolls, candles, huipiles, sombreros, wood carvings, ceramics, and leather goods. It smells flowers, beens, oranges, herbs, honey, candies, poultry. We find one of the most complete selections of chilis: chili habanero, chili jalapeno, chili guerrero, chili chipotle, and maybe twenty other sorts of chili. An assault on senses.















The Chiapan coffee is good and we re-stock.

February 8th, 2005: Canyon Sumidero

The river Grijalva originates in the high mountains of Cuchumatanes in Guatemala, running over thousand kilometers before entering the Gulf of Mexico. The four powerstations built on the river produce about twenty per cent of all electricity consumed in Mexico. On its way to the Gulf, the powerful river meets the impressive Canyon Sumidero. The geological age of the canyon is twelve million years. At the deepest point, the canyon's walls are thousand meters high.

According to old Indian legends, around 500 A.D., a warrior tribe came to the Grijalva Valley from Nicaragua. These warrior people were called the Chiapa. By 1523, the indominable Chiapanecas were conquered by the Spaniards, with the help of Zoque Indians. The Chiapanecas revolted several times and were able to recuperate their land, but the power of gunpowder prevailed and the remaining rebels retreated to the caves of the Sumidero Canyon. When they understood they would not be free, almost fifteen thousand Indians threw themselves over the cliffs..

The legends are re-counted in the National Park Canyon Sumidero that protects the river crocodiles, spider monkeys, and other rare species and plants inhabiting the canyon today. A 17 kilometers trail to the park offers five spectacular viewpoints at the left edge of the canyon. The first glimpse shows the Grijalva river flowing out of the canyon to the hot highlands where the Chiapas' capital, Tuxtla Guitierez, is situated.



As we advance from one viewpoint to the other, the canyon gets deeper and deeper until the river disappears a kilometer down the walls in the darkness.