Mexican Diary, Part 2: After So Many Centuries, the Mayans Still Beguile

Our guide Alphonso leads Cynthia, Lisa and I through the cool Mexican jungle.  On either side mangrove trees look impenetrable with their dense, knotted roots.  I now understand the need for machetes.  Iguanas lounge on rocks and branches. These animals are like squirrels in Mexico.  They’re everywhere, and thank God, not aggressive.  To really see creatures of the jungle, Alphonso advises us to come back at night.  “Then you really see the snakes,” he said.  We decide to sit that one out.

Ten minutes later we come to a clearing with immense collapsed stone structures as far as the eye can see.  This is what’s left of the Mayan culture in Tulum.  A grid of dirt roads leads past once-regal houses for the aristocracy, temples and official buildings.  Every dwelling has remnants of pillars.  Some have secret passages and tunnels.  In one residence there’s a hole in the living room for burying the dead, a common custom.  The largest building, a temple, sits on the highest hill with a commanding view of the Caribbean.  

I walk these streets trying to imagine how they looked a thousand years ago, bustling with people and activity.  I can’t help picturing future generations examining remnants of the Empire State building or Eiffel Tower.  A ripple goes down my spine.  Every civilization thinks they’re invincible.     

Even at 10:00 a.m. the sun beats down and I try and find any shade as Alphonso tells us how Mayan society was organized around city-states.  They charted the moon and planets, had their own written language and of course, that infamous calendar.  They also had a savage side with human sacrifice, teeth filed to points (better to attack your enemy’s jugular) and were known to rip beating hearts out of chests. 

Alphonso shows us a small album of pictures he’s taken over the years, displaying the ruins at various times of the day and months.  His love of this site is evident.  He tells us how the Mayan culture’s heyday went from 250 AD to 900, but eventually vanished.  No one knows why.  Some say it was the Spanish arrival in 900, although it about took 170 years for the Europeans to gain complete control.  Some say it was environmental, maybe drought.  Perhaps it was disease.    

And yet to me the Mayan culture still prevails in southern Mexico.  It’s in the art, the architecture, and of course, the faces of the natives.  Maybe the Mayans never really went away.  Like any clever people, they simply adapted.   We’ll never know what happened to their civilization.  But judging by the international crowds in Tulum, their legend still tantalizes.