Interest waning in Mexico's archaeological treasures?

May 11, 2007

El Universal reports that interest in most of Mexico's archaeological sites by tourists is waning, and blames the decline on poor marketing.

The number one and two sites, Teotihuacan and Chichén Itzá, saw a decline in the number of visitors between 2001 and 2006, the newspaper reports. Teotihuacan in 2001 had 2.295 million visitors, but in 2006 had 1.395. Chichén in 2001 had 1.18 million visitors but it 2006 saw that fall to 938,000.

Heavily advertised and promoted sites, such as Tulum and Coba (which, the newspaper claims, benefit from Riviera Maya marketing) posted substantial increases during the same period.

If the newspaper's argument is true, that archaeological zones require promotion to thrive, then Chichén Itzá should see a dramatic increase in visitors as a result of the promotion by Mexico to name it one of the Seven Wonders of the World.

Morley and the Barbachanos

May 9, 2007

Gonzalo Navarrete Muñoz, the resident historian of the Diario de Yucatan, is making a career of writing about Chichen. He was at it again last weekend, penning a column about Chichen and some of the people who are associated in history with it.

The column was the result of a dinner invitation by Fernando Barbachano Herrero, the grandson of the man who founded the Mayaland hotel at Chichen, and the son of my good friend, the late don Fernando Barbachano Gomez Rul. Barbachano Herrero asked Navarrete Muñoz to attend a dinner he was throwing for a grand nephew of Sylvanus Morley.

Morley was the archaeologist who was the driving force behind the Carnegie Institution's 20-year restoration/research project at Chichen Itza. Jim Macauley is the grandson of Morley's sister.

This dinner party also included an uncle and cousin of Barbachano Herrero, and Eduardo Perez de Heredia, director of INAH's Chichen Itza operation.

Navarrete Muñoz, in his column, said conversation centered on the modern history of Chichen Itza: How Barbachano Herrero's great- grandfather Francisco Gomez Rul became the first registered tourism operator in Yucatan, how his daughter, Carmen Gomez Rul, and son-in- law, Fernando Barbachano Peon, purchased property from Edward Thompson at Chichen Itza to start the Mayaland; how Morley got approval to restore Chichen in 1914 from the Carnegie, but the Mexican Revolution and aftermath delayed the start of the project for 10 years.

Barbachano Herrero related how it was Morley who designed the foyer of the Mayaland, which is oriented toward the Caracol. (NOTE: There is nothing better than having a drink late in the day at the Mayaland and watch the sun disappear behind that ancient observatory.)

The discussion then turned to the unique shadow-and-light phenomenon that plays on El Castillo during the equinoxes. Perez de Heredia adhered to the official INAH archaeologist party line, saying, "Evidence does not exist that the Mayans contemplated the shadows of the equinoxes," adding, "Chichen Itza was not made to produce shadows."

Restoring El Castillo Behind Closed Doors...

May 8, 2007

Officials at INAH yesterday announced completion of a $330,000 (Mexican) restoration of El Castillo, just in time should the pyramid be named one of the Seven Wonders of the World. Work began last year and consisted of cleaning every square inch of the giant building, removing dirt and moss, and replacing crumbling or failed mortar.

The pyramid had degraded, the result of a constant assault of heat, humidity and wind.

Special attention was applied to the Greater Temple on top of the pyramid as well as the inner chamber. According to Chichen director Eduardo Perez, the Maya constructed new temples on old. The inner chamber is from a previous version of the pyramid. Inside that chamber is a chac mool statue and a bright, red jaguar throne, each of which has also been meticulously cleaned.

The top of the pyramid and the inner chamber are closed to the public. INAH officials are currently determining if the spaces can be reopened in a limited way.

Chichen is Number Two--Sort Of!

May 7, 2007

Those sneaky devils looking to name the new Seven Wonders of the World have pulled a fast one.

Several weeks ago the New Open World Foundation (www.new7wonders.com) promised to release the voting tallies to date of the 21 monuments seeking the distinction to become a world wonder. Today is the day, and the results are less than definitive.

No specific tallies were released. Instead, they organization announced which monuments were in the top 10 and which were in the bottom 10. Of the top 10, Chichen Itza was number two, but only because alphabetically it came after Greece's Acropolis and before the Colosseum in Rome.

If all races were reported this way, I'd have been in the money of Sunday's Kentucky Derby as my horse finished 7th.

The rest of the Top 10 includes Eiffel Tower, Great Wall, Machu Picchu, Petra, Easter Island, Stonehenge and the Taj Mahal.

The Bottom 10 consist of Angkor, Alhambra, Hagia Sophia, Kiyomizu Temple, the Kremlin, Neuschwanstein Castle, Statue of Liberty, Statue of Christ the Redeemer, Sydney Opera House and Timbucktu.

The only ranking we apparently know for sure is 11, which, by process of elimination, must be the Pyramids of Giza. However, I suspect the organizers are going to let that one in by acclamation, as it is the only monument still standing of the original Seven Wonders of the Ancient World. If true, that means Chichen is fighting for one of six spots, not seven.

Journey to Merida Yields Surprises

May 2, 2007

The San Antonio News-Express runs a regular column consisting of a conversation between two women, Maria Eugenia Cossio Ameduri and Ellen Riojas Clark. They usually discuss books they have read, but a few weeks ago, Maria Eugenia described a recent visit she had to her mother's home city, Merida. Not much here about Chichen Itza, but I liked the banter. Here's an edited version of that conversation:

MARIA EUGENIA: Ellen, after my father died I wanted to take my mother back to Mérida, where she was born, to visit the sites she remembers with so much nostalgia. Unhappily, she was diagnosed with Parkinson's and is no longer capable of traveling. When I heard that one of her family's henequen (sisal) haciendas, "Chunchucmil," had been bought and slated to become a hotel, I decided to go and photograph whatever had survived of it after the passing of more than 70 years.

Ellen, you know I am a pragmatist who believes that people who dwell in their "glorious" past do so because their present is less than idyllic, so I never gave a thought at what I was going to feel. We went to Chunchucmil not knowing whether we could get in, but we thought that at least we could photograph the area from the outside. To our pleasant surprise, there was no gate and we drove up to the main house, which is still in pretty good condition.

I asked two men on the porch if I could talk to the manager of the property. The older, a Mayan Indian, asked me what I wanted. I explained to him that the hacienda had belonged to my great- grandfather Rafael Peón Losa. He smiled and pointed to a plaque on the wall with my great-grandfather's name as the founder of Chunchucmil. Unexpectedly, I was moved. Somebody who has been like a character in a novel to me came to life and made his presence felt, taking me by surprise.

Juventino, the manager of the hacienda, opened up the main house and told me that the portraits were still there. When I saw them, tears welled up in my eyes; the frescoes of my grand-aunts and great- grandmother's faces were still on the wall. Can you believe it? Also, a room with oriental motif frescoes has been preserved as well as the tile floors imported from France - all still in pristine condition! He asked me if I was interested in seeing "the refrigerator" and he opened a room next to the kitchen and, pointing to a big wooden box, said: "That's where they kept the food for Don Porfirio. Your great- grandfather brought it from France, via New York, for the banquet."

What he was referring to was a famous lunch that my great-grandfather threw in honor of President Porfirio Díaz, who visited Mérida in 1906. My great-grandfather hosted him at Chunchucmil. Everything for that feast: the china, silverware, chefs and icebox, came from France.

Because of the many expenses he had incurred, my great-grandfather almost went bankrupt. This fulsome deed became a legend and part of the history books of Yucatán! Besides that, what was important to me, Ellen, is that in this empty house there was still evidence of our past family life that impressed me, rendering the present hazy.

Visiting the compound, I realized that these haciendas were like feudal towns. Besides the machinery for extracting and processing the henequen fiber, they had a chapel, a school, a prison, an infirmary, and, of course, a store. Chunchucmil is a town that time forgot. Sadly, I don't think the lives of the people there have changed much since my family owned it.

ELLEN: I had some of the most wonderful times in Yucatán, and I don't mean just Cancún. It was so interesting to go to the mercado in Cancún and to hear Mayan spoken everywhere. The children as well as the adults using the Mayan way of counting with their fingers, doing all sorts of mathematical computations with just their hands, and so fast.

Had some astonishing adventures there, including chopping my way with a machete in my Dr. Scholl's sandals through the thick, overgrown jungle in Coba. I felt like a female Indiana Jones swinging my machete and uncovering a path to carved stones, pyramids and many unexcavated temple mounds. This was back in the early '90s and they had not cleared it fully nor kept it up. Even saw monkeys! And reptiles of all sorts! Imagínate, in my Dr. Scholl's ...

Chichén Itzá is where the gods punished me! Climbed all the way to the top in my sandals, as usual, get to the top step, all out of breath, someone reaches for my hand to give me a pull, AND, I bang my big toe on the top step. Broke my toe, which turned black and blue.

MA. EUGENIA: My goodness!

On the family front, besides Chunchucmil, we also visited my mother's house in Mérida, which we were lucky to still see since it is being parceled out and in the process of being sold, and my great- grandparents' house in the main plaza, where the first cathedral inland in the New Spain is located.

... I want to reassure people that Mérida is safe and easy to get to. We flew directly from San Antonio to Mexico City just to connect with our flight to Mérida, where people are service-oriented, kind and helpful.

Just to give you an idea, we took a taxi from downtown Mérida back to our hotel. The driver asked how much we had paid to go from the hotel to Mérida. My husband told him that we had paid 120 pesos. He said it was OK. We paid and were walking to our hotel when the driver came running to Ardow and said: "120 is too much, let me give you 20 back."

When have you heard of something like that? I am telling you, only in Mérida.

The Maya's magnetic personality

May 1, 2007: Why did Maya civilization collapse? Too much magnetism.

Researchers from France have identified a correlation between periods of draught and increases in strength of the Earth's magnetic field. In a recent issue of EOS Transactions, journal of the American Geophysical Union, Yves Gallet, Agnès Genevey, Maxime Le Goff, Frédéric Fluteau, and Safar Ali Eshraghi published a study that found a "good temporal coincidence" between "periods of geomagnetic field intensity increases and cooling events." While temperatures in Europe dipped and glaciers advanced, the Middle East and Mesoamerica entered periods of draught.

The team postulated that an increased magnetic field alters how cosmic radiation interacts with the atmosphere, changing the rate in which clouds are formed, which in turn affects the amount of solar radiation absorbed by the earth and earth surface temperatures.

One theory is that Maya political leaders were unable to maintain control of the population during extended periods of draught. Some have suggested that Maya scientists, who could predict astronomical phenomena with great precision, "lost face" with the Maya populace