Incidents of Travel in the Yucatán, Part 4.

Late one afternoon in Mérida I wandered into a large old church.  Inside, it had that beautiful and lived-in feel of old churches that every day for hundreds of years have been open to the life of the world around it.  There was no service going on and only a few people  --  a family, I think  --  up near the front, lost in prayer, and a flicker of candles at a side altar.  I heard a flutter of wings high up near the dark ceiling of the nave: birds, surrogate for angels, who had made their nests in the inaccessible rafters and interior cornices of the old structure.  I was tired and sat down in a worn pew and let my mind relax and wander among the familiar images and associations of the sanctuary and drifted off into peace as one does when you are in a comfortable, familiar place, even if, as here, it is one that you have never actually been before.  I pondered nothing earthly-minded and time became unimportant.

A bit later I became aware of motion at the rear of the church and glanced back to see that a small party of tourists, apparently Americans, had entered and were hesitantly looking around at the furnishings of the sanctuary.  Noticing others apparently in prayer or at some pious observation, they were speaking in whisper and trying not to disturb and it seemed to me being a bit awkward and uncomfortable to find themselves there.

This seemed strange to me.  Elaborated as its decoration might be, this wasn’t some obscure East Asian temple where hashish-crazed natives danced and sacrificed before a pagan idol with a jeweled eye and a taste for virgin’s blood: it was just a church.  A Roman Catholic church just like the ones I am sure these people had passed by most every day of their life.  However protestant one might have been  --  and scornful of the pomps and presumptions of the Pope in Rome  --  how odd that a visiting American would be uncomfortable in a Christian church.  I would have thought that in a foreign city the church should be the most familiar place, the most comfortable and reassuring and homelike.  But perhaps they were unaccustomed to being in a church even when at home and I suppose that when you travel you also learn about your own kind, though I still think it unfortunate.  A part of the country they have come to visit that is invisible to them.

For the birds fluttering around the ceiling, it was their home, too, though for them it was just another cave.

Incidents of Travel in the Yucatán, Part 3.

There was one other incident in Mérida that might be worth mentioning.

Early one evening I was sitting by myself at a table reading the menu in a little open-fronted restaurant facing the park in the center of town.  I was puzzling over the local Yucatecan dishes when I became aware that the fellow at the next table had started a conversation with me.
    Pointing to the restaurant’s name on the menu, Nicté-Há, he asked if I knew what it meant.  Something to do with a flower, I said knowingly, making use of the fact that there was a picture of a flower on the cover.
    Ah, you have some knowledge of the Mayan tongue, he said, introducing himself as a teacher of that language.

We talked of this and that.  Or rather, he talked and I nodded, mostly keeping up with what he was saying.  He quoted some Mayan poetry and in general made the point that any educated person ought to know this ancient and still widely-spoken the language, to all of which I smiled and nodded assent.
    He asked for my journal and said he would write down some common Mayan words that would be useful for me to know if I were to be spending time in the Yucatán.

He wrote in my journal for a few minutes and then handed it back.  On the left side of the page he had written a phrase in Mayan and across from it the same phrase in Spanish.  I was relieved to find that he had written the Mayan in Roman letters, as I might have had trouble with glyphs.

Bix a bel? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ¿Cómo está?
Tux ca bin? . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  .  ¿A dónde va?
Max a kabáh? . . .  .  . . . ¿Como es tu nombre?
Jaipé jab yantech? . . . . . . . ¿Que edad tienes?

He had written ten phrases and went through them, pronouncing them for me.  The “x” was pronounced “sh”, as it was in 16th-Century Spanish when Indian names and words were transliterated into the Roman alphabet.  He told me I could also find some language books at Libreria Burrel, the big bookstore near my hotel.
    Later, I looked over the list of phrases he had given me:  How are you?  What is your name?  How old are you?  Would you like to go for a walk?  Would you like to dance?  Would you like to go to bed? and of course, Thank you.
    My, my.  I suddenly saw a pattern.  How practical.  What a handy list of phrases to give a lone gentleman in an unfamiliar town where Mayan might be spoken.  How considerate of my teacher.

On the way back to Chicxulub Puerto on a slow local bus, an old Indian got on board and saw a friend.  Bix a bel?, he said.  Tux ca bin?  I was delighted, though of course that was all of their conversation that I was able to follow.

Incidents of Travel in the Yucatán, Part 2.

Some days I walk along the beach.  The sand is clean and white and the line of the surf runs straight and unbroken.   Save for the occasional fisherman coming ashore in a small, bright-painted wooden boat, the beach is empty.  To my left, ten or fifteen kilometers distant, is the long iron pier stretching out into the Gulf at the town of Progreso.  To my right, the line of white sand and the edge of the sea and the shoulder of palms all come to an indistinct point where the world stops.  Somehow, I always knew paradise would be boring.


I took a bus to the old colonial town of Mérida to spend a few days and found small, nice hotel with white walls and tile floors and large potted plants.  It was in an old building being worked on at the moment and there were unprotected holes in the floor where you could look down through into its nicely appointed lobby, but as I did not think I would be roaming about in the dark, I was sure this would be no problem.  At the hotel I learned that the following morning someone was driving out to the ruins at Uxmal, so I arranged to ride with him.


Plato & Aristotle in the Yucatán

He was a young, well-educated Mayan fellow who had been to the University and spoke good English.  As we drove across the flat scrub country toward Uxmal he mentioned that his home was in a nearby village.  I asked if it were true, as I had heard, that in the villages they still made sacrifices to Chac, the old rain god.

    “Yes,” he said, a bit shamefacedly.  “I suppose you would say that they were still pagans.”
    “Oh, well,” I said, “so were Plato and Aristotle.”

    He broke into a big smile.


When we say “Mayan” we can mean either the high civilization that flourished and passed away before the Spanish arrived, or we can mean their descendants who still live in that same area and speak their same language today.  The high civilization with its priestly and political superstructure is long gone, collapsed of its own weight.  The Mayan themselves are still here, speaking the same language that their ancestors a millennium ago carved into the glyphs of monuments that we have been for the last century extracting from the jungle. 
    The gods who demanded blood to maintain the cosmic order and whose ways and intentions could only be divined by priests have passed away, along with the haughty lords and puffed-up warriors who had been part and parcel of that old elaborate and expensive regime, and Chac, the old god whom the people knew before and who brings life-giving rain and may be approached directly, is, it would appear, still with his people.

I almost hate to mention this, but how often do you get the chance to tell a charming story about a Meso-American deity?
    When Queen Elizabeth and Prince Phillip were visiting Mexico in 1975, they were guests at a light and sound show at the ruins of Uxmal.  At the high point of the presentation  --  and I can only imagine that it must have been a spectacular show because they are spectacular ruins  -- the audio played an ancient prayer to Chac.  Whereupon, the skies opened and a furious rain poured down from heaven.
    This happened in late February, at the mid-point the dry season.