TULUM RE-VISITED MAY 2008

MAYAN SHAMANS OR SHYSTER CHARLATANS?
By John M. Grimsrud
Twenty plus years ago when Jane and I first visited Tulum it was a two tope town. (A tope is a speed bump.)
Stuck in my mind is a humorous little incident that occurred on our first visit. It was customary back in those days for young venders selling fruits and homemade items to eat to stand at the topes and attempt to make a sale to passing motorists that were slowing down for the speed bumps.
As we passed one of Tulum’s two topes I remarked to Jane of the strikingly beautiful young Mayan girl there selling fruit which I did not buy.
Jane advised me not to look back, but I did, wishing I hadn’t.
Glancing in my rearview mirror I saw that hauntingly beautiful Mayan princess transformed as she “shot me the bird” with both hands while sour facedly sticking out her tongue. Beauty is only skin deep!
Well, over the past quarter of a century we have seen little two tope Tulum transform from a nearly dead jungle settlement that wasn’t even a wide place in the road to a bustling boom town.
The state of Quintana Roo had been a territory where no white man was safe from the beginning of the Caste War in 1847 until the 1930s. After federal troops out gunned the Maya and sent all of the captives off to Cuba as slaves President Porfirio Diaz made Quintana Roo into a national territory in 1902
Statehood came in 1974 two years after Cancun and the Caribbean coast were discovered and being developed as a tourist destination. Before that it had been a smugglers tax free haven where clandestine fortunes were made dealing in everything from electronic gadgets to Dutch ham and cheese.
Caribbean coast tourism brought an avalanche of development beginning in Cancun in 1972. International vacationers flooded in making the Costa Maya the world’s number one tourist destination, sending this last holdout of ancient Mayan culture and tradition into a faded memory.
Land grabbing flimflammers and unscripted developers exploited labor at slave wages and didn’t hesitate to capitalize.
In the1990s state Governor Mario E. Villanueva Madrid developed Columbian drug connections and made the state of Quintana Roo into the number one drug trafficking area in all of Mexico.
The influx of multinational capital merely served to augment the wealth of the wealthiest while simultaneously plundering Mexico’s last and largest natural eco-environment.
The buzz-words today have become; “Mayan” and “eco” for ecological that have the eager tourists lining up to squander their money.
The cruise ships promote blitzkrieg day trips with caravan loads of jeeps filing down jungle roads at top speed thirty at a time seeing nothing but the dust obliterated back of the jeep in front of them. Here a small group leaves Tulum headed for Punta Allen.

On the Caribbean coast south of Tulum is the beach front resort of Copal named after the Mayan shaman’s ceremonial smoke producing tree pitch. Believe it or not we haven’t seen anything other than some of the maintenance people that are in anyway even remotely Mayan. The massage lady is Swedish.
This Mayan baptism ceremony held on the grounds of the ruins of Tulum is being conducted by the shaman with the blue baseball cap. At least here the participants were Mexican; in fact they were all friends of our adopted Mexican daughter Grisel.
This expensive Caribbean beach wedding ceremony was just a three day drunk made up of rich jet-setters on a fling. The white robed barefooted long gray bearded old hippie shaman of dubious origins was no more Mayan than the man in the moon.
In the town of Tulum is this real Mayan park flanked by their gigantic ritualistic Ceiba trees also known as yaxchilcab in Mayan and kapok in English the fiber of which was used in life-preservers until the 1950s. This park is surrounding the Maya Cruzob cross cult church and dates back to the beginning of the Caste War in the 1840s when no foreigners were safe to enter this region and the nearby city of Felipe Carrillo Porto then known as Chan Santa Crux was the capitol of their Mayan territory.
Chan Santa Crux fell to federal troops in 1901 and the captured Mayan rebels were sold off to Cuba in slavery. Despite the crushing oppression by the invading conquers the Maya still cling to their ancient ways.
Within this humble thatched roof dwelling is the sacred Mayan Cruzob Cross altar guarded by an alternating group of true Maya, natives of this land who keep alive the language and traditions of their ancient ancestors. They are serious about taking photos and you will be obliged to remove your shoes before entering the chapel and light a ceremonial candle.. You will be expected to make a cash contribution. Though the above sign is in both Spanish and English do not be surprised if you only encounter Mayan speakers here.
Passion for maintenance is low here in this Mayan park and the people think differently about money and land rights than the descendants of the European community.
In downtown Tulum a block removed from the Mayan Cruzob Cross church is the totally un-restored ruminant of a Mayan temple as you can see that is still being actively used.

In this state of Quintana Roo that is uniquely ecologically diverse with high jungle, savanna mangrove wetlands and the second longest coral reef in the world, the Mayan people have co-existed with nature for thousands of years.
Tulum was an active part of the Mayan sea-going trade route and at the ruins of Tulum you will find that these ancient mariners actually had a day and night range marker system to guide vessels through a break in the coral reef.
South of Tulum at the Mayan ruins of Muyil or Chunyaxché these Maya dug a straight canal six kilometers long in from the bay that is still serviceable to this day. Further evidence of their seafaring commerce can be found on the New River in Belize where channel cuts and docking stations are clearly in evidence and usable leading all the way up to the Mayan ruins of Lamanai that has the distinction of being one of the longest lasting continuously occupied of all Mayan sites.
The seafaring Mayan traders whose commerce took them as far a field as Cuba, Florida and many of the Caribbean islands originated from the area of present day Tabasco and Veracruz.
These were the Chontal Maya whose descendants were the ancient Olmec with their huge trading canoes.
Handed down from these Olmec was the secret of corn cultivation together with the incredible process known as “nixtamalization” that enabled them to form the first Mesoamerican civilization.
Corn had been cultivated since before 5000 BC. However this process known as nixtamalization developed by the Olmec whereby they boiled the corn with white lime or wood ashes and let it stand some hours to cool softened the husk that made it easier to grind into smooth dough called masa. A result of this simple process yielded a product dramatically enhanced in nutritional value that provided sufficient protein for almost every diet and together with their beans, squash, avocados and other tropical fruits they went on to cultivate cacao, cotton, vanilla, harvest rubber and then had the leisure time to build their incredible civilization.
Venturing out of the huge jungle rivers that flowed down from the highlands of Guatemala, the Chontal Maya from Tabasco sailed their cargo laden long canoes off to the Caribbean.
August 15th 1502 at the Island of Guanaja in the Bay Islands of Honduras two sailing canoes forty to fifty meters in length with center covered cabins heavy laden with trading goods were apprehended by Christopher Columbus on his fourth and final voyage. He became the first European to encounter the Maya of Mexico.
Christopher Columbus had limited luck in his lusty search for gold and had finally stooped to trading in human flesh.
Little did Columbus know at the time that the shipment of cacao was a valuable cargo used as currency in the New World.

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Now the swindlers that have come here to create jobs and better the lot of the natives have instead manipulated land titles, plundered the natural environment and only exploited the Maya name to dupe vacationers. At the same time they are paying slave wages to the Maya who must enter the business establishments by the rear door.
Worst of all is the fact that now these same exploiters want to blame the Mayan for the obvious ecological degradation. It is the same old story of blame the victim.