The Visionary Mayan Queen: Yohl Ik'Nal of Palenque (19 page)

June 28, 1994

Today is Sunday, and the team takes every Sunday off to rest. I’m impatient to continue the work, but everyone else seems to enjoy lounging around camp, visiting nearby towns or going to Villahermosa to the movies. Last evening I went to Palenque town for dinner with my family. They are thrilled at the opportunity to have me close by; most of my last six years have been spent in Mexico City. While they’re proud of me, the first in our family to get advanced degrees, they seem uncomfortable about the results: I’m still unmarried at age 26, too educated for men of our town, and probably destined for a university position far away from home.

It’s the perennial dilemma of villagers around the world. Parents want a better life for their children, send them away to get educated, hope they will return to the village and help local people, but inevitably we’re lured into city life with its work and cultural advantages. In addition, the educational and cultural gap separates us from village society. Our poor parents are left alone in their old age, or uprooted to live in alien urban settings. Tanto trieste! How sad, but probably my fate, too.

My family was interested in happenings at the archeological camp, because locals take much pride in their famous Maya ruin. It supports a large part of local economy with an unending stream of tourists, filmmaking, spiritual conferences and scientific research expeditions. They listened to my stories and took part in a vivacious discussion, my father never lacking in opinions about the import of our discoveries. He’s somewhat of a self-styled Palenque expert and frequently takes friends on tours of the archeological site. My mother liked best the descriptions of our cook’s talents, though she couldn’t believe their cooking might taste as good as hers.

I described last evening’s dinner at the archeological camp kitchen; it was especially delicious. How the cooks can prepare such tasty food with limited facilities amazes me. They brought typical south Mexican cuisine to a fine art: stews of pork and chicken, black bean sauce, tamales of chili and cheese, and tortillas as only village women can make – small, thick and cooked on a griddle stone placed over an open hearth. Add local fresh papayas, mangos, bananas and melons for the finishing touch and you have a meal for a Maya king – K’uhul Ahau, that is.

My abuelita, “little grandmother,” watched all this with a twinkle in her eyes. She is a great one for telling stories, my abuelita. I learned all I know about storytelling arts from her. She told me many tales about growing up in Tumbala, a tiny Mayan village far into the forests east of Palenque. To help support her family, she walked three hours through trails to Palenque town to work as a housekeeper. After a long day scrubbing floors and washing clothes by hand, cooking meals and tending children, she returned home in gathering darkness. According to her, she could walk that trail if the night was pitch black or she was blindfolded.

She met my grandfather in Palenque. He worked in the grocery store owned by his uncle. One day their eyes met across a table of squashes, and they fell in love. He bargained with her father, who was loath to lose the family’s best source of income. Legend has it that grandfather paid a royal bride price for her, at least it seemed so to villagers of that time. They lived in Palenque and built the house my father inherited, where my parents are today. Abuelita’s squash dishes are still a family favorite.

She promises to tell me the story of how I got my blue eyes – the same color as hers – later, always later when I am old enough. Well, I should be old enough now! When I asked tonight, she demurred, saying:

“Maybe on your 30
^th
birthday, or when you marry.”

“Why when I marry? What if I don’t marry?” I chided her.

“Not marry? Do not say such a thing, querida,” she scolded. “Of course you will marry, and have children, and continue the family. That is what women must do.”

She is still very much a Maya villager, my abuelita Juanita. A tiny, slender woman, she has the narrow face, prominent cheekbones and large nose of the highland Maya. Her skin is dark chocolate color and makes a startling contrast with her blue eyes. Papa, her son, looks more Spanish with lighter skin and smaller nose. He more resembles my grandfather, now passed on. Mama also looks less typically Mayan. They are all mestizos, my family. From earliest times the Spanish interbred with natives, initially by keeping mistresses but eventually by marrying.

Mama seems unimpressed by Abuelita Juanita’s secrets.

“Every Maya today has some blue-eyed Spaniard ancestor. What’s to be so special about your eyes? Mexico is populated by mestizos, we are all a mixed breed. Juanita makes much of nothing.”

But I’m interested in our heritage and her village memories.

“Maybe if you tell me the story about our blue eyes, then I will want to get married,” I tease.

“We will see, we will see,” is all she would say.

I am nearly moved to tears – some of joy, some of sorrow – when I think about Palenque’s legacy of exploration going back to the early Spaniards. Some came for official documentation, some as explorers and opportunists, a few as lovers of antiquities and exotica. Among them were serious archeologists and anthropologists seeking to penetrate the mysteries of the fabulous ancient civilization lost in dense jungles.

What did the site look like to early explorers? They had to endure daunting hardships getting here. With Papa’s help, I’m summarizing the history of Palenque’s exploration.

In the 1780s, a couple of Spanish expeditions came to Palenque and made crude drawings of structures and art. The King of Spain was interested in the geography and history of his overseas colonies, and dispatched Artillery Captain Antonio del Rio from Guatemala to bring away samples. Del Rio removed stucco hieroglyphs, parts of figures and small panels that now reside in Madrid’s Museo de America. Numerous drawings by artist Ignacio Armendariz from this expedition were the first reasonably accurate reproductions of Palenque’s huge array of art.

Another Spanish expedition in the early 1800s produced 27 drawings of panels and tablets, floor plans, and sketches of buildings, a bridge and aqueduct. Guillermo Dupaix, Dragoon Captain stationed in Mexico, and artist Jose Luciano Castaneda took a 50-mile trek from Cuidad Real (now San Cristobal de la Casas) to Palenque that required eight days on a trail winding through mountains that were “scarcely passable by any other animal than a bird.” Unfortunately, the work of these two Spanish artists got confounded and appeared in a book by Alexander von Humboldt in 1810 labeled as “Mexican reliefs found in Oaxaca,” a city nowhere near Palenque.

The flamboyant artist, traveler and antiquarian, self-styled “count” Jean-Frederic Maximilien de Waldeck adapted Armendariz-Castandea’s art with his own embellishments of musculature and costumes that gave a distinctly Roman look. Waldeck, like some other early explorers, believed the people who built these cities came from the “old world,” either Rome, India or Egypt. This art appeared in an 1822 publication of the del Rio report, with many images copied into Lord Kingsborough’s sumptuous volume the
Antiquities of Mexico
in 1829. Waldeck resided at Palenque in 1832, building a pole-and-thatch house near the Temple of the Cross and recruiting a local Maya girl as his housekeeper. The structure called Temple of the Count is named for him. He made numerous drawings of reliefs and glyphs, some were careful reproductions but many were fanciful with evocative views of buildings and romantic landscapes used later for paintings and lithographs.

I can forgive Waldeck for many of his absurdities, such as including elephant heads and Hindu designs in renditions of Maya art. But I cannot forgive him for partially destroying one of Palenque’s loveliest stucco sculptures, the “Beau-relief” that once adorned the Temple of the Jaguar. It depicts a graceful figure with flowing headdress and geometric-patterned skirt, seated on layered cushions upon a double-headed jaguar throne. The figure’s arms and legs hold elegant, ballet-like poses. Waldeck did draw the figure first, as did Armendariz half-a-century earlier. Why he destroyed it is a mystery.

These drawings were reproduced in a number of books and magazines, and caught the attention of two men in the United States who really “put Palenque on the map” – John Lloyd Stephens, American popular travel writer and Frederick Catherwood, English architect and illustrator. Intrigued by the fantastic images and cities depicted, they determined to travel in search of Maya ruins and publish a book with illustrations about these wondrous things. They went first to Belize to visit Copan (now in Honduras), and then planned visits to Uxmal, Palenque and other sites.

Belize was under British control then, and some international competition got sparked. Patrick Walker, aide to the superintendent of British Honduras, and Lt. John Caddy of the Royal Artillery heard about Stephens and Catherwood’s plans to visit Palenque. Irked that the American expedition might reach Palenque before the British, Walker and Caddy quickly put together their own expedition. The Britons planned to reach Palenque first by going due west along the Belize River and across the Peten in Guatemala. They endured a grueling journey through swamps and jungles, arriving two months ahead of the American team.

Walker and Caddy made some quite accurate drawings of figures, panels and buildings and produced a report that remained unpublished for over 125 years. Their primary goal seemed to be winning the race with the American team, and Walker’s greatest interest was hunting game along the way. Caddy’s report did make prophetic observations: that the massive buildings, elegant bas-reliefs, and beautiful ornaments prove that in ancient times the city was inhabited by “a race both populous and civilized.” He also concluded that many more buildings once stood at the site that extended for several leagues. One entry remarked on a Spanish manuscript from around 1796, in which the local priest claimed that he “discovered the true origin” of these ancient people because of their “perfect knowledge of the Mythology of the Chaldeans.”

More of Stephens and Catherwood’s work later. Mama just called for dinner and I’m hungry.

July 2, 1994

On this rainy afternoon, my work for the day finished, I’m continuing my notes about early explorers. At camp we really enjoy occasional rains during the dry season, it cools the air a little. The humidity increases; it must be close to 100% now judging from my totally damp clothes. The ceiling fan helps by moving the air. I marvel at the stamina of those early explorers who visited Palenque in the 19
^th
century, without cabins and electricity. Thanks to the remarkable four-volume books
Incidents of Travel
, by Stephens and Catherwood, we are given much insight into the hardships of travel and the impact of this splendid and high civilization on these explorers.

John Stephens is a masterful storyteller and Frederick Catherwood a fine artist. Their first two-volume book, featuring Central America, Chiapas and Yucatan, was published in 1841. It became an instant success, with publisher Harper and Brothers in New York making 11 printings of 20,000 copies each in only three months. I keep a copy with me to enjoy comparing their impressions with present-day Palenque. Although his prose is typical for that period, it’s richly descriptive and amusing. Stephens weaves details of their harrowing adventures, gives astute character profiles, evocative descriptions and levelheaded reasoning, spiced with wry humor. Catherwood provides distinctive drawings and quality architectural designs with floor plans, elevations and outside views of Palenque’s major structures. Thirty-one of his Palenque drawings were converted to engravings and published in the two Central American volumes.

You get a real sense of travel in the mid-1800s in the backcountry of Mexico and Central America. Stephens and Catherwood came from Guatemala to Ocosingo and followed the same route Dupaix took thirty years earlier, an ancient Indian path over mountains giving “one of the grandest, wildest, and most sublime scenes I ever beheld.” They made the trip in five days to reduce nights in the wild during the rainy season. Clambering along steep paths hovering over thousand-foot precipices, they mostly walked leading mules and occasionally risked being carried in a chair by an Indian using a tumpline across his forehead. The chair-bearer’s heavy breathing, dripping sweat and trembling limbs failed to inspire confidence and made them feel guilty, so they used the chair very little. The descent was even more terrible than the ascent, and the sun was sinking. Dark clouds and thunder gave way to a violent rainstorm, men and mules slipping and sliding. Stephens admits, “. . it was the worst mountain I ever encountered in that or any other country, and, under our apprehension of the storm, I will venture to say that no travelers ever descended in less time.”

Once on the plains below and camped for the night, they suffered an onslaught of “moschetoes as we had not before experienced.” Even fire and cigars could not keep the vicious insects at bay. After a sleepless and much-bitten night, Stephens went before daylight to the nearby shallow river “and stretched myself out on the gravelly bottom, where the water was barely deep enough to run over my body. It was the first comfortable moment I had had.”

“Moschetoes” and rainstorms continued to plague the explorers after they arrived at the ruins of Palenque. They no sooner got their wood frame beds and stone slab dining table set up, with a meal of chicken, beans, rice and cold tortillas prepared proudly by their mozo Juan, than a loud thunderclap heralded the afternoon storm. Though located on the upper terrace of the palace and covered by a roof, the fierce wind blasted through open doors followed instantly by a deluge that soaked everything. They moved to an inside corridor but still could not escape the rain, and slept with clothes and bedding thoroughly wet.

Rather, they tried to sleep but “suffered terribly from moschetoes, the noise and stings of which drove away sleep. In the middle of the night I took up my mat to escape from these murderers of rest.” Finding a low damp passage near the foot of the palace tower, Stephens crawled inside and spread his mat as bats whizzed through the passage. However, the bats drove away the mosquitoes, the damp passage was cooling and refreshing, and “with some twinging apprehensions of the snakes and reptiles, lizards and scorpions, which infest the ruins, I fell asleep.”

They solved the mosquito problem by bending sticks over their wood beds and sewing their sheets together, draping them over the sticks to form a mosquito net. Not all insects were odious. At night the darkness of the palace was lighted by huge fireflies of “extraordinary size and brilliance” that flew through corridors or clung to walls. Called locuyos, they were half an inch long and had luminescent spots by their eyes and under their wings. “Four of them together threw a brilliant light for several yards around” and one alone gave enough light to read a newspaper.

To explore the heavily forested ruins they hired a guide, the same man employed by Waldeck, Walker and Caddy. It’s hard now to imagine how dense the jungle was then, trees growing on top of every structure and filling plazas. Without the guide, they had no idea where other structures lay and “might have gone within a hundred feet of all the buildings without discovering one of them.” The palace was most visible and could be seen from the northeast path leading to the ruins. Stephens described its many rooms, stuccos, tablets and ornaments while Catherwood rendered detailed floor plans and copied images. Stephens hoped their work would give an idea of the “profusion of its ornaments, of their unique and striking character, and of their mournful effect, shrouded by trees.” Perhaps readers could imagine the palace as it once was “perfect in its amplitude and rich decorations, and occupied by the strange people whose portraits and figures now adorn its walls.”

According to the guide, there were five other buildings that Stephens numbered, but none could be seen from the palace. The closest was Casa 1, a ruined pyramid that apparently had steps on all sides, now thrown down by trees that required them to “clamber over stones, aiding the feet by clinging to the branches.” From descriptions and drawings, this structure is the Pyramid of the Inscriptions. Bas-relief stuccos on the four piers of the upper temple were reasonably well preserved, depicting four standing figures holding infants. The famous hieroglyphic tablets covering the interior wall were also in good condition.

Casas 2, 3 and 5 are part of the Cross Group. Stephens and Catherwood were deeply impressed by the stuccos and tablets that we now know belong to the Temple of the Cross and Temple of the Foliated Cross. The fantastic tablets from the first temple were incomplete and only the left tablet containing glyphs was in place. The middle tablet with two figures facing a cross had been removed and carried down the side of the pyramid, but deposited near the stream bank below. A villager intended to take it home, but was stopped by government orders forbidding further removal from the ruins. The right tablet was broken and fragmented, but from remnants they saw it contained more glyphs.

The second temple contained another tablet in near-perfect condition. It had a central panel with two figures facing a large mask over two crossed batons, flanked on each side by panels of glyphs. The four piers of the temple’s entrance once contained sculptures, the outer two adorned with large medalians were still in place. The other two panels had been removed by villagers and set into the wall of a house. Copied earlier by Catherwood, these panels depicted two men facing each other. One was richly dressed and regal, the other an old man in jaguar pelt smoking a pipe. Later these famous sculptures were moved to the village church, and again later to the Palenque museum.

Casa 4 was farthest away, southwest of the palace. It sat on a pyramid 100 feet above the bank of the river with the front wall entirely collapsed. The large stucco tablet inside showed the bottom half of a figure sitting on a double-headed jaguar throne, the lovely beau relief partially destroyed by Waldeck. Stephens regretted this loss greatly (as do I) because it appeared to be “superior in execution to any other stucco relief in Palenque.” This small structure is now called Temple of the Jaguar.

Stephens complains that artists of former expeditions failed to reproduce the detailed glyphs in Casas 1 and 3, and omitted drawings of Casa 2 altogether. He believes these artists were “incapable of the labour, and the steady, determined perseverance required for drawing such complicated, unintelligible, and anomalous characters.” Catherwood used a camera lucida to project a light image of the glyphs and sculptures onto paper, and then drew the images to accurate scale and detail. He divided his paper into squares for copying glyphs to give accurate placement, reducing these large images and hand correcting the later engravings himself.

One must admire these two men, working under terrible conditions with limited equipment, yet providing such a thorough account of the Palenque structures they saw. They needed to scrape off green moss, dig out roots, clean away layers of dissolved limestone, use candles to light dark inner chambers, build scaffolds to access high places, and endure a plethora of climate and insect assaults. They paid the price of multiple mosquito bites, for both men contracted malaria and suffered repeated episodes of illness.

They left us a few astute conclusions. Stephens proved more insightful than later Mayanists by writing: “The hieroglyphics doubtless tell its history” and “The hieroglyphics are the same as were found at Copan and Quirigua. . there is room for belief that the whole of this country was once occupied by the same race, speaking the same language . .”

“Here were the remains of a cultivated, polished, and peculiar people, who had passed through all the stages incident to the rise and fall of nations; reached their golden age, and perished, entirely unknown. . wherever we moved we saw the evidences of their taste, their skill in arts, their wealth and power.”