SEEKING XIBALBA- A search for the lost Maya Codices

A novel of the modern-day Maya landscape where more is hidden than revealed. Archeologists discover an astounding ancient secret in their search for the missing Maya Codices.


SEEKING XIBALBA by L. H. Freeman Copyright
[1]1

SEEKING XIBALBA

A NOVEL BY LAWRENCE FREEMAN
SEEKING XIBALBA by L. H. Freeman Copyright
[1]1

SEEKING XIBALBA

A NOVEL BY LAWRENCE FREEMAN
The City died. Not swiftly or suddenly through invasion or burning, although there were those. No, the City died slowly, a dwindling, family by family, society by society, until only individuals were left to melt away into the verdant emerald humidity.
Over time the defensive walls crumbled, and small living things built nests in the nooks and crannies. The dust whirled eerily through the empty plazas and balconies, whispering only to ghosts, buoying gently aloft the roosting birds.
The waiting verdure crept inexorably between and through crevices and towers. Blurring the architecture until the City and the encroaching green monster became one, sleeping, waiting patiently for the ‘authorized’ grave-robbers, the archeologists.

PRENSA ALGAMA
Masuul, Mexico - Doctor Mitchell Claremont of Southern Idaho University announced today the finding of what he called “a complete library of Maya codices”, at a remote site in the Highlands of Chiapas.
Preliminarily dated to between 300 and 800 A.D., the find promises to completely revise the history of Central America, and according to Doctor Claremont, will open “many new avenues of scientific investigation, possibly even new disciplines”.
Doctor Claremont and his S.I.U. team have been excavating the previously unknown Maya site for three years and discovered the codices in an artificial cavern deep under the Ceremonial Platform.
Doctora Luz Contreras of the Museo Antropologia de Ciudad Mexico hailed the find as a “milestone for the history of Mexico” and promised immediate access to the codices for all qualified investigators. Those interested should submit their credentials for certification by INAH, the Department of Archeology of the Republic of Mexico.

This had to be the one!
All his others had been failures. Even if successes at the start, they failed at the end. His marriage, his kids, his college instructorship, even his chosen profession. He had started as a brand-new Instructor in Archeology as a part of the Sociology Department at the small, respected Southern Idaho University at Auburn.
Its reputation within the archeological community was little more than pedestrian, because the Instructor he was replacing had a rep’ as an easy grader, and those who took the course had been assured a ‘C’, without much effort.
Mitch Claremont, as a very new PHD from Tulane, had taken his doctorate with a dissertation on sanitary facilities in Elizabethan England, called ‘middens’ in the vernacular. Somewhere in the middle of his final year, he had somehow become enamored of Maya culture, and he vowed to place his school on the Mayanist’s map. He had succeeded, but only barely, with but few real contributions to the ouvre, more in the nature of connections than original thinking.
That was almost 15 years ago ago. It was now far from the time when the future had seemed so bright. He was still only an Instructor. His wife Marylea had fled almost 5 years before, taking the 2 kids with her and moving halfway across the country to where her mother lived in the cold, and snow of Missouri. His visits to the kids had fallen off as his ex’s constant drumbeat of hostility had driven a wedge, confusing the children so that they no longer knew what to think about him.
Mitch had tried dating, but soon became disenchanted with the ingenue pool at SIUA, and none of the Instructors were in the least appetizing, while the female Professors wouldn’t give him the time of day.
Millie, the hostess at the Brown Bear diner, the ‘hotspot’ in the small Idaho college town, had been a stopgap measure. Something to fill the time until something came along. Only it never did.
He had been drifting toward the deadly shoals of marriage with Millie, who had taken to calling herself Millicent when she accompanied her college instructor. Coming to his senses, he shook himself like a wet dog, and took off on a sabbatical to Mexico. There he had been lucky enough to hook up with Luz, get approval for a small grant and a passle of student diggers and cataloguers, and finally stumbled upon Maasul, and the find of his life.
This had to be the one!
Mitch stood in the ancient underground room that had been hewn out of solid rock. There, deep under the surface in the midnight dark of the cavern, lit only by the moving circle of light cast by their lanterns and the repeated flashes of the camera strobe lamp, Luz was in the process of photographing the 300 carved jadeite boxes in situ. They had been found after their local workmen had cleared a rockfall that had closed off the entrance, probably for centuries. Now the grad students were off mapping and photographing the rest of the site.
“When did they say they were coming, Luz?”
Doctora Luz Contreras was early 30's, dark with flashing eyes and carmine lips, long black flowing hair, as well as an arresting figure. She was a graduate in Anthropology From U.N.A.M., the Mexican National University in Mexico City, but she had been assigned to Mitch Claremont as the Mexican government’s watchdog.
After the world began to take notice of the archeological treasures from Mexico appearing all over the world, the ruling party realized that Mexico had a valuable resource and they were not getting a piece of the action.
Thus was born I.N.A.H., the Instituto Nacional de Antropologia e Historia, and their brief was to catalog and inventory every piece of archeological value in the country. Since there are an estimated two hundred thousand archeologically significant sites throughout Mexico, with more discovered every day, it was a daunting assignment.
It was also one which allowed I.N.A.H.’s auditors to augment their meager salaries by allowing the exportation of some of the less impressive pieces. In order to maintain control, the government required foreign explorers to obtain a permit before embarking on a dig. In return, I.N.A.H. assigned a ‘safe’ Mexican anthropologist to accompany and spy on the permit expedition, to make sure that nothing left the country without the knowledge of the chain of authority. The result was that most of the important pieces stayed in country, although that was hardly a ‘hard and fast’ rule if enough money was involved.
Luz Contreras was considered ‘safe’, but she had been with Mitch on several digs, and they had become friends. Besides, they were excited over their find, and excited that the newspeople they had called were on their way.
“Probably not until tomorrow, Mitch. You should try to be more Mexican, have a little manana in your soul, not be so frantic, so norteamericano.”
Mitch laughed. “Hey Luz, what do you say we open one of the boxes and see what a real codex looks like?”
Luz snickered dismissively. “Sure Mitch, there’s nothing wrong with contaminating the site. We do it all the time.” She went back to adjusting the lights for another foto from a different angle.
Even deep within the earth they heard the noise, it sounded like thumps on the ground.
“What the hell is that?”
“I do not know, it is maybe the thunder?”
“Jesus, I hope not, Luz. That could be big trouble.”
“Trouble? But why?”
“Hey, what kind of anthropologist are you? Haven’t you ever done a cave dig? We’re in a hole in the ground here, and if one of those monsoon rains shows up... Okay, so there’s not supposed to be monsoon rains in January, but it doesn’t have to be a monsoon, and we could be trapped in the bottom of the bottle with the water pouring into the neck.”
The sounds continued. Luz looked disgusted in the light from Mitch’s helmet lantern. “Bueno, bueno!’, she said. “It is the thought of a child, and I am sure there is not a cloud in the sky. There were not any earlier, Miguel.”
They ran along the narrow passage, and as they ran the thumps turned into booms, and when they emerged from the entrance into the brightness, they were able to hear the cracks that went with the booms.
A horseman thundered by looking for all the world like one of the Horsemen of the Apocalypse. His stocky, powerful figure was covered, not really dressed, in black, form-fitting Nomex, with a mask-like balaclava. He was riding a well-muscled roan, and waving a matte black, short-barreled, pistol-grip shotgun as he pounded past.
Luz and Mitch realized that the booms and the cracks they had heard were shotgun blasts and they looked frantically around for any signs of life that weren’t wearing black.
What they saw were confused and anxious students and workmen agitatedly milling around, looking for a safe place away from the noise, diving behind rocks and trees.
Not knowing what to do or where to go, Mitch and Luz stood rivetted where they were.
A troop of Nomex-clad horsemen, maybe twenty in all, rode into the clearing from the surrounding forest, flowing through the trees like a black river. The grad students and the workmen, already frantic, were panicked by the horsemen firing assault shotguns into the air. Mitch’s people ran for the forest, and disappeared into the underbrush, while most of the riders dismounted and moved toward the entrance to the cave, and as for the rest, some mounted and some dismounted, but all covered Mitch and Luz.
Mitch and Luz stood frozen until they saw some of the men move towards the cavern, then Luz moved to block them. While one black-clad rider covered Mitch with an assault shotgun, another backhanded Luz out of the way, and continued into the entrance as she went to the ground and lay still.
Still with a shotgun pointed at him, Mitch was startled to see the Nomex invaders coming out of the mouth of the cave carrying the lime green jadeite boxes. Mitch started forward until someone rammed a shotgun barrel into his gut, and as he doubled over, he was struck across the head and went down, his last fading view the grinning mouth of a masked, black-clad ape standing over him.
No one came to help, and an hour or so later, Mitch came back to head-pounding consciousness with a start. The blood had dried on one side of his head and his left eye was gummed together. For some moments he thought he was blind in one eye, and then he picked off flakes of blood until his eye opened.
He glanced around and he saw Luz still on the ground. He wobbled a little as he rose, and she slowly unwound to stand unsteadily.
The Cite to his feet, then ran over to her. She was in a right side reclining position, her left arm flung over her face, and she wasn’t moving.
But he finally realized with a sigh of relief that she was breathing shallowly. He shook here and she slowly came back to consciousness, her eyes opening slowly, but still glazed over. After a few seconds, her eyes came into focus and she shook her head like a shaggy sheepdog, her short hair definitely adding to the impression.
“Madre de Dios, Miguel, what happened?”
“They took the codices, Luz.”
“Oh, Mitch.”
“Yeah, I saw them before they poleaxed me.”
“Who are they?”
“Obviously professionals. Professional enough not to say a single word, so we couldn’t tell nationality from the language or even the accent.”
“Why would they take the codices?”
“I don’t really know, but I would guess it’s because they are worth big bucks.”
“If they can sell them.”
“Plenty of private collectors willing to shell out the shekels to hide the damn things in the basement and only look at them when everyone else is asleep.”
“What are we going to show the media people when they show up tomorrow morning? Most of them are already on the way.”
“I guess we show them the photographs. We sure took enough of them.”
Luz looked at him strangely, and he got it. He looked at her, she looked at him, they picked up their helmets, and as one, they ran to the cavern.
They stumbled down the neck of the cave and then they were in the room. Luz’s foto lights were scattered every which way. The wall niche for the codices was empty, and her cameras, as well as the camera bag containing all of the spent film, were gone.
“Shit!”
“Never mind that. What are we going to tell the reporters?”
“I don’t know. You got any suggestions?”
“You don’t understand. We made a worldwide announcement about a major find, and called a press conference where they will see - nothing!”
“Yeah, I know, but...”
“But nothing. We will look like fools. My reputation and academic standing will suffer, and you will look like a charlatan.”
“Oh hell, we’ll just have to tell them what happened. They’ll understand.”
“They’ll understand? They are coming for a story, and us saying ‘someone stole our codices’, is like the kid telling his teacher that the dog ate his homework.”
“So what do we do?”
“Call them off, and take our lumps. What else can we do?”
As a result of the press conference debacle the next day, Luz was recalled to Mexico City, and Mitch’s students packed up and returned to the comfortable safety of the United States. Mitch’s grant money was stopped, and his reputation as an archeologist went into the toilet.
But he wasn’t about to give up.
He couldn’t. THE GREAT BOOK OF THE MAYA

The Popul Vu of the Maya, was written after the Spanish Conquest of Mexico, some parts from memory, some parts possibly taken from the lost codices. It is often compared to the Judeo-Christian Bible and contains many of the same themes: The flood, virgin birth, resurrection, a Tree of Knowledge of good and evil, even banishment for forbidden knowledge.
The description of Xibalba, the Road to the Underworld, is part of the Popul Vu, an ancient book that recounts the Maya creation myth that tells of three co-existing worlds.
Xibalba, the Place of Fright, the underworld, the birthplace of our world, a place of evil spirits to be placated and a mirror image of our world.
The Earth-Sky middleworld, where we live.
The top of the World Tree, the upper world, the Milky Way, where the gods live.
The Yucatan Peninsula, the home of the Maya, is a limestone shelf riddled with caverns many miles long, as well as cenotes, collapsed surface pools holding fresh water. While there are few surface rivers in the Yucatan, there are many that are underground. It is a well-established fact that the Maya have lived in, performed ritual ceremonies in, or both, all in an extensive cavern system deep underground.
Caverns were sources of great power, both for good and for evil. The great limestone sinkholes, called cenotes, were not only connections to the
Underworld, they were often ceremonial centers where sacrifices were made and thrown in, including humans and gold, bejeweled offerings
The Maya were fiercely possessive of their heritage. In the early 1900’s, J. Eric Thompson, a devoted, some even might say an obsessed Mayanist, followed a generally discredited old Maya story about a ‘lost’ city to discover the premier Maya religious center of Chichen Itza in the Yucatan peninsula of Mexico. He was led to its breathtaking Cenote, a huge limestone sinkhole acting as freshwater storage in a peninsula that is without surface rivers.
To avoid any bureaucratic delays, Thompson bought the ranch on which the city stood and hired ‘hard-hat’ divers to explore the bottom. They sent up skeletons, as well as a treasure-trove of Maya artifacts, which Thompson sent in a stream to the coast where they could be shipped to the Peabody Museum at Yale University in Boston.
9 out of 10 items that were sent from Chichen Itza wound up missing, melting back into the hands of the Maya, and when the rest were put on display at the Peabody, a mysterious swarthy man in a trenchcoat smashed some of the cases and made off with the most valuable pieces, none of which have ever come to light. The affair broke Thompson, who had looked upon the excavation of the Cenote as the crowning event of his career, and he died soon after.

WHAT ARE WE DOING HERE?

After the Maasul disaster, Mitch had wandered and explored throughout Mexico for more than a year, and his interest in the Maya had led him to the very center of Maya studies, the town of San Cristobal De Las Casas.
He knew that the codices from Maasul existed. He had seen them, and having seen them, and knowing what the codices were to the Maya, he was sure that there were more of them.
Mitch had wound up at Na Bolom in search of his own private chimera, his own Holy Grail. He was looking for the missing Maya codices, the sacred books of the Maya, and not necessarily just the relics from Maasul.
Small ‘books’, four-and-a-half inches wide by nine inches high by about two inches thick, made of accordion-folded plaster-coated bark paper covered with multi-colored glyphs depicting scientific or religious themes.
Most of the ‘experts’ didn’t think they were missing, didn’t think that any more even existed aside from the ones already found. As for his discovery at Maasul, that had descended to the level of an academic joke.
After all, there still were three undisputed folios and several fragments scattered around the world, and even though these had all been dated to after the 13th Century, it was widely assumed that was all there was.
In the 16th Century, the good Friar, Diego de Landa, believing them to be works of the devil, had burned twenty-seven of the texts at his Auto-da-fe at the town of Mani in the Yucatan Peninsula, how could there be more?
Mitch didn’t believe it. He had been a middle-aged archeological instructor from a small college, his avocation had been writing, and he had some success, but his secret passion was the Maya. He had read and studied everything he could find on the Olmec and Maya Indians of Mexico, an amazing society that had collapsed even before the Spanish arrived in 1509.
He knew that the Maya had been a highly intelligent, civilized, exceptionally organized, scientifically sophisticated society, and they had to have a way of passing knowledge down. The existing codices seemed like samples of encyclopedic knowledge to him, rather than just a ‘one off’.
As far as he was concerned, it was ridiculous to assume that there were only twenty-seven more, and that they had all been burned by de Landa. These were sacred books containing revered knowledge. He thought that the rest must still exist, or at least must still have existed in the 16th Century, hidden against the rampaging Spanish priests, awaiting time for the outlanders to leave. Only they never left, and so the codices remained hidden. At least that was his premise.
We know little of the Maya and most of what we think we know is wrong. It always has been. As our ‘experts’ chip away at the black mountain that is our ignorance of the Maya, the bubble that is our perception changes day-by-day.
Our understanding of the Maya has always been to think them as peaceful, religious and scientific. It was the translation of the glyphs on the steps at Dos Pilas that laid bare the true story of the terrible conflicts that scarred the life of the Maya.
It is the agonizingly slow process of the translations that adds to our knowledge, brick by brick, but for a long time, even the drop-by-drop of translation was not possible.
Strangely enough, it was Diego De Landa, Bishop of Merida in the 16th Century who provided the clue that finally led to the breaking of the Maya Code. He wrote a phonetic translation of the Spanish alphabet in the belief that it would lead to a letter-by-letter translation of the glyphs. He was wrong, because the glyphs didn’t lend themselves to strictly alphabetic translation. The explorer Stephens and his artist Catherwood first raised the question of the glyphs on his trip through the Yucatan in 1839. He wondered if they would ever be understood.
During and just after WWII, orthodox thinking, led by Sir Eric J. Thompson, decided that reading the glyphs would always be impossible. At the same time, at the end of WWII, a Red Army artillery spotter named Yuri Knosoroff rescued the Dresden Codex from the bombed-out and burning Berlin Museum, then later while studying as an Epigrapher he discovered the key and began to translate glyphs. He was immediately attacked academically by Thompson, but in the early 1950’s a German, Heinrich Berlin, and in 1964 Tatiana Proskouriakoff established conclusively that the glyphs could now be read, leaving the late Linda Schele to popularize the Maya and their writings.
We still cavalierly speak of the Maya Empire when there never was a Maya Empire. Even the word ‘Maya’ came from ‘Mayab’ which was what the indigenes called the peninsula.
Supposedly, Maya is really an Aztec word that means ‘the ones who came before’, or ‘the old ones’. There was a ‘family’ of tribes who inhabited the area, but even some of those were descendants of the mysterious Olmecs, while others were Aztecs who had come from the West.
Even though coming from the same roots, their dialects were so different that today, the remnants of the old Maya who had retreated into the forest before the onset of ’civilization’, still are unable to communicate among the villages. The inhabitants of Mensabak, Naja and Lacanja cannot communicate with each other using the old languages to this day.
Rather than an all-encompassing ‘Empire’, there were a number of powerful city-states and their subject kingdoms, and then there were wars. Endless wars. Endless maneuverings. The same things that happened all through the world throughout history. The so-called ‘Maya’ were no better, but no worse than anyone else.
It is now thought that the Olmec were the first, the seminal race that preceded the Maya, and that the pre-classic, classic and post-classic eras of the Maya culture lasted from approximately 1500 BCE until almost 1500 ACE, some 3000 years.
The present day thinking is that the Olmecs handed down language, astonomy, and other scientific skills to the Maya. If that is so, where did the Olmecs get those skills from? Of course there are many theories floating around, floating because they are grounded in very little.
One that will start a serious argument anywhere in Mexico is that the sudden and explosive enlightenment did not come from an indigenous spark, but rather by means of visitors from across the sea, China is usually mentioned, although India and even Africa are also contenders.
For a long time, the academics supported the indigenous invention theory, saying that all of the occupants of the Americas had come over the ice-covered Bering Sea from Siberia and Northern Asia about 12,000 BCE, and that anything that happened after that came from those people.
Lately some new information has come to light. Some skulls have been found in Baja California and in Brazil, that allow for the population of the Americas to be the result of many landings at different places, landings even earlier, about 15,000 BCE. From the skulls it looks as if these people were the same ones that left Southern Asia to go to Australia and then to Polynesia. It now seems likely that these peoples also made it to the Atlantic coasts of the Americas.
That kind of blows the Indigenous Invention theory all to hell and opens up the migration theories.
Speculation is that contact began with a trading mission that was expanded with time, and the inevitable mixing of the races produced faces that so disturb us when depicted on the Olmec heads.
True, more is known, and more and more every day, but it is all still very little. It is only recently that a serious beginning has been made to decipher the glyphs, and there are still thousands, probably millions, that have yet to be translated.
In just the last few years the sociologists have changed their vision of the Maya from a peace-loving, environmentally-sensitive, brilliantly-scientific culture to one that was as violent, destructive and power-hungry as everyone else.
Mesoamerican glyph writing in stone had likely originated in pre-Maya times, with the Olmec about 2650 years ago, even though there are questioned Olmec glyphs that may be dated as long ago as 3500 BCE.
It is reasonable to assume that most writing was done on perishable materials like the codices, so there must have been innumerable writings that existed over the centuries.
Even strictly Maya glyphs in stone have been found from as early as 400 BCE, and one of the best-documented tales of the Maya was recently discovered in the re-discovery and exploration of the Honduran site we call Copan.
There, the glyphs and wall-paintings tell the story of Yax K’uk Mo, ‘Lord of the West’, a royal personage, who came from Teotihuacan near present-day Mexico City in 426 BCE to found the ceremonial center, Copan. It is there that the story of the 700-year flourishing of the city and of the inheritors of the mantle of Yax K’uk Mo is found, and Yax K’uk Mo was Aztec royalty.
Mitch was very aware that the codices were only fragile, folded bark-paper boards covered with a thin white plaster coating upon which the fabulously-colored glyphs of the Maya had been painted. Four centuries had passed since the Spanish Conquistadores and their even more dangerous Religious, had disrupted whatever Maya cohesion was left.
The passage of those four centuries had taken place in a mostly hot and humid climate. How would these fragile and destructible books have survived deterioration down through the ages? Why wouldn’t they have crumbled to mold-covered dust? They probably would. But that was what he was searching for. That was his chimera.
It was Frans Blom that gave him hope.
Frans Blom, his Frans Blom, the founder of Na Bolom, the Frans Blom of Mitch’s library who, while still a Professor at Tulane, found a 15 centuries’ old Maya cloth, still perfectly preserved in a dry cave. If Frans could find an ancient fabric, then there was hope for the codices.
There was also the Dead Sea Scrolls, discovered largely intact after being hidden in stoppered clay jars and buried in a dry cave for over 2,000 years.
The Instituto Cientifico de Na Bolom, the Scientific Institute of Na Bolom (House of the Tiger) is located in the city of San Cristobal de Las Casas. The city is some 8,000 feet up in the mountains, and clear and cold despite being in Southern Mexico, almost to Central America down by the Guatemalan border. It was founded as a Spanish colonial city which had retained most of its character throughout the five hundred plus years of its existence.
Founded by the Spanish military as a point of control for the fractious Maya of Highland Mexico, it was originally called Villa Vicioso, because it was a garrison from which marauding Spanish Conquistadores ranged over the countryside. Today it is composed of two very different factions, The Ladinos, those who took their orders from Mexico City, and the indigenous Maya, who had spawned the EZLN, the feared Zapatista rebels. San Cristobal de Las Casas is the fastest growing city in all of Mexico. All thanks to religion.
For centuries los Indios had at least been nominally Catholic, even though their Catholicism actually incorporated many of the ancient gods. Into this rock-ribbed conservatism plunged the fervent Protestant Evangelicals. They willy-nilly stirred up the populace by converting many to the ‘new’ religion, sometimes by rather unsavory means in an unholy ‘numbers’ game.
This conversion set up a viable opposition to the existing order and threatened the status quo, and so in some of the villages the Elders, known as Cargos, took the drastic step of expelling the conversos from the villages. They used the grounds that these upstarts could no longer be allowed to participate in the land inheritance system because they were no longer part of the community.
This move, pushing the conversos out of their ancestral homes, swelled the ramshackle outskirts of the city to the breaking point, and refugees fleeing the sporadic warfare and banditry along the Mexico-Guatemalan border has resulted in a soaring population, causing a veritable invasion of child Chiclet sellers onto the cities’ streets. A startling anomaly, returning the processed gum to the place where the chicle, the sap of a tree, is actually found.
This displaced and poverty-ridden population provided fertile ground for recruitment into the revolutionary EZLN. The rebels had actually seized the city for a whole 24 hours in 1994, and the Chilangos, the westernized rulers from Mexico City viewed the Zapatistas as a serious threat to the unity of Mexico. Outraged by another Maya revolt, someone had determined to kill them at every opportunity, and 50,000 soldiers were transplanted into the sparsely-populated State of Chiapas. Ironically, many of them had originally been Maya.
Astrid and he were both volunteers at Na Bolom, completely responsible for their own transportation, room and board. The Instituto Cientifico de Na Bolom was world renowned as a center for Maya studies. Originally a monastery, and then a private residence and then the Institute, Na Bolom was now run by a Mexican Trust under the direction of an ex-Governor of Chiapas, referred to as El Jefe, a rigid man of military bearing, He could fix you with his piercing cold glacier-blue eyes, his gray hair bristled, cut en brose and with a Heidelberg saber scar across a prominent cheekbone, He could have been a model for a Prussian General.
Thirty-three acres on the Northernmost edge of the city of San Cristobal de Las Casas, the Institute consisted of an Administration complex; a small theater; the art gallery; a gift ship for indigenous Maya arts and crafts; a Museum; the Chapel with its own collection of religious art; the Dining room and its annex; the kitchen; Astrid’s studio; the Photo archive; the Photo Museum; the library, with four rooms full of books and an upstairs for rare materials. In another wing was Trudi’s room, which was the original room of the founder, complete with all her memorabilia and an extensive native costume collection.
In the South wing was a food storage room; a laundry; a large office for Tourist Services; an office for the Institute Director; and a number of rooms which were used for hotel guests. In the rear garden area was a series of rooms set aside for visiting Lacondon Maya who were in from the jungle, usually for medical procedures; a separate group of hotel rooms; a large house in the back of the garden used for visiting V.I.P.s; a model Maya hut used for ceremonial purposes; two tree nurseries with several thousand fledgling trees; and then there were extensive Indigenous plantings along the garden paths.
There was little money available from the Mexican Government, even though the Institute was world-famous and even though it was affiliated with the prestigious Universitad del Sur, located just on the outskirts of the city. The Institute had to struggle along on grants, gifts and tourist largesse, through guided tours and the gift shop, helped along by a small hotel and a restaurant where, although reservations were required, it was often filled with people who had taken the tours. There was a skeleton local staff, paid very little, and so the Institute had to rely on volunteers, and they came from all over the world, young, highly educated, intelligent, idealistic and eager to work, drawn by a glittering sociological, archeological and ecological reputation.
There were thirty-two volunteers, and mostly they stayed at the fairly rudimentary volunteer house some distance away in downtown San Cristobal de Las Casas. He could also have stayed at the volunteer house, enjoying the close camaraderie of a hard-working and unappreciated group, but they were a little young for him, so he had rented Casa Azul, the blue house, a well known house about three blocks from Na Bolom. Casa Azul was actually five casitas or small, self-contained houses, distributed around two patios almost overwhelmed by fruit trees, and all enclosed by an extensive block wall painted Maya blue, and two huge wooden doors, also painted Maya blue.
Astrid had started out at the volunteer house, but finally wound up staying in the room that was named Cenaloa. Each of the guest rooms at Casa Na Bolom, was named for one of the nearby Maya villages. She also had a room at the volunteer house over by Maria’s, down in the center of town, but mostly she stayed in the room they had named Cenaloa, the room they had given her as a studio.
The staff had finally cleaned out a guest room for her to use as a studio when the improvised tent on the roof they had expected her to use as a studio had just blown completely away one day in the monsoon rains, almost carrying her off the roof with it. As a painter, she was into death and skeletons. Had done a bunch of sketches of the mummies at Guanajuato, and now she was doing the paintings. Interesting but pretty morbid. She had come from Amsterdam where she was a Cardiac Nurse with a painting hobby.
At Na Bolom she was the ‘Artist-in-Residence’, a program the paid staff was very proud of and quick to point to, but really didn’t exist. People who had been gulled by the literature had sent in resumes and submissions to be considered for the program, but Mitch had found them dumped into a box in the library where they had obviously never been read. She’d got in there the same way he did. She had just showed up and got in with a lot of fast talk and a great deal of nerve.
They’d both been captivated by Casa Na Bolom from afar, she from Amsterdam and he from Auburn. His volunteer position was that he was the ‘Archivist’ at the library across the courtyard from her room. he ran the library and did the popular visitor tours of the Institute. The visitor tours were what raised the money to pay the day-to-day expenses.
Astrid was a chiseled, almost frizzy ice-blond, nearly platinum, early 30’s, and like many Scandinavians was sturdy and brimming with athletic health. Her face was pale, broad and strong and she resembled Ursulla Andress except around the eyes. Ursula had sloe eyes, Asiatic eyes, smoldering eyes filled with barely-concealed lust and the feminine wisdom of the ages, using all the cosmetic artifice to perfection.
Astrid’s eyes were a startling blue, frank, intelligent, wide open and showing a willingness to listen. She used no makeup and her flaws were a badge of honesty than of any consciousness of her appearance. She was exactly what she was. Her English was serviceable but stilted. It was, and still is, amazing how many Europeans and Mexicans speak English while most Americans, arrogant in their vaunted superiority, speak no language but their own. Blunt and straightforward, Astrid worked diligently and seriously at her painting every day. She had been promised a formal showing at the little gallery that was ill-maintained in the Administration building right by the entrance to the complex.
She was friendly and pleasant, but not a breathtaking beauty like Nina, the awesome 17-year-old Belgian volunteer who was a dead-ringer for a young Kim Novak. An almost ethereal beauty. Fey grey eyes and floating platinum hair. Quiet, seemingly naive, a will-o-the-wisp blown like a dandelion seed, but spreading destruction in her wake. Manuel, the Director of Na Bolom was bewitched, and threw over his Dutch wife and child for her. No matter, and of little moment to this tale.
Coming off a bad marriage that had left Mitch with deep scars, he still noticed women, and maybe even inventoried them, but it was like admiring a tornado. He appreciated the form and activity, but was afraid to take part in it.
Nevertheless, Astrid and he became friends. Both of artistic temperaments, both single, both practicing demanding professions far from our real interests and older than the rest of the volunteers, we more or less understood each other’s problems and spent a great deal of time together including meals in the comedor, the Dining Room. His Library and her studio were separated only by a garden patio, and they would go there for breaks during the day, sitting, talking and laughing on the stone benches under the brilliance of the highland sun.
Mitch had more faith in the Maya than the ‘experts’. Actually he had very little faith in the ‘experts’, he had seen them be wrong so many times. Their history books should have been more properly titled, ‘The Latest Theory Until the Next One.’ He believed that the Maya would have found a way to preserve the codices that were their heritage, and he thought he knew what it had been. At least in a general way. He needed to be more specific.
He thought formal Maya archeology had gone the wrong way. They knew the legends of Xibalba, the Underworld, knew of them but failed to understand them. In his mind the real life of the Maya still lay in their Xibalba, there in the wormholed limestone of the Yucatan Peninsula. The nature of the Peninsula was known, and the caverns were legendary, but there was a failure to connect the life of the Maya with the legends of Xibalba.
To him, the answer to the riddles that surrounded the Maya lay in that Underworld, the hidden birthplace of their religion. The books were sacred, the Underworld was their religion, and to his mind the two were connected. He thought the lost codices were somewhere in their Underworld. That was why they had never been discovered. Were they had buried somewhere in a dry cavern, sealed inside stoppered and sealed clay vessels, or as at Maasul, jadeite boxes, maybe something like the Dead Sea Scrolls? And the Dead Sea Scrolls had also been buried in caves.
But where? That was the question. That was where his theories came to an end. He’d done a lot of readings in the published works about the Maya, and even published a few articles, and it seemed that there had been a deliberate attempt to mislead the experts, direct them away from the caverns.
Sociologists talked about the H’men, the legendary religious leaders of the Maya. The academics treated the H’men as antiquated relics of another time, somehow not realizing that the Maya religion was as alive today as it had ever been, maybe even more so because it had been driven underground, figuratively as well as literally. Oh, there were giant ornate Catholic churches that had been built by the conquerors, and they were filled to the brim with Indian worshippers, but the churches and their saints only served as masks for the secretive worship of the old gods, and there were more ceremonies deep within the jungles, and in deep caves, in places where non-Indians went in but never came out.
Even the Catholic Churches in relatively large communities were hardly immune. The Church at Chamula, a village of the Tzotzil Maya, had run the priest out of town years earlier and He had been forbidden to return by the Cargos, the civic council the town. Though still nominally Catholic, the services were conducted by the locals, and were like no Catholic services anyone ever saw. There were no pews, and services were conducted in small family groups sitting on a floor strewn with pine needles, and surrounded by candles. Usually there was a sick family member in the center, attended by a Curandero, a healer, who passed a chicken or an egg over the sick person and then killed the chicken of broke the egg, to show the noxious substance inside that they claimed had been in the body of the patient. Then the family would drink Coca-Cola, their burps expelling the bad spirits from their bodies.
The experts should have gotten their clue from the Caves at Balancanche, the next to Chichen Itza, where they found evidence of worship, recent worship, deep within the caves. Even the attempted entry into the caves raised a ruckus among the Indians, and they blocked entry with their bodies until several native priests arrived and conducted ceremonies before the archeologists would be allowed to enter.
Then too, there was the mystery of the missing populations of Chichen Itza and where they were buried. The ‘experts’ couldn’t get over the fact that no burial grounds had been found within the perimeters of Chichen Itza. He didn’t get the problem. Hell, there’d already been caches of bodies found in caves all over the Yucatan, why would they think that Chichen would be different? They knew about the Cenote, the limestone sinkhole where the Maya threw sacrifices and offerings to appease the gods of the Underworld, why did they think that the Underworld ended there? He thought there must be cavern burial places near Chichen, they just hadn’t found them yet.
Rather than the cenotes being water reservoirs for the cities, which was only part of their use, he believed that the cities were actually built where the cenotes were because the limestone sinkholes were the Maya links to the Underworld, Xibalba.
The conventional archeologists must really be blind. They had found a cavern up on the Grijalva River where there was obviously a religious site deep inside. It seemed pretty obvious that the real life of the Maya was the Underworld, Xibalba.
He needed a quiet place to research the early days of Maya and Olmec Archeology, the days before orthodoxy had hardened the discipline and placed blinders on the practitioners, who went beyond the accepted parameters at their academic peril. According to orthodoxy, the use of caverns was strictly limited to a not-yet-emerged society. Those were supposed to be the only peoples that lived-in and made use of caves. Then why is the Great Pyramid at Teotihuacan built over a complex of sacred caves? And what of all the Olmec sculptures showing grinning dwarves emerging from caves?
Even in Egypt, the Great Pyramid of Giza has a passage that goes down beyond ground level. The Egyptian pyramids have been widely touted as being launching pads to send the soul of the Pharoahs to their appointed place in the sky, the link between heaven and earth. If that is true, then why were the pyramids abandoned in favor of purpose-built caverns to inter the royal mummies? How were these deeply-buried souls supposed to get to their sky-home? Maybe the pyramids were artificial mountains concealing (or maybe advertising) the sacred caverns within. And it is not only the distant past, for at the Al Aqsa mosque, under the Dome of the Rock, there is an underground grotto that is the heart of the religious experience.
He had chosen Na Bolom because in all his readings about the Maya, virtually all of the early Mayanists (a catch-all term for all those working in the field, degreed or not) had worked out of, passed through, or used the facilities at the Casa de Na Bolom, many had even known and revered old Frans Blom who had founded the place.
Now that Frans and Trudi were gone, the Casa had been turned into a quaint hotel-restaurant-museum-Indian craft center-tour center-nursery, and a continual flow of academics mixed with curious tourists and wandering artists inhabited the place. It was also a kind of headquarters and stopping-off place for the sporadic CIA forays into Central America.
Mitch’s goal was the Library and the Archives, containing the raw notes of the early Mayanists, before they had been censored by orthodoxy.
The Instituto Cientifico de Casa de Na Balom, The Scientific Institute of The House of The Jaguar, is at the same time, less grand and also more grand than its name might imply. In truth it was the home of Trudi and Frans Blom, although when they bought it, in the early 1950’s, it was languishing as an abandoned monastery with cows ambling through the patios.
They were a strange couple, he an eminent Dutch explorer of the Yucatan, quite well-known in the field of Maya-Olmec archeology, and at the same time a failed academic with an severe alcohol problem. She an escapee from Nazi Germany and a renowned photographer documenting the life of the isolated Lacondon Maya.
Together they purchased an abandoned monastery located on a large parcel of land in the city of San Cristobal de Las Casas, a colonial city some 8,000 feet up in the mountains and near the Guatemalan border.
With Frans Blom’s reputation and Trudie’s genius for organization, Na Bolom soon became the center for Maya exploration, the base camp for the many expeditions that fanned out through entire Maya region, the Yucatan, Chiapas, Campeche, Tobasco, Guatemala, Belize, even Honduras and El Salvador.
And when they returned with their handwritten notes and hand-drawn maps, they stayed at Na Bolom to refine and transcribe their raw notes into a more finished and more acceptable form. The notes were then archived into the library at Na Bolom. They are still there, in their raw form, with all the personal asides, and all their ‘unacceptable’ findings. It was those findings that he was interested in.
The library had originally been Frans’ study, and still contained his own personal books and notes, and, over a period of time, many books in several languages that had been used by the researchers working there. It is a magical place, set there with a view of the patio-garden, and facing the colonnades across the courtyard. It is an old-fashioned library, with paned-glass-fronted dark wood bookshelves and green baize-covered oak library tables lit by green-shaded banker’s lamps. A giant stone fireplace dominates one end of the room and usually has a cheery fire burning brightly, the only method of providing warmth for the room.
It was an enchanted place, a space inhabited by the ghosts of all the souls that had passed through there, and the ghost of the connection to the world of the Maya. The warmth of the fire encouraged sitting in the large raw-leather chairs that surrounded the fireplace. The chairs had been hand-made by Frans.The library had been graced by Mayanists from all over the world, and the Dining Room’s huge refectory table was the scene of many heated discussions ranging over many topics, often in several languages all at one time.
It was the perfect place to mount a research assault on the problem, but there were some drawbacks. The supervisor of the Dining Room was Chan K’in, the hereditary Chief of the so-called ‘last of the Maya’, the Lacondon Indians. True, Chan K’in was really ‘one of the boys’, who’s nickname was ‘Gorilla’, because of his compact bodybuilders physique. Everyone among the Maya was given a nickname as a sign of friendship. He had also been a member of the Mexican ‘Ejercito’, the Army, so He had pretty well ‘gone Ladino’, adopted the Mexican European mentality. But he was still the hereditary Chief, and Mitch noticed that he had been taking a real interest in Mitch’s theories, and had even participated in some of the conversations, all the time hotly denying that there were any hidden caverns filled with artifacts.
Mitch wasn’t buying it. He now knew that the caverns existed, they were even under Na Bolom and the city of San Cristobal de Las Casas. How did he know? Well, for one thing, during the so-called ‘Cristos Rebellion’ in the ‘30’s, Christians had taken to hiding in the caverns under the city to escape the rampaging Mexican army.
There were rumors of a tunnel that led from the Cathedral all the way out to the town of Chamula, a distance of some fifteen miles, and it was said that this was the escape route for the ‘Zapatistas’. the rebels that had briefly seized the city to demonstrate their opposition to the dictatorial ways of the government administrators.

INTRODUCTION TO XIBALBA
And then he met Luz, one of the local women who did the laundry at Na Bolom. She was the one who told him about the wrought-iron door, dogged shut and painted over in the back of the Tour Director’s office, that supposedly was an entrance to the tunnels. She thought they led to the Cathedral about three miles away, and from there onto Chamula, and there was even talk of a tunnel to the village of Zinacantan another five miles further on.
The native staff had been warned away from the door, and even Appolonia muttered darkly about Xibalba, the Underworld. As a devout Catholic, she crossed herself each time she went by the Tour Director’s office. Mitch couldn’t wait, and it wasn’t long until he had enlisted Astrid in the quest.
Naturally, the door was rusted shut and looked like it hadn’t been opened in many years. What was more, it had been painted over many times with thick beige paint. He was beginning to think that they could forget the door, it seemed as if everyone else had, and ‘Chan K’in’ was now making fun of them. Calling them ‘sewer rats’, and guessing that even if they got the door open, all they’d find was some ancient and primitive sewer filled with petrified shit. Because Chan K’in was so strong against it, Mitch began to get even more interested in it.
They finally found WD-40 in a ‘Ferreteria’, a hardware that specialized in plumbing supplies. Naturally it was imported and cost like hell, but it was worth it. First they chiseled most of the paint from around the opening, and after failing to open the dogs, they went back to the tried and true methods. After three or four days of bathing the door in the WD-40, and swinging a sledge at it once or twice a day to watch the lace-like rust clots flake off, one of the dogs finally budged, and then it was a few minutes more of sledging until all the dogs had grated out of the way and then it was time to work on the door itself.
That was a little more difficult, and required several hours work with the small sledge, a chisel and a large old crowbar before he was able to slowly lever the old rusty door open, while it snowed paint and rust flakes, and the hinges shrieked for mercy. The smell that burst forth was of earth, rock, humidity and mold. Damned thing smelled like a fresh grave at a funeral he’d once been to.
It was exciting to see the vindication of one of his theories.
The door was small. more of an oblong portal than a real door, maybe four feet by three feet, like a door on a submarine. It opened on a black hole, except that a shaft of sunlight showed a rough, narrow, winding staircase descending almost precipitously with varying-sized steps and rough-hewn weeping stone walls. Rubble had fallen from the walls and was building on the steps, but they were still passable.
So here it was. The entrance to his quest. He turned to Astrid and just looked at her.
“Yes, Mitch,” she said, “What do you want to do now?” There is no way of knowing what might be inside. It could be dangerous. It could even be deadly. There could be snakes, spiders, scorpions, all kinds of things. Then, as a nurse, I have done some reading on Histoplasmosis, the lung disease that comes from breathing bat excrement. Maybe we should be wearing scuba, or some other kind of breathing apparatus. So what do we do now? We can go inside, or we can just close it back up, but if we do decide to go, then there are things we should take with us.”
Not to appear ‘chicken’ in front of Astrid, he sighed a sophisticated, world-weary sigh, and said, “Okay, I’ll grab some grub from the kitchen, and you bring what you think we’ll need. And for chrissakes change your shoes. I think we should make the first foray a short one, just a kind of a look around to see what is really down there.”
Astrid rushed back to her room to get a pair of scuffed desert boots to replace the jap-flaps that she was wearing, and when she came back she brought a ragged corn-stalk broom to help clear the steps, and two lantern-style flashlights with what looked like auto headlights on them. They took one of the Na Bolom 2-way radios that were kept around to facilitate communications with the workers,
He advised Manuel that they were going into the tunnel. Manuel didn’t seem to have anything against it, but a few minutes later, ‘Chan K’in’ showed up in a very agitated state and tried to persuade them not to go down, saying that these old tunnels were not safe, and that even in town, the tunnels had been sealed off to avoid people getting lost or injured.
This was the first time Mitch had heard anything from any local about tunnels in town. When he had gone to the Cathedral to inquire, he was met with disdain. They denied that such tunnels had ever existed. His agitation only hardened my resolve to go down there and see what the hell there was that Chan K’in seemed to be so worried about.
Mitch had been to the San Cristobal caverns just outside of town, and they were extensive but had been made ‘touristy’ by the installation of walkways, electric lights and explanatory plaques, but even those went along for about a mile and a half, and then were blocked off as dangerous to tourists. When he tried to find someone to bribe in order to go further, he quickly discovered that no amount of money could persuade the guards to allow him to go any further, yelling at him that those who went further into the tunnels did not come back.
He was concerned about going down into the Na Bolom tunnel, but he was excited too, and glad to have someone to come with him. He wasn’t sure he would have had the guts to go down there alone. He felt like a child going into a deep, dark forest with a little friend, afraid and excited about what they might find.
They started down the steps using a lantern, with Chan K’in still protesting behind them, and Mitch used the broom to try to clear away some of the detritus, but that didn’t last too long because it began to build up on the lower steps to such an extent that it threatened to become impassable. They went down the steps slowly and carefully, winding round and down. There was no way of seeing ahead because all that was in front was that seemingly endless rough-hewn rock wall, reduced to the wavering yellow-white circle of the lantern.
Astrid and he whispered because the environment and the echoes bouncing off the rock walls seemed to call for hushed tones as they went down and down. Again like children in the forest.
The air changed and the wavering circle of light opened up. Sensing they had entered an open area, they stopped and began to direct the beam around. They had come out into a large space about the size of a small city block and maybe three stories high all carved out of the limestone karst on which the city sat.
Their light pinpointed several features as it circled the perimeter, and it seemed as if there were a number of what might have been outlets, although he was unable to see how far they extended, and so to him they were just holes in the limestone..
But that was not what took his breath away. The entire floor of the space was covered in black water of an unknown depth that flickered in the light of the lantern. The stairs that they stood on were open on one side and became suddenly terrifying as they curved steeply down along the wall of the dome, down to the water.
They stood high above the rippling pool, on open, uneven and rock-strewn stairs scarcely maybe two feet deep and four feet wide, leading to what they now saw was a floating wooden landing stage about ten feet by four feet, but what really amazed them was that loosely tied to the landing stage were two of the dugouts that the natives called cayucos, the little canoe-style boats that had existed as far back as Cortes. Except that these were made of bright yellow and white plastic!
The only other cayuco he had actually seen was the one that was on display in one of the colonnades of Na Bolom. But that one was wooden and had been hand-chopped out of a single tree.
He don’t know about Astrid, but for himself, he was terrified and he had to remember not to look down over the edge. They climbed very carefully down, picking their way among the rocks strewn on the steps, keeping as close as possible to the safety of the wall. He slipped once, and Astrid shot out a hand to steady him.
They reached the stage, where they were surprised to see that the slim, low-slung, double-ended canoes were maybe ten feet long and three feet wide and obviously carried a shipped sail lying in the bottom of the boat. No motor, but a couple of white plastic paddles were laid athwart, and there was a long steering oar attached to the rear. There were no symbols or words on the sides, but there were stylized eyes painted at the front.
It was Astrid that noticed the wind, when she complained that she was cold while he was examining the cayucos, and he realized that there was a stiff, cool breeze there. That brought to mind the fact that the cayucos were not drifting aimlessly, but were streaming out in unison, apparently in response to a swift current there in the cavern. He was confused. He didn’t understand any of it. What was all this? What were the cayucos doing here? What did it all mean?
While he was wondering, it was Astrid who was observing. “Mitch, look over there.” She pointed her lantern at one of the outlets. “The current is flowing toward that outlet, do you think there is enough room to maneuver one of these canoes through it?”
“Jesus, Astrid, you’re not thinking about going out in one of these things, are you?” Woman was a lot braver than he was. He was already afraid and bewildered, but he wasn’t about to show it in front of her.
“And just why not, Mitch?” She was looking at me with her head cocked belligerently. “Is this not why we are here?”
“You’ve got more guts than I have, Asti.” Asti was a nickname he had given her. “You think we should just take off into the wild black yonder, without having any idea where it goes or how long it will take to get there? Let me see if Manuel can give us any information.”
He picked up the two-way and pushed the ‘talk’ button. “Manuel? Manuel? Can you hear me?” He pushed the ‘listen’ button and was rewarded with the crackle of static over dead air. He tried again several times, but got nowhere. He should have realized the rock barrier would kill the radio, but hope springs eternal.
Then he realized that he was just looking for reassurance, and that Manuel didn’t know anything more than he did about the tunnels, and he knew nothing. They were alone down here, and they had to rely on their own decisions, or could just go back.
He saw a flash out of the corner of his eye and Asti grabbed his arm. A flaming torch had just burst out of the stairway into the top of the dome. Then there was another, and yet another, as the torches guttered and wavered in the gusts within the dome. He could see them coming, and he was relieved. It was a group of men, maybe six or seven and Chan K’in was in the lead.
As he was looking at them, one of them seemed to see us and grabbed Chan K’in’s shoulder, pointing excitedly and shouting something in Maya that he didn’t understand. But it didn’t sound good. Chan K’in spotted them and began shouting for them to stay still. To stay right where we were. That they would be right there.
“Mitch, what are they doing here? Why did they come after us?” Asti gripped his arm tightly. She was afraid and he couldn’t blame her, but he didn’t know what there was to be afraid of. Nevertheless he was afraid. Things were going through his head.
Everybody seemed to be hiding the tunnels. Denying they even existed. Especially, Chan K’in, and He had tried several times to keep them away. And he was a Maya. And Mitch’s theory was that these were Maya tunnels. Secret Maya tunnels. They didn’t want str‚ƒ„…†‡ˆ‰Š‹ŒŽ‘’“”•–—˜™š›œžŸ ¡¢£¤¥¦§¨©ª«¬­®¯°±²³´µ¶·¸¹º»¼½¾¿ÀÁÂÃÄÅÆÇÈÉÊËÌÍÎÏÐÑÒÓÔÕÖ×ØÙÚÛÜÝÞßàáâãäåæçèéêëìíîïðñòóôõö÷øùûýÿÿÿüýþÿangers in here. And now they were coming. “Shut off your light Asti,” He said tersely as he turned his off. There was a shout from the walls as the darkness fell. Their torches only lit the immediate area, so Astrid and Mitch could see them, but they could no longer see Astrid and Mitch.
“Mitch? Mitch?” Chan K’in was yelling, now, running and stumbling down the stairs.
He pushed Asti into one of the boats, and she seemed to agree, because she didn’t say a word. He quietly slipped the mooring line. The sleek little craft moved swiftly away from the stage, swept by the current and he felt the atmospheric pressure change as they swung into the outlet tunnel.
“See, Mitch,” said Asti, “I told you there would be room in the outlet.” She whispered quietly.
“Shut up, Asti, this is no time to play ‘I told you so.’” he said menacingly.
Unseeing, but buffeted and pushed on by the current and the wind, they sped along the passageway.
“Asti,” He said. “You saw the outlet. Do you think there would be enough room in here to hoist the sail?”
“I do not know, Mitch. I did not get that good a look. Raise your hand slowly and see if you can feel the ceiling.”
He raised my hand and touched nothing, so he slowly stood up, rocking the little craft in its skittering passage... “Mitch!” Whispered Astrid, “What are you doing?” Even standing with his hand outstretched, he still couldn’t feel the roof. . He sat back down, saying. “Feels like there’s room. Let’s do it. Let me see if I can find the step for the mast.”
Asti sounded puzzled. “Step? What is this step?”
“The place to put the mast. The socket it goes in on the bottom of the boat. If they have a mast, they must have a socket to hold it upright.” He was scrabbling around in the bottom of the boat, and then he found it. “Here it is. Here it is. Let’s get this damn thing up, we’re going to need the wind at our backs.”
They put up the makeshift rig, and when he unfurled it, the sail belied out and damn near knocked me overboard. But they could feel the canoe moving out under us, even though they were still in total darkness. As he calmed down and his eyes grew more accustomed, he began to see what looked like glimmers of phosphorescence, and he began to realize that there were patches of luminescent rock in the passage, and as my light adaptation grew, he could see that there were Maya symbols on the wall, too bad he couldn’t read them.
“Hey, Astrid, looks like road signs.”
“I do not like it when you are not serious, Mitch.”
He settled back down in the bottom of the boat. It seemed to have a slight downward angle, but it was hard to tell.
“Mitch, do you understand any of this?” Asti did not seem upset, just concerned. “What are these boats? It seems that they are here for a purpose, and these tunnels with their rivers...
“Jesus, Asti, how the hell would I know?”
“I don’t know, but where do they go? What are they here for? And, what is more, where are we going, and what do we do when we get there?”
Her questions kept reverberating. They were the same questions that he was asking himself, and he didn’t know any of the answers, so he just kept quiet and looked at her.
“What is more, Mitch, do you really think Chan K’in is chasing us? Why would He do that?”
“ Woman, you sure got a lot of questions. Too bad I haven’t got any answers. As to where we’re going and what we’re going to do when we get there, well, we’re just going to have to see.”
He kept watching for the light of the torches behind them, but didn’t see anything, but he knew that the lights could appear at any moment and that they should be prepared to do something. Problem was, he didn’t know what. But there was something that had been circling in his head.
“I been thinking, Asti. This river thing. I think maybe it has a connection to the Maya and why they never used the wheel. They knew about the wheel because we’ve found toys with wheels, and nobody can tell me that they were so stupid that they couldn’t put two together with two. Maybe they didn’t use the wheel because they didn’t need to use the wheel. They had another transportation and communication route, a better way.”
“You think they used the rivers, Mitch? You think they’re still using the rivers?”
“Asti, this whole peninsula is all limestone karst honeycombed like a Swiss cheese. There must be rivers like this everywhere. Could there be a better system? It’s at least as good as highways.”
“Mitch, you are being foolish. How could there be an area-wide system? San Cristobal is 8,000 feet up in the mountains. How could there be communication between the highlands and the lowlands? We are talking here about water, for God’s sake! It can’t run uphill, can’t climb mountains! Be serious.”
“All right, all right, maybe it is not the same system. Maybe we are in a system that works only for the highlands. Maybe there are different underground river systems. Like there are different subway systems in New York. Who knows? But you can’t deny what we are floating in right now.”
“Mitch, you do not know what we are floating in now. It could be a fresh water drinking source, or it could be a sewer, although it doesn’t smell like a sewer. It may go on for three miles and then fall off in a two hundred foot waterfall. We could easily be going to our deaths. Maybe that is why Chan K’in was chasing us... maybe it was to warn us.”
This desultory and meaningless conversation did nothing to enlighten either of them, and accomplished nothing more than to pass the time as they rushed onward with the current and the wind.
But as they talked and bobbed along, he was suddenly aware that the phosphorescent patches on the walls had disappeared, and he noticed a change in pressure that told him that they had come again into an open space.
“Asti! Asti! Help me drop the sail, we’re in another open space.”
They dropped the sail and their craft slowed as he switched on the lantern, and passed the lighted circle around to see what was here.
This was not another large dome, but rather just a wide spot in the stream. Alongside the main current was a space maybe twice as wide as the river they floated in, and at the outer edge was a debris-strewn stone quay with two empty wooden, old-style cayucos tied alongside, and at the end of the quay another tunnel entrance pierced the wall and led elsewhere. But at the rear of the dock there seemed to be a doorway cut into the rock, with darkness behind it.
Using the steering oar, he shifted their little boat out of the main stream, and it was suddenly caught by a current that had been directed in some unseen way, and their craft swung completely around as if steered by some unseen oarsman, and glided expertly in right beside the stone quay, where it slowed and stopped ahead of the other two canoes like a Disneyland ride, and he tied it off to the stone posts that lined the landing.
“Holy shit!” He said more to myself than to Astrid. “This is an artificial steering system. Do you think there is machinery involved, or is there just some method of channeling the flow?”
She didn’t answer and he really didn’t expect one.
They whispered to each other, uncertain as to what they should do. They believed that they were still being chased by Chan K’in and his men and they had no idea where they were. On the other hand, if they left their boat here, there was nothing to distinguish it from the others, and Chan K’in might, or might not, realize that they had stopped rather than continue on.
“Let us be practical about this. If we stay here, we can go into the doorway and see if there is a passage and steps up to the surface.”
“Yeah, maybe, but we could also get trapped here, and we might be better us to keep going and try to get away.”
“I don’t know about that. Mitch. At least we would be on land going somewhere where there could be help, rather than continue on with the river to who knows where?”
“There’s another point too, we couldn’t get any reception on the radio down here, and if we could go up, we might be able to reach someone for help.” “Mitch, we brought some stuff with us, that’s true, but we have no weapons or even any real supplies. Not even matches to build a fire and cook, even if we could find food. No change of clothes. Nothing. We have to go up, we have no choice. The river will wait. It will still be here. We can return when we are more prepared for exploration. Maybe even bring someone else down with us.”
“Jeesus, not that, Asti. This is going to be our discovery, and I’m not sharing this with anyone.”
“Okay! Okay! Just us, nobody else.”
She was right. We started up the stairs, another flight of different-sized, rubble-strewn steps leading steeply upwards inside a low, cramped, rough-hewn tunnel, even worse than the one at Na Bolom. They emerged into the heat of late afternoon, through an old growth of trees and into an overgrown clearing where there was little evidence of recent human passage in spite ot the ancient path that still existed.
As they came out of the cave, there was a shrieking and screeching of some of the local bird life. Looking around, they found ourselves to be in a shallow bowl-shaped dell, surrounded by low hills. They climbed one of the hills and saw a village nearby. As they descended towards it, they took to a dusty road and soon came upon a white-clad peon trudging along in rubber-tire-soled sandals and carrying a bundle of firewood secured by a tumpline across the little man’s forehead.
“Senor! Senor! Por favor. Que est la nombre d’esta village?” What is the name of this village? He asked in my terrible gringo Spanish. It was terrible, but he seemed to be able to make himself understood.
The old man stopped and looked at them as if they were from Mars. “...is Tenejapa, Senor. You... lost?” He asked in just as terrible English.
“Muy gracias, Senor. Es bueno.” Thanks, it’s okay.
“Asti, looks like we’re in Tenejapa, a Tzotzil Maya village, really not too far from home.”
“Yes, Mitch. A Tzotzil village where a couple of gringos will stand out like targets on a shooting range. If we go into the village and they come looking for us, there will be no place for us to hide.”
“Yeah? So what do you suggest we do?”
“Oh, Mitch, I do not know. If we can’t go into the village, I do not know what we can do. Where can we go?”
He tried the radio, but we must have been out of range, because all he got was more static.
Just then, a shining miracle appeared. A red and white Maya de Oro bus, probably carrying tourists to shop for the famous bird pottery of Tenejapa. Just incredible luck. He flagged down the bus and the driver was more than happy to accept two more paying passengers, while the tourists greeted them as if they were relatives or something, even making smart cracks about missing their own bus back to San Cristobal.
The bus started off for Tenejapa.


SHIT HAPPENS!
The bus moved on to Tenejapa, and the tourists got off to shop. Asti and he stayed on the bus in case Chan K’in and his people were out and about in the village, but at least they didn’t see them. It was a couple of hours until the mob trundled back to the bus, staggering under their load of plaster pigeons and other tourist junk.
Then they were on their way back to San Cristobal and in a few more hours they returned to Na Bolom. They were telling the story to Manuel when Chan K’in showed up looking all hot and bothered, yelling about how he was only trying to help them, and how dangerous the sewers were, and why were they running, and wherever did they go... and on and on.
It was a pretty good story all right, but he wasn’t buying it. He and his buddies sure didn’t look like they were trying to help when they were chasing the two of them and yelling, but after all, thay were back at Na Bolom, and there was little that Chan K’in could do there.
After dinner in the Comedor, during which they got to regale the staff and dinner guests with their adventure, the party broke up and Asti and he went to her studio where they talked about what they were going to do. It was turning dark when they decided to go for a walk in the garden. Na Bolom was famous for its vast lush garden, a replica of the highland cloud forest behind the building where they grew every kind of plant and tree that could be found in the mountain highlands, where San Cristobal was. Medicinal herbs and plants used for dyes were there, as well as jungle orchids.
Na Bolom also grew the vegetables used by the Institute for its dinners. It was more or less a plant museum as well as a nursery, where the tours were introduced to the plants and shown where the tree shoots were grown by their thousands to help with reforestation to replace the thousands of trees that were burned yearly by the city residents to provide the only means of heat that was available there in the cold climate.
They passed the two-faced statue of Diego Rivera that had been erected in the middle of the garden. Diego had been a great friend of Frans Blom, and the two used to go to the garden to drink because Trudie did not want them drinking in the house. The statue gleamed in the moonlight, revealing its twin sides of saintliness and debauchery.
One side of Diego’s statue depicted him as a studious little boy being sent off by his loving mother, while the reverse showed an older, drunken Diego surrounded by slutty women, one of which was picking his pocket. The statue was the highlight of the tour. It was beautiful there in the garden in the moonlight, quiet, peaceful and serene, and they walked and talked about what they had found and what they could do.
They were walking by the prototypical Maya choza that the volunteers had constructed there in the middle of the garden. A single, unlit adobe room maybe ten feet across, with a door that was covered by a hanging cloth and above a palm-leaf roof. Inside were wooden benches along two walls and a small altar with a god-pot to burn copal incense and a dirt floor. Maybe it was not a real choza because it was not built by the Maya, but the local Maya families actually use it for festival gatherings and they perform the ceremonies in front of the tourists.
Walking alongside the darkened choza, he felt the wind from something that flew past beside his ear and heard the whickering of the bullet through the dry palm leaf roof before he heard the rifle blast which sounded as if it came from up by the maintenance shacks up on the hill.
His mind was a blank, and he was reacting rather than thinking.
He didn’t wait for an invitation, and Asti seemed frozen by the noise, so he grabbed her arm and threw her roughly through the door of the hut. She cried out as she fell. He dived in after her, hoping against hope that the shooter hadn’t seen us go headfirst into the hut. He hoped that the shooter would expect them to go running off through the trees. At least that was his hope.
Asti was indignant. “Mitch!” She exclaimed, until He put his finger up against her lips to quiet her.
“Ssssshhhhh!” He said vehemently, and then whispered: “Didn’t you hear it?”
“Hear what?” She said.
“ Someone’s shooting at us” He said urgently in hushed tones.
“What?” She whispered plaintively.
“Shooting at us. From up by the maintenance shacks. Keep down as low as you can, these mud walls won’t even slow the bullets down.”
With that they were showered with dried mud from a large hole that suddenly appeared about three feet up on the wall and there was a ‘thunk’ as the bullet passed through the opposite wall. It was only then that they heard the ‘crack’ of the rifle.
But this time someone else heard it as well, and the garden and the building were suddenly ablaze with light and people were running down the path and shouting, asking if anyone were there, in English and in Spanish! They spilled out of the building. Manuel, several volunteers, the kitchen staff, and a bunch of tourists. He also noticed the Chan K’in was with them, but that was not unusual, because he often worked the kitchen and dining room for the evening meal, seeing that everything went well and mixing with the tourists as a kind of living exhibit. They had all been sitting in the Comedor, drinking and talking after dinner when they heard the shots. Maybe Chan K’in had been with them all along and maybe He hadn’t. There was really no way of knowing.
After they told Manuel about the situation, he opened up a couple of rooms for us, Ocosingo and Chamula, and told us He wanted us to talk to one of the Na Bolom guests in the morning. It was Asti who wanted to call the police, but Manuel and he soon calmed her down. They didn’t need the police messing around at Na Bolom. First they wouldn’t do anything worthwhile, and second, they would always be nosing around to get something to get a payoff.
They needn’t have bothered with the discussion, because someone had already called the bastards, and pretty soon three of their 70’s era Plymouths pulled up to the front door of Na Bolom with their old-fashioned gumballs flashing garish red and black shadows around the street. Juan, the door guard looked a little confused as he let them in. They rounded everybody up and put all the Na Bolom people back in the Comedor, where they sat around the table talking to each other, waiting for something or someone.
Pretty soon a short, stout man in an overblown uniform walked in and introduced himself self-importantly as Commandante Luis Cervantes Obregon de la Madrid. He was perfectly turned out, all the way up from his mirror-bright polished oxblood cavalry boots. His dark brown whipcord jodhpurs were like wings for his legs. His short khaki Eisenhower-like jacket jangled with medals and golden lanyards and from the matching oxblood Sam Brown belt hung a huge chased-silver 1911 Colt .45 with ivory grips. He wore beige kid gloves and swung a swagger stick to rhythmically swat his boots with a military smack. His broad, swarthy Indian face was adorned with a thin, villainous mustache and topped with a He was perfectly turned out all the way up from his mirror-bright polished oxblood cavalry boots. His dark brown whipcord jodhpurs were like wings for his legs. He wore beige kid gloves and swung a swagger stick to rhythmically swat his boots with a military smack. His broad, swarthy Indian face was adorned with a thin, villainous mustache and topped with a patent leather visored officer’s campaign hat weighted down with golden scrambled eggs. He probably envisioned himself as a rapier-thin cruel Spanish Grandee.
Maybe he was dating myself, but what flashed to mind was the vision of the vicious Akim Tamiroff as the Chinese warlord to the heroic Gary Cooper in ‘The General Died at Dawn.’ Mitch wanted to tell the Commandante that he should bring his uniform up-to-date and wear cammies, combat-boots and a black beret, but, though he disliked his pretension at sight, it was his country and Mitch was only a tolerated guest. And a victim besides.
One of the police officers pointed Mitch out to him, and he imperiously beckoned Mitch over. His voice was that of the whiny bandit ‘Yellow Hat’ in the movie ‘Treasure of Sierra Madre.’ He looked Mitch up and down, and sneered, “So this is the Senor C.I.A.”
“C.I.A.?” Mitch asked. “What is C.I.A.?”
“Ah, Senor, you deny you are of the C.I.A.?”
“No offense intended, Commandante, but I don’t know what you are talking about.”
The Commandante hooked his thumbs into the Sam Browne and reared back. “Why you no admit it, Senor. You of the Estado Unidos C.I.A. You think we not know? We know.” His expansive gesture took in the whole of Na Bolom. “We know this place is a nest of spies, that you are all C.I.A.”
“Senor...” He protested. “I am here only as a simple librarian, assisting in cataloguing and preservation of the library. Ask anyone. That is what he do here.”
He laughed sneeringly. “So, you are only a simple bibliotecario. Do you make the fool of me?”
“No, no. Of course not. I only tell you what I do.”
“Then, Senor C.I.A.”, he said accusingly, “why is it that they shoot at you? How is it that you are involved with the rebeldes, the Zapatistas?”
Mitch was beginning to lose his temper, and he bit off the words as he replied: “I... really... wouldn’t... know... Commandante. Isn’t that your job? he was flabbergasted. ”And what makes you think it was Zapatistas?”
The Commandante waived a gloved hand negligently. “Who else? It does not matter what you say. I am knowing the truth. All this shooting... is not good for our country. Scares the tourists. For me... you spies and rebels could shoot yourselves until you are all gone. I will report so to my superiors, they will make the decisions. Since you say you know nothing, then why should I ask questions. I will let the local policia trample all over you and the crime place.” He bowed slightly to me and to Asti, then turned militarily and walked away. So much for Commandante Luis Cervantes Obregon de la Madrid. Or so I thought.
DESMOND
The next morning in Manuel’s office they were introduced to the man from Bonampak. Not the temple, the room named Bonampak. The room was kept for him even though He was rarely there. This was someone he had never seen around Na Bolom before. The man was actually named Schuyler, Schuyler Desmond. It was really probably Schuyler Desmond III, but he eschewed the III as pretentious. As if Schuyler wasn’t enough.
He was early ‘40’s, fair complexion and almost transparent, colorless, thin, whispy hair combed carefully over a pink pate. Casually dressed, although it was ‘pressed’ casual, if you know what that means. Tassel loafers, chinos and a cable-knit crew-neck sweater. His face was doughy and unlined. Kind of ‘preppy.’ Tinted ‘granny’ glasses, and he carried a gracefully curved briar pipe, which he never saw him smoke, then or later.
“Jesus!” Mitch exclaimed. “You’re the C.I.A. man the Commandante was talking about.”
Schuyler preened. “I wouldn’t have thought it was quite that obvious.”
Mitch didn’t bite. “Okay, do you know anything about this?”
“It’s obvious”. He said. “You must have made someone exceedingly upset.” He smiled.
“Hey! This may be a joke to you, but this is very real to us. The Commandante seemed to think it had something to do with the Zapatistas.”
In his fruity Boston accent, likely as phony as the rest of him, Schuyler disparaged the idea. “No, dear boy. It is obvious that you are not political, and their interest is definitely political. Now, that is not to say that there is no Indigenous involvement, oh my no. Did I hear correctly from what a little bird told me, that you have been making a nuisance of yourselves about the tunnels. Is that true?”
This was when it hit Mitch for the first time. Was there a connection between the tunnels and the sniper who had tried to kill them? “Do you really think that someone would try to kill us because we went into the tunnels?”
“It is my belief that you are laboring under a misapprehension... I am sorry, I seem to have forgotten your name.”
“Mitch.” Mitch replied. “Just call me Mitch.”
“Of course.” He snapped his fingers. “Mitch. Well Mitch, to begin with, if the shooter had wanted you dead, you would now be lying on a metal gurney in the Coroner’s morgue. No, the intention was obviously to frighten you.”
“It seems that a lot of things are obvious to you that are not so obvious to me.”
He held out his hand, and there in his palm there was a somewhat deformed copper-jacketed bullet. “Tell me, did you not say that you heard the impact before you heard the shot?”
“True.”
“And the bullet is a .308. Taken together, that means a sniper’s rifle, where the bullet travels faster than the speed of sound. That means you heard the impact before you heard the shot. This guy was an expert. He shot to scare you.”
Mitch flashed that Chan K’in was in the Mexican army.
“Have you got any idea why?” He asked Schuyler.
“They don’t like people messing around in their caverns. They’ve been hiding them for 500 years and they don’t want you ‘discovering’ them.”
“You know about the caverns? You, meaning the C.I.A. if course.”
“Of course, Mitch. We know about them. My God, it’s almost an open secret. But we don’t go blundering around in them. That’s their business, not ours.”
“But surely you know the tunnels and the passages.”
“Only in a general way, Mitch. We’re interested in military routes, of course. That’s why we built the toll roads, for intra and inter-country security in the Americas, but the tunnels are of little use to us. Can you imagine us trying to transport an Abrams tank through there?”
“Look, Desmond, I’m not too interested in the transport problems of Abrams tanks, but I am interested in the tunnels. Are you saying the tunnels have no military application whatsoever?”
“Mitch, about the only thing the tunnels might be good for is infiltration by small groups of men, and that’s not something we ordinarily concern ourselves with. Of course we are fully aware of the entrances and exits to all the navigable caves. Our remote sensing satellites make this Swiss cheese peninsula almost transparent, at least near the surface.”
Visions of his ‘chimera’ began to dance in Mitch’s head. “Those Sat probings of yours... Do you think I might have access to them?”
“Surely you must be joking, my dear boy. Why, we don’t even allow the Mexicans to see those. Too afraid to give the Mexican Government an edge, don’t’cha know.”
“Desmond?” He asked. “ These remote sensing Sats of yours, do they produce a picture of what might be inside the caves?”
“Interesting idea, isn’t it, Mitch. One that I’m sure many archeologists would give much to see. But I’m very much afraid that the Sats are not quite that good as of yet. Maybe some of the shallower caverns, to be sure, but none of the deeper ones.”
“How deep do they see, Desmond?”
“Classified, my boy. Strictly need to know, but, we digress. The point here is quite simple. Stay out of the caverns or the Indigenes will surely kill you. That is their sacred ground, and they don’t want you in there.”
“Is that some kind of order, Desmond?”
“Oh, certainly not. It is only a friendly warning, supported by quite a great deal of data.”
“What kind of data might that be, Desmond?”
“Oh, the kind that bleeds then dies, dear boy. You see, we weren’t always quite so cavalier in our attitude about the caverns, so we started to send people in to explore them. Not one of them ever returned, and believe me, there were many of them. In the end, it was not worth the effort just to make the point.”
Not getting anywhere, he switched gears. “You said you knew of the entrances and exits to all of the navigable caves. You called them ‘navigable’. Navigable how?”
“Oh, there are many of them, some by water, above and below, some need ladders, and some of the caves are dry. But, Mitch, it matters little to you, you see, you have already been warned away from them, and it would be in your best interests to heed the warnings. I need to tell you, and you need to understand it, if you get into trouble down here, we will not be able to help you. Is that perfectly clear, Mitch?”
“So I am to be forbidden to continue my explorations?”
“Mitch, Mitch. Why will you not understand? We are in the territory of the E.Z.L.N., what you call the ‘Zapatistas’, but which the Mexican army calls ‘the Rebels.” To all intents and purposes, this is a war zone, or if you prefer it, an occupied territory. We don’t want you in the middle of it.”
“But I’m not in the middle of it. I am just following an archeological theory.”
“Surely, but the moment you set foot in those caves you become one of the players, and we would not like that. In fact, we would not countenance that. You would be strictly on your own... and by the way, Mitch, don’t bother with the Na Bolom cave entrance, we welded it shut this morning.”
ONCE MORE INTO THE BREACH...
Asti and Mitch returned to her studio.
“Asti, what do you think about our friend Desmond?”
“Mitch, I do not think that there is much substance to your Mr. Desmond, but what does it have to do with me? It is your search, not mine. I am here to paint my pictures and then at the end, I will return to Amsterdam and my nursing duties. The painting is my quest. That is what I am searching for.”
“Ah, but you paint archeological treasures, do you not?”
“So?”
“So? So? Have you never heard of Stevens and Catherwood. They found the Maya temples and Catherwood painted them for posterity. He became wildly famous.”
“But that was before real photography, Mitch.”
“But a lot of what we see will not lend itself to photography. Most of it will be in almost total darkness, and we won’t have the time to set up photo lighting, so most of it will have to be done from memory!”
“Oh, I could do that all right, Mitch, most of the time I only sketch the momias anyway, and paint them when I get home.”
“...And you’re certainly fit enough to make the journey with me into the tunnels.” He smiled ingratiatingly.” Beside that, I don’t want to go alone.”
Asti was warming to the idea. “And we would need the... oh, what would you call it... for the trip... oh, you know.”
“Sure, the camping equipment. Lots of places for that downtown. We could start out at that big hardware store and go on from there. But there is still one other problem.”
“Oh, Mitch, you always have just one more problem. What is it this time?”
“Have you given any thought about how we get into the system? Now that they have Na Bolom welded shut?”
She laughed. “Mitch, maybe they have welded Na Bolom, but I’ll bet that they have not welded Chamula, where we got out last time. Remember, we left the boat there and I think it is probably still there. But I have another question. Where are we going?”
“Well, I’ve given some thought to it, Asti, and I think maybe Izamal is a pretty good bet.”
“Good bet?” What is this ‘good bet’?”
“Good place to look, Asti.”
“Why this place Izamal?”
“Because before the Conquistadors and the Friars, before about 1520, Izamal was at least one of the major religious sites of the Maya and a main pilgrimage destination. It was the Bishop de Landa, the one who burned the codices at Mani, at the Auto-da-fe in the late 1500’s, and who had built the enormous monastery at Izamal, and built it over and using the stolen building blocks of the sacred pyramid, just as the Spanish often used the finished Maya blocks to build their churches.”
“So what? As I said before, Mitch, why Izamal?”
It was a pretty good question. His readings about the Maya had led to an interest in the Bishop of Merida who had tried to destroy the Maya heritage as the ‘works of the Devil’. This was Diego de Landa. Just as the Maya readings led him to Chiapas and Na Bolom as a repository of knowledge about the Maya, so his readings about the Bishop were leading him to Izamal as a possible repository of the ancient Maya knowledge. Of course, their recent discoveries had led him to question just how ‘ancient’ this knowledge was, and to consider the fact that maybe the Maya knowledge was still vital and alive.
“Asti, Izamal’s a place that I read about, it was a major religious site for the Maya, and seems as good a place to start as any.”
“Any idea how we get there?”
“None whatsoever, Asti. I guess we just get into the system with the compass on my watch and keep heading Northeast, then we’ll see.”
“Why not a GPS?”
“I would think there would be a problem of reception underground. No, I think a simple compass will have to do it.”
“Okay, Mitch, what else?”
“Maybe a 50 pound backpack for me, thirty pound for you. What do you think?”
Asti chortled derisively. “I think I can carry at least as much as you.” She looked him over scornfully, then said, “maybe more.”
“Okay, okay, just give me a break here, Asti. We’ll both take fifty pound backpacks, but most of all, flashlights and batteries, lots of batteries. Oh, and lots of rope too.”
“Rope, Mitch? What for, this rope?”
“I don’t know. I’m just sort of winging it here.”
“Winging it? What is this winging it? I do not know the expression.”
“Sorry, I’m just guessing what we need.”
“Mitch, I am thinking that we will need much of the freeze-dried food. There will not be too many McDonald’s down there, but at least we will have much water.” She laughed again, but easier this time.
“Yeah, and maybe a little cookstove and matches will be pretty good underground. Not too much wood to be found down there for burning. Lightweight sleeping bags. What about a tent. Do you think we need a tent?”
“What for, to keep off the rain? Mitch, there’s not likely to be much rain down there.”
“How about the cold?”
“We can save the weight and cuddle, if necessary.”
“Very funny, Asti, but I’m really not in the mood for jokes.”
“That was not a joke, Mitch. We in the Scandinavian countries do not have the same attitude toward sex that you Americans have. To us it is just a natural body function, like peeing, or exercising.”
He shook my head. “Jeez. Looks like I was born and raised in the wrong country.”
“Okay, Mitch, I think that we’ve got enough settled to get going.”
“Wait a minute... what about disguises. If we’re going in there, we don’t want anyone to spot us in a place where no gringos are supposed to be.”
They settled on traditional peasant garb, white trousers and a white guayabera shirt for him, and an embroidered huipile for Asti. Mitch’s hair was a natural black, but it was necessary to die Asti’s blond flag so she wouldn’t stand out. Then too, they both used a brown die to darken our faces, and thought that they might pass at a distance, although close-up, Asti’s startlingly blue eyes might be a problem.
They took a taxi to Chamula that evening, and the driver muttered “loco gringos” when they insisted on getting out a mile or so outside of town where there was absolutely nobody and nothing on the road. After he had disappeared in a cloud of dust, they hoisted their backpacks and carefully made their way to the copse of trees that hid the entrance. They didn’t switch on a lantern until they were actually in the cave. They didn’t worry about the taxi driver, because by the time they got around to him, they would already be in the system and far away. At least he hoped so.
Once in the caves, it didn’t matter whether it was night or day, and they made their way carefully down the rubble-choked staircase, that was at least a little familiar to, and not quite so terrifying. ‘Their’ cayuco was still there, its sail athwart and still furled, but he realized that one of the old wooden cayucos that had been there before was now missing. More and more it appeared that the system was in use.
He untied the line while Asti paddled away from the dock. and the little boat was pulled away from the quay by the current, and he let the it swing them around and shoot them out the exit as if they were on a ride at an amusement park. They were in the tunnel again, but this time they could use the lanterns and were able to examine the underground passage more closely. It wasn’t what was expected.
The entire vault was carved limestone in the familiar finished style of the Maya temples and pyramids that were on the surface. There was a walkway that ran all along the cavern walls and was maybe ten feet wide and some three feet above the waterline. There were also unlit torches that were in niches about every 10 feet. The same wind that they had noticed the first time they were in the tunnel was noticeable again, but they didn’t think it was a good idea to put up the sails yet. They didn’t want to be going so fast that they wouldn’t have time to examine the walls, and maybe miss an exit somewhere down the line.
They soon came to realize that the wall friezes were repeated about every twenty feet and pictured what looked like a king seated on a throne and with serving people seated on the floor before him. There was a great deal of gold, turquoise and obsidian coating the carvings, and that made for myriad reflections from any source of light, in this case, their lanterns. It was all breathtaking and much superior artistically to anything that they had seen on the surface.
He was becoming worried because, according to the compass, they seemed to be traveling West straight as an arrow. They opened our map of the Peninsula and figured out that they were heading toward what appeared to be Lake Peten Itza in Guatemala where there was an island in the center which had been the home of the last refuge of the Maya in the days of the Conquistadores, the city of Tayasal.
He had never seen Tayasal, but he had read about it in various of the histories of the Maya. The Itza’s name for it was Ta Iz’ail, but that was corrupted to Tayasal. It worried him that they would be going so far West without moving toward the North, but he figured that he had to trust the Maya. They must have known what they were doing, and they planned the system so there must be a way to get North, otherwise the whole thing would have little point. From the map it looked as if it might be about three hundred miles to Lake Peten Itza, and without the sails they seemed to be traveling at about twenty-five miles an hour, so they were talking about a twelve hour trip if everything stayed the same. Maybe the sail might have given them another five or ten miles and hour, but he still didn’t want to take the chance. He was a little concerned about what was going to happen when they crossed the Usamacinta River, which was the border between Mexico and Guatemala, but he didn’t think there would be any Customs Posts there.
They weren’t able to determine if the tunnel was natural or man-made, but clearly, if it had once been natural, it had been carefully and decoratively reworked until there wasn’t an inch of natural rock still visible. It was obvious from the nature of the flow that passage was directed by underwater constructions, and it seemed unlikely that these could be natural.
They talked about it, but in the end they decided not to tie up at the side and sleep, just in case someone was following them, and there was one dodgy part when they thought they saw a torch following them, but they really didn’t have time to put up the sail, and they were soon overtaken by a larger seven-man cayuco.
It had a lifted and pointed prow and stern. and sails rigged and bellied, the five men in the center, dressed in military khakis, were paddling for all they were worth while their leader sat in lordly fashion at the bow, and there was a oarsman sitting high at the stern, the long steering oar seemingly trailing behind in the wake of their boat, but it was clear that the steersman was tense and alert, just waiting for when he was needed.
Astrid and Mitch’s disguises must have been sufficient because the large Cayuco passed without seeming to notice the couple, their faces stoic and unrelenting as they sped toward their destination. These guys were pretty frightening because they did not look like a group of individuals, but rather like a well-oiled, well-trained squad that presaged a much larger force.
The passage was uneventful until they reached a point where they began to hear the echoing reverberations from what sounded like a jet engine running wide open as it got louder and louder until there was a faint glimmer of light ahead in the tunnel and as the sound became louder the light became brighter until it seemed to resolve into a white light half-circle in front of them and then they burst forward out of the tunnel and into a large natural cave that was fronted by a roaring waterfall.
By some trick of the system, their cayuco was not propelled out through the waterfall but instead emerged at speed into the cavern and then settled into a lazy circling far behind the waterfall. There in the water, a series of labyrinthine channels, their walls raised slightly above the surface, constituted a barrier to a direct assault into the lake while a raised and walled platform on one wall with its own entrance, gave mute evidence that it had once been manned as a watchtower guarding the entrance. Luckily it was empty, otherwise Astrid and Mitch might have been hard-pressed to explain their sudden appearance.
They remained in the boat, slowly circling, until dusk, and then threaded their way through the maze to poke the nose of the boat through the curtain of spray to the side of the waterfall and then he paddled the boat through the drenching shower and into the body of the lake. The surface was calm, and absent of the currents that had moved them through the tunnel system, and they drifted slowly toward the island town of Tayasal.
There seemed little danger, and so they took rooms at a small Mexican hotel called exaggeratedly, La Costa, The Coast. Like most small hotels in Mexico, this one was clean and neat, smelling of strong insecticide, but without many of the luxuries that Americans had become used to.
There was a cafe down the street, just four tables and chairs, but at least it featured pozole, a kind of stew that he had become partial too. Asti had the biftec asado, and both of them had Dos Equis cerveza and the grainy vanilla ice cream that passed for deluxe in Mexico.
The mattress in his room was well-molded to the hundreds and maybe thousands of bodies that had preceded his, but nevertheless he slept like a baby, and they spent the day walking the cobbled streets of the old town. They didn’t want to go looking for the entrance during the day, and he thought he had a plan to locate the tunnel entrances at night.
He knew there were entrances, because this was obviously part of an extremely sophisticated transport system and he was sure that this was a hub, probably with connections in several directions because, more or less, this was the center of Maya territory.
“But Mitch, Tayasal was the last redoubt of the Maya, so why would there be a terminus here?”
“Just because it was supposedly the last redoubt, Asti, doesn’t mean that it wasn’t here before, as a matter of fact, he seem to remember a story that the residents of Tayasal were the Itza survivors of the destruction of Chichen by the ruler of Mayapan because of some sort of Maya war, and that was way before the Spanish even landed in Mexico. No, Tayasal was here long before the Spanish, and maybe the fact that it was a terminus was the reason that it was chosen as a redoubt. If he recall correctly, the Spanish had a hell of a time finally taking Tayasal because it was on an island in the middle of a 26-mile lake. They had to build ships to finally take it.”
“Then how do you expect to find a tunnel entrance if it has eluded the Spanish and everyone else for all this time?”
“Popcorn, Asti, popcorn.”
That night we took to the boat and drifted it along the North edge while he threw popcorn over the side to the exasperation of a confused Asti. She watched without comprehension as the snow-white kernels picked up the light of the full moon. They kept it up for three hours, until they finally reached a spot where the popcorn was picked up by a current and swept along toward the shore.
They soon saw what looked like a shallow cave until we saw the popcorn continuing along toward the back. They followed it, and the popcorn flowed around a hidden corner into an opening behind the apparent cut in the bank. Once again they were in a rough cavern that soon became the carven and brightly decorated walls of the system, the metal and glasslike obsidian, quartz and turquoise brilliantly reflecting and magnifying the slimmest glimmer of light from their lanterns. He would have expected it to do the same from the unlit torches that were arrayed everywhere along the walls.
This time, they were moving North in a somewhat bigger tunnel than the one they had come in. This one also had a walkway along the wall, but this waterway was considerably wider, maybe enough for three or four boats such as ours. He noticed that they had entered into the outermost lane, the one nearest the walkway, and they pretty well stayed in that lane. He guessed that as they got further and further away from the walkway, the current would be faster, but that was just a guess, he decided that they would test that theory soon, because in the fast current and with sails hoist, there was no telling how fast they might be moving.
He really couldn’t figure out how the tunnels worked. It seemed as if there was a slight downhill slope to the tunnels, and that explained the current, but there were a couple of problems with that theory.
If that was true, it would rule out the caverns as natural, they would have to have been constructed from scratch, and that would have qualified them as the greatest construction projects of all time. Never mind that the peninsula was mostly soft limestone, it would still be one hell of a job, using thousands of men and taking dozens, if not hundreds of years.
The other problem was that a descending tunnel was okay going from the highlands to the forest floor, but then what? You couldn’t keep descending forever, and how would you get back up from the descent in order to go down again? It all made no sense.
He didn’t know that he was about to see at least part of the answer. They traveled on for several hours, and pretty soon he became aware of the change in sound and pressure that seemed to signal another one of the Maya ‘stations’, and within a few minutes, the reflecting walls fell away and they were in an enormous chamber, but even more, it was quickly clear that this was the end of the line, the river was no more, and there seemed to be no exits.
Where to from here?

MIRROR IMAGE
He had no idea where they were, he only knew that they had traveled North because that was what the compass read. This terminal was more of an amphitheater than a room, for the river bordered an enormous plaza on which had been erected a giant pyramid such as was found on the surface. Topped by a temple, it was a shining white monument in the light of our lanterns, awe inspiring, and would have been more so if the plaza before it had been crowded with colorful Maya dignitaries.
It would have been more impressive when lit by the ceremonial fires in the great stone basins that dotted the plaza and climbed like silent soldiers lining the grand staircase that led to the roof temple. At the very top of the staircase snarled a large chacmool, the elongated jaguar-shaped altar on which sacrifices had been performed in the old days. The entire structure had been richly painted in the distinctive Maya blue, reds and blacks, the paint had either resisted the onslaught of time, or been recently renewed. Mitch’s vote was for the latter.
He didn’t know where they were, and he wasn’t familiar enough with the surface archeology to compare, but to him, this was the proof of the legends of Xibalba, that it was a mirror image of the surface, and this pyramid was probably a duplicate of the one above.
Staring in awe at the archeological riches before us, his eye was drawn to a wall opposite by the dazzling mural that had been painted there. He had seen the murals at Bonampak, and they were the scribbling of children against these magnificent, brilliantly-colored depiction’s of ceremonial life. As the eye of his lantern traversed the arena, he realized that the wall was a tableau and that leaning against it were giant wooden ladders about 30 feet long and rising some 8 to 10 stories above the plaza. At first he thought these were but maintenance structures for the paintings, until he noticed that they rested against a narrow balcony that seemed to front a cavern behind it.
“Asti’, he said, pointing up at the balcony, “This is the end of the line, and that appears to be the way out of here. That’s where we have to go. There is no other place.”
“Mitch, now you appear to be the one that is in a hurry. What is there to say that your precious codices are not right here in this structure?”
“...” For just a moment he was caught totally flatfooted. He was so focused on Izamal that he wasn’t even considering the possibility that the codices might be anywhere else. Indeed, taking a second look at what was right in front of them, he realized that this was an imposing enough structure that it might contain what he was looking for.
“Sorry, Asti. You’re right, of course. Who’s to say that they aren’t here? We’re here, and the only way to get to this place is through the system, so it is well protected and unlikely to be stumbled on by any lost Spaniard, so why not?”
Tired of sight being restricted to the little circles thrown by the lanterns, they lit several of the huge braziers, and this provided more than enough light. I don’t know what they used for the pools of fuel that filled these things, but either they had some sort of natural filling system, or they were being replenished with an oil that was fragrant but nearly smoke-free. they climbed the steps, or rather the plateaus, for surely they were more than steps, for they were forced to mount them one by one, hand and foot until they reached the apex, exhausted and hardly able to catch our breath.
Impressive as the pyramid was from its foot, it was more so from the pinnacle, the stage for the priests. All around them lay the carefully-laid blocks of the plaza and the surreal colors of the surrounding mural with the gigantic figures lending a touch of unreality to the enormous space that seemingly faded into infinity above them, even though he realized that it was only a trick of the dun-colored ceiling above that sucked up the light.
They heard them before they saw them, loud-talking, laughing, bellowing, maybe even drunk.
“Down,” Asti whispered urgently, and they both flopped to the edge of the top level, peering over to see what was coming.
Three cayucos burst from the tunnel into the enclosure and seemed to be chasing something, men in the prows thrusting spears into the water and yelling, as if they were on a hunt. He could tell that there was something in front of them because He could see the boil of the water and the wake behind. This furious focus was coming up on the edge of the plaza when a giant... thing burst from the water and roared and slithered up onto the plaza. The men laughed, leaping from the boats up onto the platform to case after their prey.
“Holy shit!” What the hell is that?” He asked.
“It is, what do you call them? A crocodile, and a big one too.”
“Yeah, but it’s white, and it must be eighteen feet long.”
“Maybe white because it lives in the dark caves where there is no light and there is no need of the natural camouflage. It is probably blind as well, but they all have sensors on their bellies. That’s how they hunt.”
“And just how do you know so much about crocodiles, Asti?”
“When I knew I was coming to the this area I read up on it and learned about the crocodiles and caimans in the rivers, and thought it might be smart to read up on them. I came across the albino cave crocodiles in my books... But I do not understand why those men are chasing it, they are supposed to be gods to the Indians?”
“Look, look,” He said, pointing to several of the men dragging a large cage made out of branches and vines. They were advancing toward the monster which was now cornered and was busy roaring amazingly like a lion, and snapping at the advancing men, who were now carrying a net of ropes. “They’re not trying to hurt it, they are capturing it.”
“What would they be doing that for?”
“A ceremony?” He guessed. “They may be capturing it for a ceremony of some kind.”
Asti was startled. “Here? You think the ceremony will be here?”
“Oh shit! I hadn’t thought about that.” He looked wildly around. “If there is going to be a ceremony, then the priests will be coming up here, and we better find a place to hide real quick.”
Below, he could see that more and more cayucos were arriving, some large and ceremonial, probably carrying dignitaries, and there were others carrying large and small groups of people. Their vacant canoe went as unnoticed as a Chevrolet in a parking lot. They could see most of the top of the pyramid, and the pillared square of the temple in the center, and the chacmool that was the centerpiece of the stage. It sat at the edge of the plateau and the apex of the steps that was the stage where the ceremonies were performed for the benefit of the people in the plaza below.
Frantically he scrambled about the topmost plaza searching for a hiding place, but found none. Then, Asti beckoned from one corner of the temple, and there pointed out two large grapefruit-sized holes in one of the plaza stones, and urgently pantomimed lifting the stone.
He had no idea what she was thinking, but there was no way that he was going to be able to lift this two or three hundred pound rock, but since they were desperate he figured that he might as well give it a try. What did he have to lose?
To his amazement the hatchway opened easily and soundlessly on its counterbalanced hinges revealing the dark entrance to a steep stairway. Using flashlights they slipped down the precision-carved staircase as he closed the block behind them. This one was not winding, but descended in short flights deep into the earth beneath the pyramid. There a natural cave had been expanded and decorated to contain a huge sarcophagus decorated in the jade mosaic of the full figure of a king seated on a throne.
Once they were firmly ensconced in our new quarters, he turned to Asti, “How did you know?”
“Palenque,” she said. “It is the same as the tomb of King Pacal at Palenque. I have been there and I have seen it.” He sighed. “Well, now you’ve seen two of them, and for the moment they are safe... until the site of the ceremony shifts down here.”
“That will not happen, Mitch. This place is sacred and is not to be disturbed. No, the ceremony will take place only above us.”
They were deep beneath the surface of the earth but the eerie echoes of the event above came clearly through the stairway. The earth-shaking sounds of a huge drum were the introduction, and in the hours that followed he heard the vibrations and pitch of the piercing whistles, the shrill flutes, the blare of trumpets, the ringing of bells, the voice of the pipes, the pulsating reverberation of the drums and clink and plink of the marimbas, accompanied underneath it all by the rhythmic chants of the hundreds and hundreds of people, and punctuated by the amplified intonations of the priests.
The entire pyramid shook with their efforts. All this was followed by the sounds of drunken merriment while they slept fitfully there in the darkness, and in the morning, at least he thought it must be morning, all was quiet as they made their way up to the top.
They emerged, and once again all was dark there in the huge chamber, but a quick sweep of the lighted disks of their lanterns played over the scenes of last night’s revelries, and astonishingly, all was as it had been before they arrived. It was pristine, without blemish or rubbish... until the light swept across the chacmool, revealing the splashes of blood that despoiled the back of the jaguar statue.
There was a brief, shrill cry from Asti, and then she said, her voice wavering, her face invisible there in the dark, “...there was a sacrifice.”
“Apparently so, but we don’t know what it was. Could have been a pig... or a dog, maybe even that crocodile.”
“With all that ceremony? I don’t think so, Mitch. And I am thinking that you do not think so either.”
“But we don’t know, so why be any more afraid than is necessary?”
“Mitch, they have to keep away from them. They cannot know what they know. This was not for us to see. Not for us to know.”
“Yeah, but I thought that was the plan from the beginning, so what’s new?”
“Mitch, you are the most exasperating man. What am I to do with you?”
“Come with me, Asti, just come with me.”
“Mitch, I did not come from Amsterdam to die in a cave in the Yucatan.”
“So what do you want to do? Do you want to go back?”
“Well...”
“Oh, come on, Asti. A lot of this was your idea in the first place. Just think of the stories you’ll have to tell your friends back in Amsterdam.”
Asti laughed. “If I get back to Amsterdam.”
“You know, Asti, I’ve been thinking...”
“That would be a first.”
“No, really. If they keep going with this, they could do a book. There would be enough interest, and not just academic, either.”
“A popular book, then?”
“Asti, if I find the codices, they will be world famous, and even if they don’t, just the revealing of this underground system should be enough, don’t you think?”
“Mitch, if they don’t get moving, they’ll never get anywhere. Besides, I’m hungry, and the backpacks are in the boat. If we’re going to climb that damned ladder, we are going to have to get our strength back, so can we go and eat now?”
The climb was uneventful even if scary. The ladders were constructed as a grid made of branches tied with vines, but for all that, they were sturdy and serviceable even if a little rustic, but there was little problem getting to the balcony, except that Asti made it there first, then turned around to smirk.
The balcony was actually a broad plaza that lead to a quay fronting another river, but this time, the by now familiar precision of the magnificently decorated passages below, was simply missing, and in their stead was a roughly hacked cave.
Fed by a waterfall that fell from high up on the wall, this stream was no less broad and no less tall, just missing the finished look of the ones they had come from. Even so there were a number of the familiar cayucos, large and small, both the yellow fiberglass and the rough dugouts, and they chose one of the smaller fiberglass canoes to continue our journey.
Once again they were heading North, and this time they erected the sail to take advantage of the wind that filled this cavern as well, adding its power to that of the current and they were swept along there in the depths. they were somewhat used to the system and less fearful, and they talked about how the system flowed downhill as long as it could, then stopped to resume far above to once again flow downhill.
That part was understandable, what was questionable was how the water was raised to the new level. Some sort of hydraulic pressure transfer, but his knowledge was insufficient to figure out how it was done, and it didn’t matter. It was only necessary to know that it worked, and that this sophisticated network had been built by the ancient Maya. Surely if they were capable of this level of construction a little thing like the preservation of a few codices would not be beyond them.
My chimera was glowing brighter now.
They seemed to be following a shallow curve, but it was curved enough so that their flashlights didn’t help to see what was ahead. They were moving much faster than they had been when they were in the last tunnel. The rush of the water and the whistle of the wind in the square-rigged sail made it impossible to hear anything else, and even talking was difficult as they were carried swiftly on the current, strictly as a precaution, they shut the lanterns off and sat waiting for something they felt was coming without knowing what it might be.
He felt the sudden drop in pressure that telltale our emergence into the larger space, but this time our speed swirled us in great swooping circles so that they were disoriented and dizzy when the prow of the boat bumped against something and then they were pinioned like butterflies in the brilliant beams of half a dozen high-powered lanterns.
He was blinded and almost pulled bodily from the boat where he was forced to run over stone blocks. He was brought to an abrupt halt and stood there blinking, until one of the beams swung around to the man facing me. A short, muscular, crew-cut, khaki T-shirted and cami pants, fireplug of a man with a broad sardonic grin on his face. Gorilla!
“Mitch!” He exclaimed expansively. “...and the lovely Miss Astreed as well.”
“How did you find us, Gorilla?”
“Maybe you should refer to me by my Ladino name, Sargento Pedro de Alvarado.”
“Certainly Sargento de Alvarado. I see you have taken the name of Cortes’ Captain, the cruel Spaniard. Is that in the nature of a grim joke?”
“No joke, Senor y Senorita, and if you are still wondering how it is that you are found, it is because there was no where else that you could go. We knew you were in the rivers so you had to come this way, but we have been waiting here for an entire day. We could not understand where you could have gone.”
Asti grew impatient with the game. “Come, come, Chan K’in. So now we are here and you have us. What is it that you intend to do with us?”
“Senorita Astreed, that is a question I have asked myself. Tell me, what would you have me do?”
“Look, Chan K’in, this is Mitch’s idea. He’s looking for the lost codices of the Maya. He thinks they may have been hidden in a cave.”
“Yes, yes, it is as good a story as any, but I have a question for Mitch, here. Mitch? Commandante de la Madrid may be a poseur, but He is not a fool. He thinks you are CIA. Is true?”
“Gorilla, are you nuts? I am a fucking librarian, for chrissakes. You know me. And this is Astrid, she’s a painter all the way from Amsterdam. How could we be CIA?”
Chan K’in exploded. “You think I am a fool? You think we didn’t find out all about you? This is the age of the Internet, it is our weapon and you would be amazed what you can find out on the Internet. You...” He pointed at Mitch. “A trial lawyer from California who suddenly and unexpectedly left to come to San Cristobal to be a librarian?” He turned and pointed at Astrid... “and you, a cardiac nurse in Amsterdam who took a sudden leave to come to San Cristobal to be an artist-in-residence? If your covers were not so stupid they would be laughable, but it is clear that is what your stories are... covers - just covers!”
Mitch’s mind was in turmoil. When he heard this from Chan K’in’s mouth he suddenly grasped what he was talking about. It really did sound like a cover story. How could he ever make him believe the truth when the truth sounded like such a transparent lie?
“Look, Gorilla...”
“Don’t bother with more lies, I know the truth. You could only be American CIA seeking to pry the secrets from my country and my poor people. You think that you are our saviors, our great uncle to the North, but you do not understand, we are like children living in the shadow of a famous father, never to live our own lives. You are our oppressors. Generous oppressors, to be sure, so long as we do things your way, but let us once refuse your help or go against your advice, then we get spanked like Panama or sent to our room, like Castro’s Cuba. You ask what I am to do with you...”
Astrid broke in. “Senor Chan K’in...”
“Ah, so now I am Senor Chan K’in. How I have risen in the world, at least in your eyes, just so long as you are my captives.”
He looked at him and opened my mouth to speak, but he broke in first, “... Aaaacch! What to do with you, what to do? If you were just tourists, I might have just given you a personal, long-time tour of the underground burial pits, but since you are CIA... You know, Mitch and Astreed, in a way you have much luck...”
“Shit!” He said derisively, “you call this lucky?”
“Of course I do. Two years ago there were CIA spies who got into the system, and we of the EZLN were not so sophisticated then, so we simply killed them and through them into the river. It amused us to do that so they could finally learn where the rivers went. Of course they would be able to tell no one, and that was what we wanted.”
“So?”
“So now we are more sophisticated, my dear Astreed. We learned our lesson from the last agents that we taught to go swimming. You see, when they disappeared, the Americans sent their troops down to train with the Ejercito Mexicana, the Mexican Army, and for a year there were so many troops in the highlands that our operations were completely disrupted and many of our people were sent to the camps in Soconusco and are still there. You Americans don’t really pay too much attention to the Zapatistas so long as we don’t really present a threat to the stability of Mexico, but they did not like for their agents to disappear.”
Mitch was relieved. Maybe we were living a lie, but at least we were living. “So why not just let us go? After all, we will soon be missed and they will come looking for us.”
“No, Senor Mitch, we will tell them that you are being held hostage for the release of our people in soconusco, and you will be allowed to send messages about how well you are being treated, but we are in the middle of an operation and we don’t want you loose right now.”
“Come on, Gorilla, you can’t keep us forever, what’s the point?”
“Mitch, I confess that I don’t know, but I do know that I do not want busloads of ‘gringo’ tourists leaving Coca-Cola cans and McDonald’s bags in the rivers of our heritage, and I will do everything I can to stop that.”
“Gorilla, why would[1]

‑­ !"#$%&'()*+,-./0123456789:;<=>?@ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ[\]^_`abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyzýÿÿÿ}~€ you think that such a thing might happen?”
“Have you been to Palenque, Mitch? I do not want such a thing to happen to our rivers.”
“Okay, you made your point. Where to we go from here?”
“Oh, I think we have a place that will be of interest to you, Senor y Senorita.”

WHERE DOES A 500 POUND GORILLA SLEEP?
Chan K’in had them blindfolded and the blindfolds actually did the job, what with the eye pads and the adhesive tape, and as they were seated in the bottom of a large cayuco Chan K’in said, “So, Mitch, do you feel better now, more relaxed? And by the way, you can call me ‘Gorilla’ only when we are friends and we are among friends. It is disrespectful to call one by our animal names in any other situation. Are you so much an ignorant gringo that you do not even know that?”
“Sorry Chan K’in, I’ve always known you and called you ‘Gorilla’, just the same as I have been ‘Elefante’ since I got to know you, and Astrid has been ‘Delfine’, and Luis over there was always called ‘Mono’. You all use animal names down here, I always took it to be a sign of affection.”
Thought about logically, it was reasonable for a short, squat, muscular Maya to bear the nickname of ‘Gorilla’, or for a short, skinny Mexican to be called ‘Mono’, Monkey, or even for a graceful female to bear the name ‘Delfine’ or Dolphin. Certainly a giant (to a little Maya) gringo could well be called ‘Elefante’, Elephant.
“It is normally a sign of affection or friendship, Senor, but you may have noticed that we are not being affectionate right at this moment, not since I found out that you and she were CIA.”
“Yes I had, but to tell you the truth, Chan K’in, I had really expected to see you with your rifle.”
“Rifle?” He questioned. “Rifle? ...” Suddenly, He laughed explosively. “Oh, you mean the rifle at Na Bolom. You really think that was me?”
“Wasn’t it?”
“No, Mitch, I really have no interest in killing you. In fact, it is in my interest to keep you alive.”
“Why? You want us quiet don’t you?”
“Yes, but the EZLN does not need the heat that would come down with your death. I have already told you about the last CIA people we kept very quiet.”
“So who did it?”
“Quien sabe, Senor, who knows?” He probably shrugged, but I couldn’t see it.
Astrid and Mitch sat for hours at a time as the boat rushed along the stream. Chan K’in and his men spoke to each other, but they spoke Maya, and Mitch had a hard enough time with Spanish.
They traveled for three days, and since they were kept blindfolded most of the time, he had no idea where they were at any time. They traveled in stretches, and when he assumed it was night aboveground they stopped at one of the stations to allow Astrid and Mitch to sleep on the ground and get what rest they could. The places they stopped were all just stopping places, rest areas with no structures and no exits he could see. Chan K’in’s men watched the pair closely but he didn’t know why, after all, where the hell could we go?
Through it all, Asti was a real trooper. She and he talked, of course, and the rest just ignored them. She didn’t complain, but seemed as fascinated by what was happening as he was.
They became aware of the stopping place on the third day, they were still blindfolded but there was more noise and commotion than they had heard before as they emerged into a huge, echoing chamber resounding with the reverberations of one of the huge tree-trunk drums, and bumped into several objects before they heard the familiar grating noise that signaled that the craft had pulled alongside a stone quay.
They were roughly dragged out of the boat and felt the rock rasping under their feet, and then their captors removed the blindfolds. For just a moment his mind was unable to comprehend what his eyes were seeing. It was an enormous underground space, larger than the Houston Astrodome which he had been in some years before. The limestone composition of the roof must have been shot through with veins of quartz crystal because bright light came through the marbleizing and lit the entire area, not quite with the strength of sunlight, but enough to see easily by.
And what he saw was a living Maya city there deep under the earth. Villages of the white, oblong, conical-roofed chozas, the little Maya houses that were built here just as they would be built on the surface. As his eyes grew accustomed to the light levels, he looked toward the center of the city where he could see pyramids, buildings and temples, and lit braziers were everywhere illuminating the vibrant colors of the structures. These pyramids were crowned with mantilla-like roof-combs like in Tikal. They looked more natural than the silly, multi-story tower the archeologists put up in Palenque.
How big was this city? It was difficult to estimate there in the underground and the muted light, but it was the largest Maya city that he had ever seen, and looked larger than Chichen Itza or Palenque, which were imposing structures in their own right.
And it was even more imposing because it was so clean! He was used to seeing inadequate reconstruction’s on the surface. Rough, differently-colored, partial visualizations, often wrong and jarring, unfinished, they offered a fantasy of what someone thought a Maya monument might have looked like, and this city was a real original, a Maya city as a Maya city had really been, and still is.
It was breathtaking, an urban setting that was all of a piece, all uniform, each structure fitting together with the next, clean, maintained, finished, alive and glittering, and each complementing each other like an object of fine Tiffany jewelry. Maybe the only American who had seen a true vision of Maya architecture was Frank Lloyd Wright, who in his Hollyhock House and in others, incorporated the Maya artistic concept. Strange, Wright worked from a geometric and spiritual place to reach his designs and the geometric part was the result of a couple of thousand years of mathematics, would it have been any different with the Maya?
They were pushed towards the city center and suddenly came to the beginning of a blocks-long, central reflecting pool, glistening like an onyx mirror, flanked by the date stelae that led to the foot of a pyramid. The flanking date monuments were weathered and chipped, sometimes even defaced, somehow blurred by the erosions, but here they were fresh and clean-cut, maybe even new, or maybe just protected. He couldn’t read them, of course, He’d just never got around to the glyphs, although, considering his quest, he probably should have.
The people there in the city were not dressed any differently than those above, White cotton pants, guayabera shirts, rubber tire sandals and straw cowboy hats of the men; the lightly-embroidered gown-like huipiles and upswept-braided jet-black hair of the women. Just as on the surface, these were the Maya.
People were always asking what had happened to the Maya, and here was the answer. Nothing. They were still here, all around. Only the original infrastructure had collapsed for some unknown reason, but the people? They went on as they always had. And now they were here.
They came to a long, rectangular building, resplendent in Maya blue and crowned with the intricately geometric frieze that was the hallmark of the Maya. It would have been about a story and a half tall back in the States, but here it simply fit in with the scheme. They entered through the tall wooden doors with carved-stone fittings. Inside the floors were highly polished and light poured in through the latticed stonework of the windows. Most of the furnishings were wood or bamboo, and at one end of the long room was a raised dais on which was a huge chacmool throne.
Seated upon the throne in an insouciant attitude was our old friend Chan K’in, in his familiar khaki T-shirt emblazoned with the ‘Ejercito Nationale’ logo, somewhat incongruous under the circumstances. He was adorned with a black webbing shoulder holster holding what looked like a Baretta. He was wearing cami parachute pants with many buttoned pockets, and polished jump boots. On either side was a muscular young man clad only in breechcloth and sandals, but holding a long spear upright! Here, our Chan K’in was king.
“Surprised, Mitch? Astreed? Why? You knew I was the hereditary chief of the Maya. Here I am Holun Chan of the Holoch Uinuch, First Chief of the True People.”
“Yeah, Chan K’in, but I thought it was, you know, like, it was ceremonial. Just a fairy story.”
He expansively opened his arms. “Well then, welcome to fairyland. By the way. Here I am called Chan K’in Joven. My father was Chan K’in Viejo, the older; and I am the younger. Who did you expect?”
“I thought maybe Subcommandante Marcos, the leader of the EZLN, the Zapatistas...”
Chan K’in Joven laughed. “Oh, our Internet voice of the Zapatistas. Mitch, you might as well know, if your organization does not already know, that the EZLN is just a small splinter group. That is why Marcos calls himself just Subcommandante, He knows that the people would not stand for it if he were to call himself anything more.”
“And these two?” He said, indicating his guards.
He laughed again. “Only for show, my dear Mitch.” He gestured to the intricate pierced partition over his shoulder. “The ones you have to look out for are the men behind the screen with automatic weapons. HK’s I believe, they are the best.”
“Okay then. What happens now?”
“Well, Mitch, I have given it a great deal of thought. It appears that you and the lovely Astreed are to be honored as our guests, at least for a while.” He gestured with one finger.

ASTI
Two more of Chan K’in’s men came from behind the screen and took Asti and Mitch back out through the front door and around to the end of the building where they were taken into a little half-size door that was at the rear. Inside it was quite dim. There were windows, but they were sealed with wooden hoardings that admitted only shafts of streaming light through cracks and knotholes. There were also some narrow skylights which allowed in only enough light to see by.
Chan K’in must have had a skewed idea of the relationship between Astrid and Mitch because there was only one large hammock, a so-called ‘matrimonio’ that was meant for a married couple. He could understand how Chan K’in could have reached the conclusion, but that didn’t make things any easier. The two left Asti and Mitch alone there, noisily closing and locking the door behind them, leaving them in a sudden and deafening silence.
They stood there in the semi-darkness, staring at each other. They were friends, but could they be more than friends? Asti was dressed in jeans and an old gray sweatshirt with the sleeves torn off. For the first time he noticed that the sweatshirt was a little too small on her, especially across the breasts. He could see that she was not wearing a bra. Her jeans were old and faded, but very tight and form-fitting, and the form that they were fitting looked pretty good.
She looked at him as if she knew what was going through his mind and smiled a Mona Lisa smile and started towards him. She walked as if she were made of liquid and slid into his arms and they were kissing hungrily. Her sweatshirt disappeared and her breasts were pressed hard against him and one leg came up alongside him, opening herself to rub against him. She twined herself around like a creeper vine, moving against him, pushing him back toward the matrimonio, but he had not been in the Yucatan long enough to make love in a hammock.
Her hands were in his jeans, tantalizing as she rubbed against him, but he maneuvered her onto a pile of rugs and blankets that were near the wall. He ran his hands up and down her breasts and she licked my ear, breathing into it like fire. He undid the button on the top of her jeans and as he sucked on her distended nipple, he eased her down in a tangle of clothes and blankets as he thrust his hand down her pants to discover that she wasn’t wearing underpants, something that had always driven him crazy.
As she fell down onto the heap of blankets, she lifted her ass to push down her jeans and his hand slid down to her wet mound where her long legs joined, and his finger slickered inside her as her hips strained upwards to push him deeper as his teeth worried and pulled at her nipple as she arched.
She was pulling and squeezing at his member and it was hard as iron. She was kissing and biting his nipple and then her wet lips and tongue slithered down my stomach while pulling him up into her mouth as her hands roughly molded his sack and he could feel the pressure building. He worked myself around so that his mouth was at her thighs and his tongue left a snail’s trail on her thigh as he worked his way toward her center.
He buried his face in her wiry hair and her legs fell apart and he could smell the clean fresh smell of the sea as his tongue licked her swelling slit and she cried out with a sharp intake of breath as he nibbled at her clit and she greedily sucked at him and whined at him to “come, come in my mouth”. She wanted his seed flowing over her breasts but he wanted to come way deep inside her and feel her cunt spasm around him, pulling his every drop into her body as she writhed and cried and laughed as emotions and exploding senses washed over her, but that was his fantasy, and it wasn’t hers... not yet anyway.
Their movements became frantic, frenzied, raging, building now to release. Animal cries and squeals were interrupted by bites and nips as they tried to devour each other. Sweat, saliva and bodily juices mingled and the odors of exertions and lust filled the air, and all drove them on to greater and greater heights.
Then she was in my arms and my hands were cupping and caressing her breasts and nipples as her ass nuzzled back against her groin and he was in her from the rear as she pressed back against him to drive him deeper inside her and his hand slid down over her belly and into her mound, as the tip of his finger stroked and rubbed at her swollen clit and she began the feral grunts and thrusts that signaled her coming climax as she rammed herself back against his groin, shoving as deep inside her as he could get. They exploded together as she writhed from side to side and made guttural sound beyond speech that joined with his until he and she were indistinguishable.
They collapsed back against the piled rugs as the sweat and fluids dried on their faces and bodies, and a great languor came over him and he turned to look at her and watched the sex flush slowly fade from her face and chest. Her eyes caught his and she smiled. “Not bad...”, she said.
“That all?” He asked.
She rolled over towards him and murmured something that struck fear into his very depths. “...for the first time. But I’m sure we can do better.”



























INVOLVEMENT
Brilliant waterfalls of sunlight shot through the cracks and skylights to wake them where they lay, still atop the rugs, with one careless covering. They were spent and exhausted from the struggles of the night past.
He looked over at her. He had a foolproof method of determining his relationships with women. It had to do with the morning after. If he viewed the night’s activities with shame and embarrassment, then it had been simple lust, but if not...?
By day she was as bright and shining as she had been the night before in the full flower of our awakening. He looked carefully, turning it over and over in his mind, and he could find there no shadow of shame or embarrassment. They smiled at each other and there was no self-consciousness in their nakedness. They arose and dressed with the familiarity of the long-wed, but still achingly aware of the delights that awaited only a re-match. It was a comfortable, satisfying feeling.
The wooden storm-doors were thrown open to allow the world in, and the front doors crashed back to admit Chan K’in in his now-familiar T-shirt and cami’s uniform.
“Ah, Mitch, Astreed.” He tipped his head forward in the simulacra of a bow. “The guards tell me that you both passed what can only be described as a very pleasant night.” His teeth flashed in a smile. Mitch glanced at Astrid and was unaccountably proud that she denied him the satisfaction of an embarrassed flush.
His face fell, then He shrugged. “Oh well.” He said. “I thought you two might be interested in what we do here in our city of Xibalba.”
That woke Mitch up. “Oh, so that’s what you call your city.”
“Not my city, Mitch. It is our city. The true city of the Maya. Here we rule. Here, we make the laws. There are no Ladinos here, no Chilangos, no Conquistadores, not even any turistas, except for you and Astreed here, of course. But that was not our doing.
“You built all this?” Mitch asked, his hand sweeping to take in the Maya world.
He laughed. “Me?” He smiled. Xibalba has been here for as long as we know. It is the first Maya city, the one from which all others sprang. All here are Maya. All here is Maya. All here has always been Maya. All here will always be Maya. It is not a dead city like those on the surface that have been stolen by others, this is our living and vibrant city, a city of our predecessors and also of our descendants.”
“But it is hidden and not in the open.”
“Like the true life of the Maya, Mitch. And so it must be for the present, but not for always. One day we shall return to the surface and reclaim our land, but to do this we must purge our land of the foreigners and the traitors.”
“Purge? You mean Kill?”
“Only if we must. Only if they will not leave to go back to from whence they came.”
“Jeesus, Chan K’in, you’re talking about hundreds of thousands, maybe millions.”
Astrid spoke up. “And what of the mixed bloods? What of them?”
“Mixed bloods?” He spat onto the floor. There are no mixed bloods. One drop is a deadly pollutant. Only full-blooded Maya will remain.”
“Just you and the Nazis, eh? Chan K’in.” Asti was waxing sarcastic and he shot her a warning glance, which she returned with disdain.
“The Nazis, you say? The Germans didn’t have their country overrun and stolen from them. They were not reduced to slaves. They were not killed in their millions. Their philosophy was an exercise in hubris, ours will be a lesson in race survival. If you must think in those terms, then rather think of us as the Jews, only a hundredfold more oppressed. Yet we survive, and we will survive until we again regain our rightful place.” His voice and timbre had risen until He sounded as if He were making a speech.
It was Asti who went for it. She had more guts than he did. “So when do you put this plan into operation?”
Chan K’in returned to this earth from wherever He had been flying. “Astreed, we are a realistic people, but what is more we are a patient people. We watch the way of the world. Right now the Norteamericanos are the... how is it you say... the fly in the ointment.”
“How so?”
“We might be able to prevail over the Mexicans, but the Norteamericanos would never permit it. So we will wait and we will watch. We see the rise of the Chinese. For a while we played with Castro while the Russians were helping him because we thought it might give us a chance, but now we have to wait for the Chinese.”
“And if it takes fifty years...”
“It is of no matter to us, friend Astreed, even if it takes five hundred years. We have been here a long time and we will be here long after everyone else has left, then it will be time enough.”
...and until then?”
“Until then Mitch, we can only pull the tail of our own personal jaguar, our Bolom, the Mexican government.”
“What for?”
“What for?, Mitch, what for? We keep the pressure on so they will leave us alone. Give us some autonomy. Maybe let us have our own State.”
“Look, Chan K’in,” He said, “I don’t understand. I thought they already gave you the Yucatan. That the Maya run it.”
“I know what they say, and I know the Chilangos with the Maya names who actually run the State and who take orders from Day-Effay.”
“Wait a minute, Chan K’in, You are using words I do not know? What is this ‘Chilangos’?”
“Chilangos are the bosses from Day-Effay, Astreed.”
“And Day-Effay? What is that?”
“It is the letters for Distrito Federale, Federal District. Just another name for Mexico City.”
“So you are saying that it is still run from Mexico City?”
“Now you have it, Astreed.”
“So what can you do about it, Chan K’in?”
“I already told you, Mitch, we can annoy them, attack where they do not expect us to be and then disappear into the earth, into the land of the Maya.”
“Who is we? The EZLN, the Zapatistas?”
“No, Mitch. We are not those children from UNAM. The University of Mexico does not make revolutionaries, it makes only talkers on the Internet. That’s what they are good for.”
“They are also good for dying, Chan K’in. Your friends of the Army are killing them.”
“No, Mitch, you are wrong again. My friends in the Army are disciplined, and what you don’t know is that most of the soldiers who are posted here are also Indians. They do not kill Maya. No, it is the paramilitaries that are killing in the villages. They are the army only of the coffee growers in Soconusco. That is who we attack. That is who we kill. The Army we only annoy. Like when we occupied San Cristobal for 24 hours.
“Chan K’in, if you are not EZLN, then who are you?”
“We are only the Maya, Mitch. No one else. Not the EZLN, not the Zapatistas, only the Maya. The hooded children we use only for cover. So long as they exist the Chilangos can chase them and not us. It is to our advantage.”
“Why are you telling us all this? Aren’t you afraid we might tell someone else? Especially if we are CIA?”
“I like you, Mitch. You too, Astreed. What is more I trust you. But most important, you also know that what we do here is no threat to the Estados Unidos, the United States. And in truth, little threat to the Chilangos, either.”
“Then why do it?”
“So that we can respect ourselves that we have not surrendered completely, that we still fight on and we always will. To keep the Maya spirit alive.”
“Okay, so what now?”
“Mitch, Astreed, how would you like it if we showed you what we do?”
“The so-called ‘lightning raids, Chan K’in?”
“You have heard of them, Astreed?”
“Who has not? The raiders who appear and then disappear without a trace. They are famous. There was even an article in the International Issue of Time Magazine.”
“Really Astreed? It would not do to become too famous, because then they would make a real attempt to catch us.”
“Yes, well, Chan K’in, let us hope that this is not the time.”
Chan K’in laughed.
As they started off, he turned to him. “This city, this Xibalba of yours, does it have a library, a biblioteca?”
“Of course Mitch, why do you ask?”
“... Ah..., the codices? Are there any here?”
Chan K’in laughed. “For what, Mitch? For your cover story? It is not needed anymore.”
“No, Chan K’in, I am really interested in the folios, are there any ancient ones here?”
Chan K’in roared with laughter. “Mitch, Mitch, do I look like a bibliotecario to you? I thought that you were the bibliotecario, not me.“
“Well, then is there a bibliotecario for the city?”
“they don’t have such things here, Mitch. Besides, the codices are sacred and the priests, the H’men, look after them.”
“Is there someone...”
Chan K’in was becoming annoyed. Well, if you insist Mitch, I guess you could ask Yum Chac, He is probably old enough to have some knowledge...”
“This He speaks some English?”
Chan K’in laughed. “Mitch, Yum Chac does not even speak Spanish. Do you have much Quiche Maya?”
“Quiche Maya? He only speaks Quiche Maya? Maybe... maybe you could translate?”
Chan K’in laughed again. “Mitch, oh, Mitch,” He shook his head ruefully. “First you think I am a mesero, a waiter at Na Bolom, then you mistake me for a bibliotecario, and now you think I am translatador, a translator? What will I be next? Maybe a collector of basura, what you call...”
“Garbage! I know enough Spanish to at least know that. And no, I know what you are and what you are not. If you are not willing to do it, don’t you have someone else...?
Chan K’in waved his hand, impatiently, and his accent suddenly became more pronounced with the anger. “No, No. I weell do eet, eef eet weell only get this loco idea from your head.” He gestured. “Come weeth me. Both of you, they weell go to see Yum Chac.”
They walked through the broad avenues of the ceremonial part of the city, until they came to a single story, long, rectangular building which was beside the largest pyramid in the city. The building was painted in Maya Blue and the roof frieze was multiple glaring gargoyles that here they called the great god Chac, god of lightning and thunder. He hoped that Yum Chac was not a relative.
He didn’t understand what the conversation was between Chan K’in and Yum Chac, but it didn’t look too promising. they followed the tiny, wizened, leather-skinned old man to a small room in the back where He made sure that the hanging was drawn fully across the door. Then He turned and switched on the CD-ROM computer that sat on a low table.
“Chan K’in, what the hell is that?”
“What is the matter, Mitch, do you not recognize a computer when you see one?”
“But... here?” My mind blew a gasket. “What about the connections? Where do you get electricity to run it? What the hell do you use it for? How does it fit in down here...?
“Mitch, Mitch. We are the Maya, but we are not blind to what is going on around us. The computer? We run it off car batteries, and we even have a small gas generator to charge the batteries. No, there is no Internet connection, we leave that for the EZLN. And we only use it as a CD-ROM read-write so we can keep track of our archivos, our archives. It is a help to Yum Chac, and to be truthful, we stole it from the Government building in San Cristobal. He us looking for your codices now.”
The spidery fingers of the little man flew over the keyboard and the screen flickered as items were called up and dismissed. The action slowed and stopped as Yum Chac turned and spoke to Chan K’in. He shook his head and Chan K’in nodded.
“Mitch, Yum Chac says that the codices exist.”
He had my confirmation. The codices did exist. He was right and the ‘experts’ were again wrong. My path was clear and he had to follow it. “Chan K’in, please ask him if the codices are here, and can he see them?”
Chan K’in spoke again to the little man who became quite agitated during the conversation. This was followed by Chan K’in’s agitation, and the agitation was soon made mutual. It escalated to the point that Chan K’in stood tall and began issuing what were obviously orders and Yum Chac rising to his full four foot plus and standing his ground.
Chan K’in finally broke it off and turned to me. “He won’t tell us where they are.”
“What do you mean ‘He won’t tell us’?”
Chan K’in shrugged. “Just that. He refuses.”
“ How can He refuse? Aren’t they here?”
“Try to understand, Mitch. The computer lists documents and folios in our possession but all across the Peninsula. They are entered under a code which Yum Chac invented and which only He knows.”
“But you are the Chief.”
“Yes, I am Chief of everything but the sacred. There, the priests are in charge. The folios are in his care, and He will not let you see them. There is nothing that I can do. You may as well forget it.”
A lot went through his mind right then. He desperately wanted the codices but he wasn’t yet ready to die to get them, and it was pretty obvious that at least one of the factors on the side of remaining alive, was Chan K’in’s being convinced that they were CIA, and if he kept pushing the codices, he might well change his mind and decide that they were expendable. At least he knew that they existed, and that was a serious step in the right direction. Better to let it go. On the other hand, Chan K’in might be being so accommodating because he had already decided that he would soon be ‘teaching us to swim’, and if that was true, then nothing would be gained by continuing to be obsessive about the codices, because the chances were that if that was his mindset, he’d never get to reveal what he knew anyway.
He looked at Astrid and she shrugged, as if to say there was nothing more they could do about it. He turned to Chan K’in and said, “Yeah, you’re right.” He laughed. “I didn’t come down here to start a civil war among the Maya.”
“I am much relieved to hear that, Mitch, and I sincerely hope that the Senorita Astreed feels the same way.”
Asti just looked at him. “All right, then, what is next?”
“It is almost time to go down to the river, Senorita Astreed.”

DOWN THE RIVER
His heart was suddenly in his throat. Maybe he had decided to get rid of Asti and Mitch after all, but Asti put his mind at ease with her characteristic bluntness. “So, Chan K’in, is it now that you are to teach us to swim?”
Chan K’in chuckled. “There will be no swimming for you, Astreed. No, I wish for you to accompany us on an operation.”
A new fear raised itself. he didn’t want them killed in a regrettable ‘friendly fire’ incident. “An operation to do what, Chan K’in?”
“We go to have negotiations with ‘The Peace and Justice Army’, as they call themselves, although they represent neither peace nor justice.”
“This ‘Peace and Justice’ Army’? Are these the paramilitaries?”
“They did a raid on Ocosingo last night. Took over and occupied the PRI Office and the City Hall. They ransacked both offices and then they went through the town and killed the Cargos, all 6 of them.”
“Cargos?” Asked Astrid.
“Think of them as an elected Maya Town Council, Astreed, but with religious as well as traditional overtones. Such things have been approved by the Chilangos, our ‘lords’ from Mexico City. We also have our own police forces, but no guns.”
“You mean police like Commandante de la Madrid?”
Chan K’in laughed. “No, Mitch, our police are of The People, the Maya.”
“And they can’t handle the problem?”
“Mitch, the paramilitaries are a trained group of mercenaries supported and armed by the Mexican Army.”
“I don’t understand. Why would the Army want to support the paramilitaries?”
“Because the paramilitaries can do the things that the Army wants to do. They want to drive fear into the hearts of the Maya, but they do not want ‘Time’ magazine showing their actions to the world. No, they are very happy to have the paramilitaries do their bad things, because then the Mexican Government can say that the paramilitaries are terrible people, but they have nothing to do with the Government, and if the Government could catch these evil people, then the Government would imprison or kill them.”
“Then what can you and your people hope to do?”
“Just that we are not going away. That there is a cost to what they do. To make the foreign mercenaries think about what they do.”
“Foreign mercenaries? What Foreign mercenaries?”
“Mostly from Guatemala, Senorita Astreed, although are some from Argentina, Brazil and other countries. Anywhere there was experience with ‘The Dirty War’. They are the creatures of the coffee planters of Soconusco. They are needed to inspire fear into the Maya that they use almost like slave labor. They work them hard and pay them little. So it has always been, and the growers want it to continue. They do not like it when the workers cause trouble.”
Asti looked confused. “So what are you going to do now?”
“Cause trouble. What else? Let’s go.”
There were twenty-four young Maya waiting for them dockside beside four of the big, yellow, fiberglass, seven man (or since Asti was going too, seven person) cayucos with square sails already rigged. Each of the sails depicted a different angry and vividly-colored Maya god. Long torches burned brightly, jammed into the prow of each boat. The men were dressed in standard jungle camouflage and boots, and carried American AR-15’s as well as what looked like .45 caliber Colts in black webbing holsters. The only other person he recognized in the assemblage was ‘Mono’, Monkey, a particular friend of Chan K’in from Na Bolom, and he rushed up, obviously pleased to see Asti and Mitch.
They clambered into the cayuco and were soon on their way, but he soon realized that they were heading West, rather than East as when they had come out of Na Bolom. Now he was confused, because if the river current had pushed them eastward, then how could the current now carry them westward? Different systems, one going east and one going west? How could that be?
“Chan K’in, where are we going?”
“Not that it is any of your concern, friend Mitch, but we go to a place near the town of Tapachula in Soconusco, where we will pay a visit to the foreigners who serve the coffee planters in their war against the Maya.”
“But my compass shows we are going southwest.”
“How could we not be going southwest if that is the way to Soconusco?”
“No, no, that is not my question. When we left Na Bolom, the river current flowed east, but now the current is flowing west. I don’t understand how the current could be flowing both ways?”
“It is the Maya system, Mitch. It is easy to get the river to flow downhill from the mountains, and that was your eastbound ride. Westbound is a little more difficult, but since most of the journey is through the coastal flatlands of Guatemala and Mexico, it only requires the diversion of a mountain flow to send the force of the current moving westward. It is not that difficult to understand once it is explained.”
“Maybe, Chan K’in, but it would be a hell of a lot more difficult to engineer. I am impressed.”
“It is our ancestors, Mitch, they did marvelous things. Things I do not think could be done by your engineers today, even with your modern machinery.”
“Do you know how it was done?”
“Mitch, Mitch. If I ask you to build a car, or even tell me how to build a car, could you do it?” “Of course not, but I could tell you the general principles behind it.”
“Mitch, all of us know you get into a car, turn the key and it goes. Our river system is the same. We put a cayuco in it and it goes. We do not have to know the mechanics of it, except in a general sense. We know that.”
“But what about repairs? Maintenance?”
“The system will last for thousands of years just so long as rockfalls and debris are cleared from the channels, and that we can do. As for the rest. if something else should happen, Quien Sabe? Who knows.”
It was soon obvious that there were two different types of river tunnels in the system. There was the ceremonial tunnel which was finely finished, and then there was a more natural tunnel which was either completely natural, or which had been minimally excavated to conform to the system. Mitch began to think that the ceremonial tunnels were wholly engineered, but he did not know that for sure and Chan K’in sure didn’t know. In fact, he didn’t seem very interested in the tunnels, treating them as a New Yorker would a subway system. This one was an augmented natural tunnel.
He had already seen a rest stop in one of the other rivers, but now he realized that they were deliberately spaced so as to provide a stopping place. While it was not necessary to protect travelers from the rain, it was often cold there in the tunnels and so some shelter was needed, and that had been accomplished by tunneling several small caves into the soft limestone that lay behind the quay. The caves were generously provided with a bundle of torches and there was a small brazier, a chimenea, with a supply of charcoal. Each of the living spaces was provided with a small altar and a small supply of balls of copal, the sacred incense, as well as raised platforms carved into the walls of the rooms. The only drawback was that they were obliged to use the cold river water to wash in. It seemed that the ancient Maya were not decadent enough to require warm water.
Asti and he were given one of the rooms and they tried to restrain their grunts and cries so as not to disturb the little army that they accompanied. All in all it was quite a pleasant journey, those three days to Tapachula. they emerged into a small. overgrown, unprepossessing Cenote, less than a block in diameter, the water an opaque green-black and arboreal scum floating on the surface. It looked totally abandoned, and a rocky overhang hid the dark entrance. The Cenote was located at the ruins of Izapa, hard by the town of Tapachula. Behind the entrance was one of the rest stops, and he counted twenty of the little sleeping caves, more than enough to house their little party.
He looked at Chan K’in. “All right, so we’re here. What do we do now?”
“We look for the mercenaries, Mitch, and what better place to look for mercenaries than at the many cantinas, that the town of Tapachula boasts. That is what we are here for.”
They waited for night, and when it was dark enough, moved towards the town in small groups. They searched for the cantina with the most noise out of the more than thirty that were in a certain section on the outskirts of the town, and then gathered, half in the front and half at the rear.
Then they went in and immediately lined up all the men, those that were able to stand, along the zinc bar that the place boasted. The women were seated at one of the tables in the corner, and after they made a few ribald comments were unceremoniously told to shut up.
Chan K’in made his way down the line, directing his men to take out one or the other of the men and gather them in a separate group. Others he asked a few questions before deciding whether to have them separated out or not. At the same time, one of the men moved down the line taking Polaroid pictures of each of the men.
Pretty soon there were eight bleary-eyed men in various stages of drunkenness who were separated out and not very happy about it. There were a couple of Germans, a Frenchman, three who insisted loudly in telling us that they were Americans, a sullen Israeli, and an Eastern European of undetermined origin, maybe even Russian. One of the Mexicans still in the line at the bar started to put up a fight, but he was shot unceremoniously by one of the men after Chan K’in had nodded to him.
Chan K’in made a speech to the remaining men in the bar about being part of the Ejercito Maya Venganza , the Army of Maya Vengeance, and that everyone there had been identified, and if any of them took part in any further ‘Peace with Justice’ exercises, then they would be subject to immediate execution. As to the men who were being taken, they were ‘foreigners’ and had already been tried by Chan K’in’s own Military Tribunal and they were to be executed as a warning to other mercenaries not to take the money of the coffee growers to oppress the Maya.
They took the men from the cantina and frog-marched them down the street in front of the crowds that had come out when they heard the shots. they edged down the street, alert for anyone who might think to rescue the foreigners, but as was normal for many Mexicans, they had little love for the highly paid strangers among them.
They reached the edge of town where there was a garbage dump, and there under the blinding lights that washed all color from the scene, the Maya summarily executed seven of the men, Chan K’in himself delivering the coup de grace by means of a single bullet to the head. The one that remained was one of the Germans, and before he was released to tell the tale to his masters, Chan K’in smashed his gun hand with a bullet.
They could hear the formation of an angry mob, probably made up of more foreigners, who thought it would be easy to run them down and kill them. They didn’t understand that they were like ghosts, they could come and go into the Cenote and they would never find them. Never even think to look for them there. They emerged and departed in a cloak of invisibility, coming and returning to nowhere.
At least nowhere anybody knew about.

RETURN TO XIBALBA
They went back to Xibalba, which by now he knew lay beneath the enormous one-time Maya capital that is now a ruin called El Mirador, but they couldn’t go back the way they came because the current would now be against them. So they went on from Izapa to the next stop which was right by the coast at the ruins of Pajon. From there an inland river flowed back to the El Mirador site by way of Xolcol, Altar de Sacrificios, then up to Tayasal and finally back to Xibalba under El Mirador.
It was on the way back that he realized that the waterways were being maintained. Many of the tunnels were spotless and in good repair, particularly the carved stonework, but some of the side tunnels which were no longer used for one reason or another, were caverns which had reverted to almost a natural state. Stalactites hung from the ceiling, growing drip by mineralized hanging drip to create curtains or fretwork walls, or stalagmites. They raised themselves up from solidified puddles on the floor drop by drop onto the growing pillar, and sometimes stalactite and stalagmite met and thickened creating a fairyland column floor to roof.
Rainbows to milky white. Translucent sheets looking like the melting of an ice castle. One cave so covered with liquid flowstone that the whole space resembled a plastic underground mine that had melted in the heat. The world under the surface was a never-ending surprise of light and color around every corner and curve.
Xibalba awaited in all its pristine splendor, except He was soon to find out that it wasn’t all pristine, and not all of it was splendid. Just like any normal Mexican city, and that is what Xibalba was, parts of it were great, parts of it were even historical, and parts of it were poor, where dogs, chickens and refuse clogged the streets.
Asti and Mitch were given an apartment in one of the more sumptuous buildings in an area of the city they had not seen before. Gardens flourished in the muted light from the crystalline roof and the red-brown and Maya blue of the buildings contrasted with the jutting whiteness of the grimacing gargoyles that were the Maya gods.
It was less than a week later that they discovered that although the cenotes were the surface-world’s entry into Xibalba, it wasn’t quite as simple as it may have seemed. In some of the cenotes there was an ease of entryway in that the tunnel that led to Izapa was above the water level and so allowed direct a passage into the Cenote and then up to the surface, there were others, such as El Mirador, the city that lay above Xibalba, where the Cenote existed, but betrayed no entrance to Xibalba because the access lay under the surface of the water level in the Cenote.
They were later to discover that the below water level entry was only one of the Xibalba entryways, and must have been used only by those cities that were paranoid, whether or not they had good reason for their fear, and most of them were accessible only by a short underwater route. From a defense standpoint, the sub-surface entry made more sense, even though it might have been somewhat inconvenient. It was obvious that a great deal of engineering thought had been put into underwater access, because it required a relatively short dive down to a water-filled horizontal tunnel that led out to the Cenote, and then you’d have to swim up to the surface.
They had already seen that there were surface entries as well, but by now they had either been covered over or concealed in some fashion, otherwise there would have been McDonalds and Burger Kings down here.
El Mirador must have been one of the paranoid cities, and, as one-time capital city of at least a portion of the empire, it had reason to be defensive, although during some time period there must have been a ceremonial entrance into the Cenote as well.
They became aware of the El Mirador Cenote when there was a joint Guatemalan-Mexican army operation against the ruin at El Mirador because they had a tip that there was a Zapatista cell operating from there. See, they were no longer in Mexico, but just over the border into the El Peten Maya Biosphere Reserve. The tip was right, but then again, the tip was wrong, there were rebels all right, but the rebels were not in El Mirador, but rather under it, in Xibalba.
They awoke one morning to see half the town running around and panicky, and they were bewildered until they stopped someone and were finally able to decipher enough Spanish to understand what was going on. Then they went looking for Chan K’in.
“Hey, what the hell is going on?”
“Hola, Mitch, Astreed. It is not to be concerned.
“Funny, there seem to be a lot of people around here that are concerned.”
Chan K’in seemed unperturbed. “they are an excitable people, Mitch.”
It was Asti who broke the logjam. “Well, I’m excitable too, and he want to know what is going on, and what we are supposed to do about it.”
“Calm yourself, Senorita Astreed. As you have already heard, there is a small force that is searching El Mirador, but it is of no moment. As for what we are to do? We do nothing, for if we do anything then it will confirm that we are here and they will start looking for us with much seriousness,”
“And what if they know of the Cenote and the tunnel?”
“Ah, Senorita Astreed, I think that if they knew of the Cenote, they would already be at the Cenote, but they are not. And also, if they knew of the Cenote, then they would have brought more men.”
“Chan K’in, how is it that you know what is going on up there?”
“Because I have sent men to the surface and they are giving me reports.”
“Are you not concerned?”
“Not really. They have been here before and then... nothing.”
“So what’s everybody so excited about?”
“There are not so many things from the outside world that effect us here, so they are excited. But there is nothing to fear.”
So, according to Chan K’in, they were safe, and he had reason to know, but he was not getting anywhere in his quest for the codices, and it was time to start pushing.

THE HERITAGE OF THE MAYA
For many years, orthodox Mayanists took it as a given that all of the codices had been destroyed by Fray Diego de Landa and his co-religionists, as works of the devil.
The first break was the discovery of what came to be known as the Dresden Codex in a private collection in 1739.
Including the Dresden, there are now four (allegedly authenticated) Maya codices in existence, and even those four are suspiciously lacking in provenance. They seem to just have appeared from nowhere, and that is interesting since for many years, the forgery of artifacts has been a major industry among the Maya. For four of the most examined writings in history, there is a surprising lack of information. In keeping with the Maya understanding that archeologists are only foreign grave robbers, not one of these codices resides in the Maya areas of Mexico or Guatemala.
The fact that similar folios were found written by the Aztecs and the Mixtecs argues for the free flow of information across the length and breadth of Mexico. The codices are named for the city in which they reside.
The Dresden Codex is still in the Royal Library, Dresden, where it was brought in 1739. It is presently thought to have been made in the eleventh, twelfth or thirteenth century with older portions recopied. It was severely damaged by fire during WWII.
Basically a treatise on astronomy, it also contains almanacs, catalogues of dates and events. It is unique in that the astronomical tables include Long Count dates tracking solar and lunar eclipses, as well as planetary movements by Venus and Mars.
It is wide-ranging and general, containing references and predictions for time and agriculture, favorable days for predictions, and texts about sickness, medicine, hallucinogenic, conjunctions of the moon, the planets and the constellations, a page about a flood, and a prophecy or reference to rainy seasons.
The Paris codex is at the National Library, Paris, which is also said to house fifteen different codices from Mesoamerica.
Found in a wastebasket at the National Library of Paris in 1859, it's papers blackened by chimney smoke. It is not known how it came to Paris or how long it was there. A small codex of only eleven pages, it is thought to have been made in the twelfth or thirteenth century. It contains a number of almanacs structured to the 260-day ritual calendar, as well as a series of thirteen constellations representing the Maya ‘zodiac’ of animals and birds. It refers to questions of ritual and predictive almanacs.
The Madrid codex is at the Museum of America, Madrid and is rumored to have been originally brought to Spain by Cortes. For a considerable time it was thought to be two different codices, but was united in 1888. It contains 56 pages and is the longest of the known Maya codices. The codex contains both tables referring to the Maya Long Count, and almanacs recording the shorter 260-day ritual.
The Madrid Codex contains 250 almanacs grouped into sections, organized around the 260-day ritual calendar constituting the yearly round and even providing for future prophecies. It references astronomical events, solar and lunar eclipses, and seasonal phenomena such as the summer solstice and the spring equinox. It is the longest and best-preserved of the codices, containing 112 pages. It contains auguries that helped the priests make predictions. It is divided into 11 sections. The first includes rituals for the gods Kukulcan and Itzamna. The second to bad omens concerning crops and offerings that should be made to regularize rain. The third is devoted to a ritual 52-year period. The rest refer to hunting, calendars, death and purification, and other themes.
It is grouped thematically into sections concerned with the deity Chac and rain ceremonies; planting and agriculture; ceremonies surrounding the new year; carving deity images; deer hunting and trapping; capture and sacrifice of prisoners and other events during the five nameless days; and beekeeping.
Then, in the 1970’s, a partial document, to be later called the Grolier Codex, was allegedly found in a dry cave in Chiapas by looters. Still disputed by experts, its authenticity is no longer in doubt. Thought to date from A.D. 1400 and 1500. It originally contained 20 pages but there is now only eleven and there is no real explanation of the missing pages. It contains a calendar of the phases of Venus. It contains an incomplete almanac that has many similarities to the Dresden Venus table.
Augustus Le Plongeon, one of the early Mayanists alleged that He found a number of Maya codices at some undisclosed location.
There were thousands of them. The Spanish saw many of them, and many existed even after the conquest. They were on every subject, from war through music to medicine.
There must have been many such documents because scribes were honored personages in the hierarchy of the Maya. They were recruited upon any showing of artistic aptitude and set to work on general treatises, but as they became more skilled and gained more knowledge, they became specialists in certain areas, producing folios in their specialty. 16th century Spanish letters to refer to a brisk trade in manuscripts, but somehow they just disappeared. Maybe into private collections, such as the one where the Dresden Codex had been found. Or lost in the vast archives of Spain, where lie myriad items yest to be discovered, buried under the unending detritus that was the product of the unimaginable bureaucracies spawned by the Spanish Empire, glutted with the riches of New Spain, the riches that eventually destroyed the empire.
So he knew that many codices had existed, even after the Spanish had committed their atrocities in the name of religion.
Now all he had to do was find them. But where?

SEEKING
Where was he to look? Where could they be? Were they still in the places where the H’men had originally hidden them, or had they been moved since then? He no longer even knew where to start. He figured it was time to talk to Chan K’in.
“I’m still trying to find the codices.”
“Mitch, men have been looking for the ‘lost’ codices for centuries, what makes you think you can find them?”
“I found the tunnels.”
“Many have found the tunnels, Mitch, but they have always been lost again, sometimes together with those who have found them.” Chan K’in spoke pointedly and with emphasis.
Asti joined them as they stood there, in what he thought of as Chan K’in’s ‘Throne Room’, the place where they had originally been brought to him.
He noticed that Asti was dressed in a Maya Huipile, a richly embroidered long white nightshirt-looking dress with a square-cut scoop neck. The Maya women wore them loose, and that way they concealed more than they revealed, but Asti had cinched her waist with a cleverly-wrought sterling silver loop belt that turned the traditional dress into a form-fitting knockout. It was time for Asti to take her turn. “Are you saying that we are to be killed?”
“I did not say that, Senorita Astreed.”
“You didn’t answer the question, Chan K’in.”
“Because I cannot.”
“Why not?
“It is not a question for me, it is a question for the Cargos.”
“What do the Cargos have to do with it?”
“They are the ruling council of the Maya. It is they who determine our future, Astreed.”
“And it seems that they will have a say in our future as well. What about you? Do they not listen to you?”
“They listen, but they also decide, Senorita”.
The conversation was beginning to worry Mitch, and it was also getting off the track. “Wait a minute here, can we get back to the question of the codices?”
“Why, Mitch? Surely you do not expect to get an answer here, do you?”
“Why not? This is as good a place as any, and a place that is better than most. Chan K’in, you are here and the Cargos are also here. Why can we not speak to them?”
“Mitch, are you loco en la cabeza? You want to ask the Council for permission to expose our greatest secrets, our ancient heritage?”
“Dammit, Chan K’in, you are all so concerned about keeping your secrets that you are willing to allow the world to look upon the Maya as a bunch of ignorant, unlettered savages.”
He Had addressed the question to Chan K’in, but it was Asti who responded. “Now wait a minute Mitch, the world is still aware of the four codices, so they would hardly think of the Maya that way.”
“Yeah? Well. maybe not, but the world hardly thinks of intellectual achievements as widespread. Rather it is thought that they were the province of a very small portion of the highest elite.”
“So what?”
“So what? So the fact is that the making and keeping of the codices was a huge industry among the Maya. It is known that the peninsula was at least as well populated as California is today, and probably had more than 16 million people, and it is up to us to show that reading and writing were as prevalent among the Maya as it is in modern day life.”
Chan K’in looked skeptical. “Why?”
“Come on, Chan K’in. Don’t you think that in all that information there might be something that present-day society could use? How about in medicine and drugs? Maybe astronomy? Your ancestors spent hundreds of years studying mathematics. Don’t you think that they might have come up with concepts we can’t even think of? Can we learn why the Maya bureaucracy collapsed if we know something of the history? Are there lessons there for us? The Maya co-existed in harmony with nature for at least a thousand years, don’t you think there is something there for us to learn?”
“Mitch, Mitch”, Chan K’in sighed. “What is the point of all this talk. You don’t know where the lost codices are. You don’t even know if they exist. You don’t have a clue where to even start looking. What do you hope to accomplish by all these guesses?
“ Look, Chan K’in, I’m sure that the codices exist. All I want is the chance to look for them, and you’re right, I don’t know where to look, I thought you might help with that.”
Chan K’in laughed. Actually more of a bark than a laugh. “Me? I know nothing of such things. I am a warrior, not a keeper of codices. For help you must look elsewhere, and I do not know who would help you.”
“Would Yum Chac help?”
Chan K’in barked again. “Yum Chac only speaks to you because of me. No, to go to Yum Chac, you would first need to go to the Council.”
“Do you think I might get it?”
The thunderclap of an enormous explosion hit and then reverbrated throughout the cavern like being inside a giant bell.
Momentary deafness was the immediate result and they looked at each other with wild eyes as hearing slowly returned impaired with tinnitus, disorienting him as he struggled to hear clearly through the ringing in his ears. “What the hell was that?” He asked, not really expecting an answer from Chan K’in or Asti, who were doubtless as clueless as he.
Chan K’in was quickest off the mark as he whirled and took off to find the source of the blast, throwing a brusque “Come with me”, as he took off. Emerging outside, he stopped for a moment to orient himself to the location of the roar that still echoed, and spied a telltale plume of black smoke which had already reached the ceiling and was quickly spreading out from the point of origin, almost looking like an Egyptian temple column.
It was across the city near one of the shrine-topped pyramids. While there were no wheeled vehicles within the cavern, the complex was criss-crossed with canals, making him think of the descriptions of ancient Tenochtitlan, now the City of Mexico, in the time of the Aztecs, before the coming of the Spanish.
Chan K’in comandeered a small yellow plastic cayuco, and they were off in a flurry of plastic paddles wielded frantically and more or less inexpertly by all three of them. Together they threw up such a splashing spray that they probably looked as if they were going much faster than they actually were, or maybe it looked like they were about to go under, but nevertheless they got the little boat going at a pretty good clip.
“Hey, Chan K’in, do you know what the hell is going on?”
“Si, Mitch. I think so, but it is better for the people if I go there myself.”
“So what is it?”
“Even in our city of Xibalba, there are those who are for joining wholeheartedly with Mexico, and leaving our ancestors behind. Understand, these are very few, but they cause trouble, even here.”
“You think they have connections with the Mexican government?”
“Ah, Senor Mitch, the curse of money is everywhere, and there are some who would sell us for a few pesos in their pocket.”
Asti looked thoughtful, even as she fiercely wielded her paddle. “Yes, there were those in Holland during the Second World War who were eager to sell out to the Nazis. My father has told me.”
“There are always those.” With a final thrust, Chan K’in drove the little canoe against a stone quay at the side of the canal, at a place that looked near to the rising pillar of smoke.
A miniature fountain startled him momentarily as it bloomed and collapsed beside him in the placid surface of the canal. It took another moment for him to process the sudden movement of air beside his left ear and then his synapses clicked in to let him know that they were being shot at!
He jumped from the boat, dropping to the quay yelling that they were under fire, but Asti and Chan K’in had already gone to ground to escape the whistling messengers. Luckily the aftermath of the explosion had created a melee of residents trying to escape the explosion and apparently unaware of the supersonic emissaries of the rifle blasts unheard in the hubub.
Using the cover of a stela set up in the middle of an intersection, he scampered across to the safety of a single-story building that he put between himself and the nearby area of the original explosion. Both Chan K’in and Asti joined him there, and he noticed that Asti seemed somewhat miffed that he had left her to fend for herself, but what did she expect him to do? And besides, she made it didn’t she?
They were about a city block away from a large, featureless, rectangular cube decorated with a colorful frieze near the roof. For the first time he was struck by the incongruity of a roof on buildings that were enclosed within this cavern where the climate was always the same. Must be something in human nature that rejected the possibility that the gods might spy on them from above.
The cube’s recessed square doorway was cast in shadow, and from within the darkness they could see the punctuation of the muzzle flashes. Amazingly, they couldn’t see any citizens that had fallen from the marksmanship, and as the crowds slowly came to the realization that they were being indiscriminately fired upon, and they herded together in clumps and tried to run from the area, each getting in the way of the other.
Weaponless, there was little that they could do, other than flit from building to building, closing in on the gunmen, but for what purpose he did not know. Nevertheless he ran closer with his companions, unwilling to be left behind, and not a little fearful of appearing to be a coward in their eyes.
Suddenly three shadows detached themselves from the blackness of the recessed doorway, too far away to be identifiable, they rushed to join one of the human herds that were stumbling along, desperate to escape from danger. Dressed no differently from the frantic flock, they melted into the shifting hundreds, and in a second they had simply vanished, indistinguishable from the others.
“Shit!” Exclaimed Chan K’in.
“Listen, Chan K’in, these guys were shooting at us. Do you think that maybe this was all planned to smoke you out so they could kill you? Are you that much of a threat? And to who?”
“Senor Mitch, you should be famous for asking questions that cannot be answered. Who am I a threat to? Did they do this to kill me? Quien sabe, Senor? Who knows? And by the way, what makes you think they were trying for me, Senor Gringo?”
They walked to the place the smoke came from. It was a fuel dump that had been stocked with 55-gallon fuel drums that were now burning furiously, with drums bursting and exploding with an incendiary ‘S-P-A-A-N-G!’ that impacted the eardrums with a palpable pressure while the roiling fireballs dazzled the eyes. He didn’t bother to ask Chan K’in what a First Millennia society was stocking fuel for, just as he didn’t think to ask him what the assassins were doing with the Kalashnikoffs that they found lying on the floor of the recessed doorway.
In spite of their obsession with tradition, it was obvious that the 21st Century had intruded with or without permission.
Morosely, aware of the futility of searcing for the vanished gunmen, we returned to the little cayuco that they had left at the quay, and as they got into the boat he noticed several silver-lead crazes that marked the impact point of the bullets that had been fired. There was little doubt now that they had been been the targets. There were too many of them to be accounted for by random firing.
His mind was cast back to the shooting at Na Bolom and the confrontation with Commandante Luis Cervantes Obregon de la Madrid, and he wondered whether there just might be some connection.
An idea had been circling in his brain concerning what had happened at Na Bolom. He was beginning to think that it was the Mexican Government or at least the Commandante who had engineered the shooting, with the plan that if they were killed just after visiting the tunnels, it would be assumed that the Maya had killed them because of what they found, and the American heat would come down upon the Maya in reprisal. There would definitely be repercussions from the killing of a CIA agent, and that is what he was assumed to be. Was such actually possible or was he just becoming paranoid?
There was a fly in the ointment. They had tried to kill, once, and had missed. There was nothing to stop them from trying again.
SHUFFLING THE DECK
“Chan K’in, how many live in this city?”
“Why do you want to know, Mitch?”
“Just trying to figure the odds until we get shot at again.”
“Less than 20,000 live here all the time.”
“And you know who the troublemakers are.”
“Most of them.”
“So...........?”
“Mitch, what is it that you think I should do?”
“Shit! You don’t need me to tell you. Round them all up!”
“...and then, my friend Mitch?”
“What do you mean?”
“Mitch, Mitch, the problem is not those who have already been bought by the Mexicans, the problem will always be that they can constantly buy more, and it will never end. We who live here have all been corrupted a little or a lot by the Ladino world. That is the enemy we must always fight.”
“You can’t just do nothing! We have been shot at!”
“So what would you have me do, start a civil war down here? All that has really happened here is that a few shots have been fired without anyone apparently being hurt, and a little gasoline has been burned up. It is all of no importance.”
Asti spoke up. “Wait a minute! Wait a minute! Your assuming th‚ƒ„…†‡ˆ‰Š‹ŒŽ‘’“”•–—˜™š›œžŸ ¡¢£¤¥¦§¨©ª«¬­®¯°±²³´µ¶·¸¹º»¼½¾¿ÀÁÂÃÄÅÆÇÈÉÊËÌÍÎÏÐÑÒÓÔÕÖ×ØÙÚÛÜÝÞßàáâãäåæçèéêëìíîïðñòóôõö÷øùúûýýÿÿÿþÿ[1]at Chan K’in is the target. What if one of your people decided to kill the gringos who had discovered their secret?”
“No, no, Astreed. My people know you are with me, and that I would not bring anyone here who would tell of the secret. Other gringos have been here and my people did not bother them.”
“So you do think that you were the target.”
“Yes.”
“But why? Why would they be after you?”
“Astreed, have you forgotten that I am Chan Kin? I am the Chief of the Maya.”
“So what will you do about it?”
“Be a little more careful?”
“But will that be enough?”
“Astreed! Enough! Would you have me hide from my people? Run away like a little girl? I am Chan K’in! Whatever dangers I must be Chan K’in, be with and among my people. Would you have my father Chan K’in Viejo look down to see his son hiding?”
He broke into the soliloquy. “Okay, I understand that you have to stay here, you can’t be seen to run when there is trouble, but what about Asti and I? We aren’t doing anything here. We certainly aren’t doing you any good, and we sure aren’t out to do you any harm, so why do we have to stay here?”
“Where do you want to go?”
“I’ve been telling you, Chan K’in, I want to find the codices. That’s my only agenda here, whether or not you want to believe it.”
Chan K’in became serious and thoughtful. “And you, Senorita Astreed, what of you?”
“I would go with Mitch to look for the codices that he wants to find.”
“And if I allow you to go, where would you look for these codices?”
“I would start looking at Izamal, the old religious site that was destroyed by De Landa, and then maybe Mayapan, the capital of the old Northern Maya Empire.”
Chan K’in roared with his now-familiar barking laugh, more derisive than humorous. “There is little now at Izamal and Mayapan is nothing but a place for tourists. Believe me, there is nothing there for you.”
“Maybe not on the surface, Chan K’in, but what about underground. Is there no city below ground, no tunnels or rivers?”
“Mitch, I know of no underground cities, no tunnels and no rivers. Maybe they were there in the past, and maybe that has all collapsed and caved in, but we have no access, and know of no way.”
“Okay, so Izamal and Mayapan are out. There are still lots of others, Copan, for instance.”
“Mitch, do you have any idea of how many cities there really are? And to be correct, we must stop calling them cities, for they were not really cities, they were places where only the Kings, their families, the court people, and the priests lived. They were only temple centers, and the people lived out and apart from them, surrounding the ceremonial inner places with farms.”
“Okay, so they were ceremonial centers, oh, I don’t know, maybe another twenty or thirty where the codices might be hidden.”
Again the sardonic cackle from Chan K’in. “Mitch, how did you come to San Cristobal?”
“My plane landed at Merida, and then I came up to San Cristobal by Maya de Oro, the long-distance bus line.”
“And when you were on your way up here, before you reached the foothills, did you see any other hills down on the lowlands?”
“Sure, there were lots of them, rising out of the jungle.”
“Mitch, there are no hills in the lowlands, the Peninsula is as flat as a Soccer field.”
“Then what did I see?”
“You saw ceremonial centers that have not yet been excavated.”
“You’ve got to be kidding, there must be hundreds of them.”
“Mitch, at one point it is estimated that there were sixteen million Maya, just on the Yucatan Peninsula, with a population density that approached modern-day California. There are almost 100,000 such ceremonial centers in all the Maya lands. Will you try to search all of them?”
... He was silent for a long time, then finally, “You got any ideas?”
“Look Mitch, if we had any ideas as to where these codices are, that is if they actually exist, don’t you think we would have gone after them ourselves?”
“Chan K’in, how many centers on the system?”
“We do not know. We only know how many centers we can get to, and it is these that we maintain, dredging and repairing as it becomes necessary. We know that there are many others, but because of collapses or other damage, we do not have access to them. He can only tell you that there are 131 actual stopping places, but there are also many resting places where we might stay overnight.”
“Chan K’in, do you think Yum Chac would help us?”
“Doesn’t matter, I can’t give you Yum Chac. He’s too old and too important to us here. I can’t let him go.”
“Look, Chan K’in, if we are going to look for the codices, I’m going to need some help here. Someone who knows something about the codices. Yum Chac would have been perfect, but if we can’t have him, who can you give us?”
“Just wait a minute here! Why should I give you anyone?”
“Just so we don’t bother you any more. That should be worth something, isn’t it?”
Chan K’in laughed sardonically. “It might be worth something at that. All I have to do is decide whether it is easier to send you on your way with one of us to help you, or, like you said before, I can always teach you to swim.”
“Not funny. Have you got someone to give us, or not?”

MAX
“Well, I don’t know. The only one I can think of is young ‘Max’ Bax. Max is not his real name, of course, that is Mateos, but He is like all the young ones, He wants an American name and one of your baseball hats.”
“And what use would He be to us?”
“He is the apprentice to Yum Chac, learning of the old ways, and He knows as much about them as anyone except Yum Chac.”
“How old is He?”
“Let me see. I think he has fifteen or sixteen years now.”
“So what’s the matter with him? There must be something the matter with him, or you would not be so anxious to let him go.”
“No, Mitch. It is not that. It would be good for his experience. He knows of the system, of course, but this would be a way for him to see the parts of it He has not seen.”
“And what does He know of the codices?”
“He knows what Yum Chac knows, and that is as little, or as much or more than anyone else knows.”
“Does He know if there are any codices?”
“You’ll have to ask him.”
“Yeah? How? Is he one of the Maya who speaks only Quiche?”
“Yes, He speaks Quiche, but then again he speaks Spanish and English too. Like all of our children, he is an avid student of the television, the music, the movies and the internet from America. There is no where that we can get away from it.”
“Now there’s a stroke of luck. Where is this little genius? We’d like to meet him.”
“I’ll take you to him and tell him of his future, ‘chasing rainbows’ I think you call it. Then I shall have to tell Yum Chac that I am stealing his young man. He will not be happy.”
Chan K’in was right. He couldn’t understand what was being said, but Yum Chac’s blood-infused face, his wild gesticulating and his voice raised to an almost supersonic level conveyed his displeasure eloquently. His answer was Chan K’in’s preternatural calmness in the face of the onslaught until Yum Chac was finally turned away by the futility of his protest.
Meanwhile, the slight young man beside him had cowered at his master’s fury, but immediately recovered, admirably, he thought, when Chan K’in turned to him and said, “You may speak English, boy. I have a mission for you.”
“Si, Jefe. With respect, what mission is that?”
“It will help with the revolution. If you are successful, it will free us from the slavery of the Mexicans.”
The boy’s eyes grew large with wonder. “Whatever it is that you wish, Jefe, that will I do.”
It was Mitch’s turn to be amazed. He had not thought that Chan K’in took his project seriously, but now he saw that he had been wrong.
Chan K’in looked serious as he spoke to the boy. “Max, this man is Mitch from los Estados Unidos, and his friend Astrid is a Hollandaise. Together they seek the lost codices of our people.”
The boy protested. “... but Jefe, no one knows where they are, they are hidden from the foreigners...” With this He glanced at Astrid and Mitch as if he did not want to speak in front of them.
Chan K’in cut off the boy with a raised hand. “I know these, boy”, he said peremptorily, “and it is I who have assigned you to work with them. If I did not hold them in trust, I would not tell you to help them.”
The boy looked ashamed, and he lowered his eyes, but he said only, “Yes, Jefe.”
“You may ask how it is that the recovery of the lost codices might help the revolution, and so that you will understand how important this thing is, I will tell you. It really began in the 1970’s when the Roman Catholic Bishop of Chiapas, Samuel Ruiz combined with Marxists to form a loose alliance that broke up when the Marxists decided that violence was the only course to follow. Nevertheless, the close links remained between the Church and the Marxists.”
The boy seemed agitated, as if he wanted to say something, but Chan K’in raised his hand, palm out, and then he went on.
“It was in 1993 that two Mexican Federal Officers were found dead in the cloud forest of Highland Chiapas, and soon after that the EZLN, the Ejercito Zapatista de Liberacion National, the Zapatista Army of National Liberation that the world knows as the Zapatistas made a Declaration of the Lacondon Jungle. It said that the Maya had no more to lose, that the Mexican government had stolen their land, killed the people, enslaved them, and denied them even their rights as Mexican Citizens, and that it was over. Soon after that, in 1994, the Zapatistas took over the capital of Chiapas, San Cristobal de Las Casas, and several nearby towns and held them for 48 hours.”
Astrid remarked, “Yes, I remember reading about it.”
Chan K’in looked annoyed at the interruption, but continued his narrative. “The heavy fighting lasted for 12 days, and the Mexicans killed 150 people. The fighting continued with the Mexican troops invading village after village, and then in 1997, the Army came into a Catholic Church in San Cristobal and killed 45 people, 21 of them women.”
“Looks like your people were getting the short end of the stick”, He said.
Chan K’in ignored him. “And so it continues, but the killing is more limited because the eyes of the world’s news organizations had been opened and were watching. Nevertheless, there are now some 70,000 Mexican troops in Chiapas for only some 700,000 Maya speakers.”
He was surprised. “What the hell do they need all those troops for?”
But Chan K’in’s tale was meant for the boy. “Sub-commandante Marcos was the early leader, and he became known all over the world, but he has gone to ground and there are lesser people in his place.”
Finally the boy spoke, “Do we have someone to take his place?”
Chan K’in looked pleased, and he said, “Not someone, boy, something. What we need is a potent symbol for the Maya, something to inspire pride in ourselves and a seperate identity for us before the world, and it just might be that the lost codices would do that.”
“But Jefe, I would not know where to start,”
“I know, boy, but I think we can get some help from Yum Chac. He will know something of the codices.”
Chan K’in went to Yum Chac, and again there was an angry exchange, but finally the old man’s shoulders fell in defeat, and he seated himself cross-legged, gesturing for them to join him.
They were sitting on the floor cross-legged, arrayed in a half-circle before him. The boy, Max, was interpreting for Yum Chac. Yum Chac spoke and the boy repeated in English, while their questions were translated into Quiche for the old man.
He asked Max to ask Yum Chac if there were any codices still in existence.
The old man cackled and wheezed before answering, and Max translated. “He says there may be hundreds, even thousands still in existence. Our codices were once as stars in the sky, they spoke with the tongues of our ancestors. They were everywhere, in each of our temples according to their needs and the studies of their students and their priests.”
“Max, ask him what was in the books.”
Max spoke, Yum Chac answered, and the boy translated. “They spoke of our beginnings and too, they tell of our end in the future. They were the record of our people’s life, and just as they told of our past, they also set down how we should live in the present. Plantings and weavings, prophecies and sorrows, the good and the bad, the listings of the gods, their ways, and what we must do to please them.”
“Max, ask him if there were codices at Izamna.”
The old man responded to Max’s question. “Many were the books at Izamna before De Landa came, but after his burnings, we took them away, far from the black-robed crows that hate us so. He burned but few, and the people wailed and raised such a cry as if he had burned them all, but we knew he would have burned the rest if he had found them, so they were spirited away to a place where the Spanish had not yet come, deeper and deeper into the Yucatan jungle.”
“Max, ask if there were more of the codices that were burned by the Spanish priests.”
“Aye. There were others burned, one or two here, and two or three there, but never in numbers. And there were others that were stolen by the Spanish, and taken back with them when they left, but again there were few. The rest were taken and hidden by us, so that they would still be here after the Spanish left, except that they never left, and are still here, maybe a little changed, but still the same, and still with their black crows.”
“Max, does He know where the codices are now?”
The old man’s brow furrowed even more than it was as He replied to the question. “No, no. They were all gathered together to protect them, and they were moved from place to place, always a step ahead of the Spanish, but where they are now I know not.”
“Can He tell us where to look for them?”
“He says you must look to where and when the Spanish were, and that will be the trace of their passage. It is there that you must look, and you will find them where the Spanish have never been.”
“...where the Spanish have never been? Where the hell is that? The Spanish were everywhere.”
Max spoke to Yum Chac for a few minutes and then turned back to them. “He says it is not true. There were many places where the Spanish never reached. Look at Macchu Picchu and Sachsuahaman.”
“They were in Peru. Surely he’s not suggesting that the codices are in Peru.”
Max spoke with Yum Chac again, and Max said, “the old man says that such happened not only in Peru, but also at Canyon Sumidero where the Spanish thought they had defeated us in 1547, twenty-four years after they had defeated the Aztecs, and then at Peten Itza at Tayasal, it was 1697 and they thought they had conquered us again, but it was not until 1850 that we were driven back to the East, to Chan Santa Cruz, and that was during the Caste Wars.”
“But surely that was the end, and after that there was peace.”
After the translation, the old man’s already-creased face, creased further in a wry smile. Max translated the reply. “He says you do not know our history. In 1869 there was another Caste War and a siege of San Cristobal de Las Casas and it did not end until 1871.”
“But surely there was nothing after that.”
There was a buzz as Max and Yum Chac conferred, and then Max translated. “Even today, there are still many places in the Maya kingdoms where a Mexican or foreigner may go, but never return. And it has not improved even today. It was not until 1960 that the Maya were allowed to walk on the sidewalks of San Cristobal, and until 1965 Maya were not allowed to stay overnight in the city. Maya are still treated as scum by the Ladino lords of the city, and many Maya still live in conditions of slavery in the coffee plantations of Soconusco.”
“But surely there are no hidden places anymore.”
Yum Chac replied through Max. “You have forgotten the Lacandon, the so-called lost remnants of the Maya. They were not ‘discovered’ by the outside world for many years, and it is believed that there are still isolated Maya colonies in Belize, Guatemala and Honduras. The codices may be there.”
“Max, ask Yum Chac if he were going to look for the codices, where would he start.”
A few minutes later, Max translated. “He says that maybe the temples of Bonampak or Izancapac, the place that you call Yaxchilan might hold some answers, but he does not really know.”
They were about to leave when Yum Chac suddenly spoke up, and Max translated. “Yum Chac says there are rumors of the old secret Maya brotherhood, the Sh’tol Brothers. It is said that they still exist and are active in worshipping in the old ways at Izancapac. They may know something of the books. Other than that I know nothing. You must seek for yourselves.” SEEKERS
Yaxchilán (yahsh-chee-LAHN) [=green stones], a historic site, in E Chiapas, Mexico, near Bonampak, deep in the Chiapas jungle on the Usumacinta R. This important site is reached with river transport or unimproved track. The site is not restored and lacks tourist facilities.
The Columbia Gazetteer of North America. 2000.
As a child on Saturday mornings, he had listened to a radio series called ‘Escape’, and one day they broadcast a program called ‘Lonergan and the Ants’ about an American plantation owner in South America unsuccessfully defending his land against an invasion of army ants.
That’s what he thought of when they approached the ruins of Yaxchilan on the Usamacinta River, the border between Mexico and Guatemala. A green hell. The eternal jungle, not the ‘rain forest’ as it is politically correct to call it, no, it is definitely jungle. Home to more mortally poisonous reptiles and insects than almost any other place on earth.
They had come by the tunnel system to Tayasal on Lake Peten Itza, modern town of Flores where they met Jesus Alejandro Canul and his ancient Volkswagen Bus, and there followed a long, dusty and mightily uncomfortable bus ride that brought us to Frontera Echevarría (also known as Corozal) on the Usumacinta River.
The miles and miles of gravel road felt as though it took nine hours rather than the actual six. Echevarría has no paved streets, no hotels, and no real restaurant.
There, they soon found Angel, the immigration officer and a Zapatista sympathizer, who took them to the river, where everyone goes to bathe the dust away. After sundown, flying insects buzzed and swarmed the tienda lights while the locals watched a tenth rate, cheapie North American flick on the only TV in town. In English no less, while one of their own translated, hilariously changing voices for the different characters. They were a little nervous about being in such a remote location, and spent the hot, humid night on a terracotta-tiled floor at the immigration office without a sheet or pillow. With only a towel beneath his head, He woke up several times during the night with deadened hips or shoulders. but upon waking, he saw that Angel had kept watch over us all night without sleeping, and he had put his pistol out in plain sight on his desk and Mitch realized they were in good hands.
Still, he finally rose at 6:30 and actually felt refreshed. Walking out into the post-dawn mist and humidity, he gazed upon the river. The Usumacinta is about a hundred untamed meters wide, with turbulent currents moving in a myriad of directions and churning whirlpools. In the early morning light, everything glowed in otherworldly shades of gray.
There they were met by the sharks of the "Cooperativa of Bethel". These guys have a monopoly on the Usamacinta River transport, and they thought they knew very well that the little group had only 2 options: go back to Flores for 5 hours, or pay them whatever they asked. That’s what they thought; all the time until the local Zapatista Chief showed up with a lazily-cradled shotgun and somehow convinced one of them of the error of his thinking.
At the river they finally boarded a long, narrow, boat, with a midships hut with a roof of corrugated fiberglass, still a cayuco, but with a large outboard motor. The only feature which differentiated this craft with one 1000 years previous is the presence of a motor. The coerced Captain muttered and swore under his breath the whole trip.
The river is wide and fast flowing. Thick vegetation lines the banks. It's clear that the high water mark is several meters above its current level. Scary. They were very much aware that they could see Guatemala on one shore and Mexico on the other.
The journey took about 45 minutes.
From the fast-moving craft they could see many of the jungle inhabitants, from wild monkeys to toucans and eagles. Seemingly unaware of the danger, Maya women were in the water up to their waists washing clothes while crocodiles, caimans and many kinds of fresh water fish swirled around and by them.
The little boat immediately advanced to the right bank of the river for a refreshment in Guatemala. No customs, immigration or officials here; it is a village of perhaps fifty people, and the only settlement for 100 miles in all directions. Yet, because of the river access, the proprietors of the small cantina offer a wide assortment of coolish beverages and a full line of cigarettes. Chickens, mangy dogs and refuse litter the immediate area of the store and an ancient village looms beyond at jungle's edge.
Back on the boat; they are riding back in time. They pass great Turkey Vultures (perched, with spread wings in full splendor), White Egrets (walking the shore in search of fish), huge green and brown iguanas (their three foot bodies posed lazily on shoreline rock outcroppings): all rather disinterested while this surprisingly greenish-clear river flows by as it has for millennia. The dense jungles of Guatemala and Mexico begin to close in.
They float downriver through one of the last great lowland true wilderness areas of Mesoamerica. The heat and the humidity lay like a wet wool blanket and the sweat dripped down from their hairline darkening the shirt collars while their backs and armpits steamed.
This is a place that accepts the burden of time and history, the recognition that it's people were once the most advanced society on the planet. The human inhabitants now live as almost forgotten reminders of their splendid past. The jungle has grown back from long-past agricultural abuses, and this living arena seems almost to revel in personal rejuvenation. It is a rare place. But even here the jungles are being cut - twice - once for the trees, and again for agriculture.
If the chimerical Mayan texts exist, they must speak of over-urbanization and resultant land use crises. Perhaps our age could learn from the Maya's initial mistakes.
They arrived at 7:30 in the misty morning, and the reluctant Captain started in toward the river's edge. They saw large buildings of cut stone peeking through the jungle as they pulled into shore. Passing the almost-hidden ruin and finally pulling into camp, they climbed a steep hill (caused by erosion at high water) and viewed the site for the first time. Stepping off the boat and under the rainforest canopy had a cooling effect. To the left and through a forest trail the ancient structures loomed.
Straight ahead, and along the obvious and anomalous airstrip (now very green with recent rains and no traffic) there is a small village with neatly arranged thatched huts, molting and shimmering in the heat. They were vacant of life.
Their "guide" was the caretaker, the only person at the site. He too is a Zapatista sympathizer, and it seemed that everyone they met was for the rebels and against the Mexican government.
The dense jungle steams and is full of animal music. Howler monkeys, saraguates, and spider monkeys inhabit the dripping forest, along with many singing birds and other dwellers. The howlers' call can be the roar of a lion or the bark of a dog. It is shocking that this little animal, less than a meter tall, is the loudest land animal on earth.
Their terrain is the canopy of the forest and the fifty foot ceiba trees. Since the site is isolated from the whir of civilization, the sound is extraordinary. It's almost frightening in volume and utterly captivating. The caretaker said they were howling for rain, which would mean more fruit and new leaves to eat, but he also said they were howling because they were trespassing.
Few go to the site because of its remoteness and He felt like an explorer stumbling across an exquisite discovery. The character of Yaxchilán is deeply peaceful, rich and, even though sleeping, alive. Beneath its humid emerald slumber lies an almost tangible pulse, evoking an important and numinous epoch. Truly, it is a Sleeping Beauty.
The ruins had only been sparsely restored, and that earlier on. Mostly the site had lain fallow, ignored by science and the world. That was mostly due to the location, but also because the Mexican and Guatemalan governments have a truly rapacious plan for an enormous hydro-electric project that will flood Yaxchilan more than 300 feet deep, denying it posterity, and wiping out what is still a major religious site to the Maya. Here, even the major monuments are mostly covered in trees.
Max had described the site, and he knew that the core area of the site was the Grand Plaza. It is composed of two major groups named by somebody with a poor sense of geography, the Grand Acropolis and the Small Acropolis. As with other groups at the site, these two were built making use of and modifying the lay of the land. Large parts of it were built over the water by sinking pilings into the riverbed. There are at least 120 structures which make up the core area, and around 30 have been partially restored.
Arriving at Yaxchilan, they clambered up the bank to the entrance gate. At the top of the bank, there is a jetty for use in the wet season. It's hard to imagine so much water. It seems as if the site can only be accessible by river or air.
Yaxchilán, means "green stones," in Maya, and the name exudes a powerful aura of primitivism and timeless sleep, but it is not the real name of the site. Rather, over the centuries, the ever-looming jungle has wrapped its arms around the site like a loving mother would a dozing child. It is a Sleeping Beauty lost in time and space.
Little reconstruction has been completed, unlike many other sites, and what lies untouched is extraordinary. Also, it is obvious that much has yet to be excavated at this hilly site. The progression of time and erosion is raw and natural; what slumbers there is magnificent.
After obligatory unloading and such, the Spanish-speaking guide, as interpreted for them by Max, treated them to a three-hour personal tour through the ruins, which include magnificent structures, catacombs, mazes, vampire bats (nervously-spoken "vampira" -- even Mitch could understand that,) spiders, scorpions, snakes, poisonous frogs, and magnificent sculptures in stone.
The first building they see has been named the labyrinth and no one now knows what it was used for, but it is the entryway into the entire complex and is guaranteed to have some connection to Xibalba. Carved into the limestone of the riverbank, it has three inviting doors.
Entering the first chamber, they found an unlit corridor. He turned on his flashlight to follow the tunnel and a sound in the ceiling alerts him to a velvety ceiling of bats that hiss and squirm as he shines the light on them. Ironically he realized that maybe he should have got a rabies vaccination! But if he was going to be vaccinated for all that might happen in that place, he’d probably look like a pincushion.
Exploring further within the labyrinth, they walked about fifteen feet down a winding path, passing four small rooms with stone beds. Cozy. Returning, he walked down a small stairway leading out the back of the building and into the main plaza and the imposing buildings that surround it. The style looked more like Palenque than Chichen Itza. Bricks, shale and stucco over wooden support made up most of the structures, but of course the stelae were carved from large blocks of limestone.
The ceremonial center starts with its huge main plaza and well preserved stelae and door lintel carvings. Looking up the hill he saw incredibly intact roofcombs of the second tier of buildings. Here, you could climb to level after level of buildings, each an architectural wonder, each with some remarkable detail worth noting. He had been told that occasionally one can find evidence of recent worship by the Lacandons, the dwindling group of Maya that still practice the ancient ways of worship.
In ancient times, between 200 and 800 ACE, Yaxchilán was a major city rivaling the magnificence of Palenque and Chichen. The building groups of Yaxchilan lie on artificial land along slender esplanades set into the bank of the river. It seems to be influenced by Palenque more than the ruins of the Peten region of Guatemala such as Tikal. The roof-combs of the buildings are wider and higher than those of Palenque. Yaxchilán served as an important Classic Maya regional capital rivaling, if not surpassing, Piedras Negras in its architectural grandeur and size and the time came when Piedras came within the political sway of Yaxchilan.
The site is quite large. There are various clusters of restored buildings, separated by long, steep, paths through the jungle. There was a constant sound of loud growling from the surrounding trees. Seems almost incredible that it comes from a small, harmless, monkey. Sounded more like something out of ‘Alien’.
They walked through the rain forest and back to the camp that had been set up in the village, as dusk began to descend on the jungle.
DIGGING THE SITE
So they were in Yaxchilan to continue in the search for the lost codices, but now that they had gotten this far, where did they go from here?
He asked Max if he had any ideas, and the response was: “This is your quest, Mitch, but I can tell you some things about Yaxchilan. It is not the usual ceremonial religious center because it was actually a seat of power and as much a trading center as a religious location.”
“I don’t really understand, what made the city so powerful?”
“Yaxchilan’s power came from its control over the riverine traffic. It was founded on an Omega-shaped diversion out from the river in a commanding position and had even constructed an engineering marvel, a 600 foot rope suspension bridge spanning the river with stone piers sunk into the riverbed.”
“If it was so rich, didn’t it have enemies?”
“Certainly, but Piedras Negras was only one of the larger Yaxchilan colonies, and there is evidence that there was warfare with King Pakal’s Palenque, but we don’t know who won.”
“What about defenses?”
“The unusual environment provided an almost perfect defense, and it became absolutely perfect when the river was at flood-tide and Yaxchilan became an island accessible only by the bridge. The bridge also provided a method of transport to the agricultural plots on the far riverbank, and, oh, by the way, in case you’re interested, it has not yet been decided whether the Omega-shaped diversion is man-made or natural, but it is likely man-made.”
He failed to get the point. “Okay, Max, okay. We’re properly impressed, but the question is where do we start looking for the codices?.”
“I understand, Mitch. The point is that we do not need to look into all the structures in Yaxchilan, we only need to find the major religious centers and look there.”
“And how do you suggest we find that?”
“We ask the Lacondones, because this is their territory, and this is still their ceremonial religious center. It is here that they believe that their god Hachak’ayum rules. It was the god Hachak’ayum who created them as the Halach Uinich, the only true people.
“Hey, wait a minute, isn’t Chan K’in the chief of the Lacandones?”
“Well, yes, but I am speaking of the Lacondones who worship in the old ways. That would not be Chan K’in. He is too busy with other things.”
“All right, then how about Yum Chac, certainly He keeps the old ways.”
“Yes, but He keeps the old ways at Xibalba, not here. We need someone who worships at Yaxchilan.”
“Do we know someone like that?”
“I have already talked to the Chan K’in about that.”
“And you spoke to him why?
“Because Chan K’in is Lacondon and he lived here.”
“Oh! And what did he say?”
“He has sent us to Kayum
“What? He sent us to the god?”
“No, No, Senor Mitch. Kayum is not the god, he is a Shaman who lives in Mensabak and conducts many of the ceremonies here. He was a close friend of Chan K’in Viejo and he is coming to help us.”

HACHAK’AYUM AND KAYUM
Kayum arrived next day. He was repulsed and Asti actually shrank from him because he had only half a face with only one eye, and the other half was a mass of scar tissue. We didn’t want to embarrass him so we asked Max if he knew what Kayum’s story was.
“As a young man, Kayum was married to a woman much older than he was, and she was also very much of a boss. So one day he killed her, because he had found a young woman who he liked much better. That is the way of husbands and wives in the Lacondon Selva for there is no such thing as divorce, and so one kills the other and is free. No one blamed him because his old wife was a very evil woman, but her family took it as an insult and wanted to take revenge.
Kayum and his new wife ran away into the forest, but where could they go? They did not wish to become Ladinos, so they had to return, and when Kayum returned, one of his old wife’s relatives shot him in the face with a shotgun. It was his fortune, or you might think it was his misfortune, to survive, and he became what you see here.”
“Couldn’t the doctors fix his face?”
“Oh, that would never be done, for his face is the will of Hachak’ayum the God. Not only that, everyone who looks at him knows that his life is a gift from Hachak’ayum the God, and gives him much respect. He has much power among the Maya.”
As had become S.O.P., Kayum and Max spoke together, and Max translated loosely for us. Kayum took us immediately to the highest of the buildings surrounding the plaza, the one that was three stories tall and surmounted by the largest comb. The interior was more or less intact, and had obviously been somewhat maintained and swept clean of the falling detritus that was the fate of buildings that had lain fallow for over 1200 years.
As he was standing there within the confines of the temple, it suddenly came upon him that he was singularly ill-equipped for the task he had set myself. He was no University-trained Archeologist, all he had was a lot of books on the subject, and a lot of ideas. That may have been partly to the good because he was not narrowly focused and was more able to tie together information from several disciplines. But he had no practical experience. To be blunt about it, he had never actually seen a codex, only pictures. He couldn’t read the glyphs, and none of the Lacandones could read them either.
How the hell would he even recognize a codex? He really didn’t expect them to be spread out on a wall with a translation plaque underneath. No, he was expecting them to have been preserved for hiding. Probably they would be in a sealed ceramic pot. All he would be able to see would be an old pot, with no way to see what was inside.
Let’s say that he actually found an old pot that he thought might contain a codex, what would he do? The scientific thing to do would be to leave it right there in situ until it had been evaluated, photographed, drawn and measured by a professional. Only then could it be moved. To do anything else would be to destroy any possibility of establishing provenance. Without proof of authenticity it wouldn’t matter what was found because it would be hounded by cries of ‘fake’.
Even if it was not found in situ, but rather loose, so what? It would still be a sealed pot. Could he open it? Of course not, and for the same reasons. Would he smash it? Again, that would be unthinkable.
Okay, even if the codex was lying around, out of the already-opened pot, he still could not read it to check its authenticity, and nobody else he knew could do that either. Shit! He’d have to send it to a University, either in Mexico City, or maybe up in the States. Then again, he couldn’t even send it out of Mexico without having INAH and their customs people all over me. Even if word got out of the mere possibility of the discovery, INAH, their indigenous artifacts people would be in here like a shot to take charge of it.
How come Indiana Jones never had this kind of trouble?
Good God! He’d devoted a big chunk of my life to this search, and never even thought of the practicalities!
Suddenly, he snapped back into his senses. He was putting the cart before the horse. The first thing he needed to do was to find something that even just might be a codex, and then he could figure out what he had to do with it. So, now that we were in Yaxchilan, it was time to start actually looking.
Max was talking to Kayum when suddenly his face brightened and he turned to us. “Senor Mitch, Kayum says He knows of what you seek. He had first seen them many years ago.”
“Really? Ask him what they looked like? How many there were? Did he actually see the codices themselves? How is it that they have lasted all these years? What are they about? Are there more in other places? Where are they? Max, ask him! Ask him!”
“Una momento Senor! Uno pregunta solamente!” Exasperated, Max asked for a minute to even ask one question. When he had finally subsided, he turned to Kayum and spoke for several minutes, then he turned back to me to say, “Kayum says that all your questions will be answered if you will only be patient. He asks that we come with him and he will take us to the place where what you seek may be found.”
Kayum turned to walk toward the doorway, and they followed him as, to Mitch’s surprise, he started out of the rear of the building.
“Hey! Max, ask him where he’s going?”
Max spoke to Kayum for a minute and then said, “He wants to know why.”
“Why? I want to know where he’s going. Aren’t the codices in the temple?”
Max again translated to Kayum, speaking in the glottal click-language that was the language of Quiche Maya. Kayum responded and Max translated to Asti and he. “Kayum says that the picture-writings are not in the temple because this is where we gather to welcome the coming of the God Hachak’ayum each morning and when we welcome the changing of the seasons. The codices are not kept here, but they are rather in the place that was made by the First People.”
He didn’t understand. “The First People? Who are they?’
Again Max translated for Kayum. “The True People of The Land of The Deer.”
“Okay. You’re getting a little ahead of me here, and I’m losing the trend of the conversation. What is the Land of The Deer?” “I don’t need to ask Kayum about that one. Land of The Deer is the true name of what you call the Yucatan.”
“What are you talking about, Max. I thought that Yucatan was a Maya name.”
“Not quite. You see, when the Spanish first landed at Cape Cotoch, they asked the Indians who met them the name of this place, and the one asked replied ‘C’iuthan’, which only meant ‘I do not understand’, but the Spanish took that as the name of our land and it has been called Yucatan ever since.”
“Okay, so this is The Land of The Deer, but who are The First People?”
“Senor Mitch, The First People were the people who were here before the Maya came. You have called them ‘The Rubber People’.”
“The Olmecs? The Olmecs were in Yaxchilan before the Maya?”
“The First People built this place, but it was not called Yaxchilan, or even Izancapac, that is what we Maya called it, but what the First People called it has been long forgotten.”
“So what happened to the Olmecs?”
“Yaxchilan was the place of the last battle. It was here that the Maya finally conquered the First People and this place became Izancapac.”
“And the Maya? Where did the Maya come from?”
“The Maya are said to be the people who came before the Aztecs, from Teotihuacan, which is also not its true name, and only means ‘Place of the Gods’, because by the time the Aztecs came upon it, all of our people were already gone, and there was no one to tell the Aztecs who had built that wondrous place.”
“So no one knows of the founders of Teotihuacan, or what happened to them?”
“Senor Mitch, there are stories, but they are only stories. It is said that The First People were the first people of all, even of the builders of Teotihuacan.”
“So the Olmecs were the people of Yucatan, and some of them went to build Teotihuacan, while others built Yaxchilan, and then the people of Teotihucan came to fight the people of Yaxchilan, when all the time they were the same people.”
“Why do you find that strange? Does not brother fight brother for land and riches all over the earth?”THE PLACE OF THE FIRST PEOPLE
Kayum led them to a collapsed temple in the center of the plaza that was the remnants of a pagoda-like structure that looked like the pagoda-like Palenque Temple of the Inscriptions, and had been only the size of a standard tennis court. To him it looked like it might have been a small chapel.
They entered the chapel to find a large, bare floor area with an carven inset area. Without hesitation, Kayum went to one side of the inset section, knelt down with his back to them and did something that resulted in a short grinding noise. Then he motioned the three of them to join him on one side of the enclosure and it was only then that they noticed that there was a small gap alongside the insert, and upon putting their fingers into the gap they realized that there was a lip which allowed them a grip on what now seemed to be a slab.
They all heaved and grunted, and were surprised by the ease with which the cleverly counterbalanced block rose from its socket with a sigh and a grating feel, releasing a blast of humid, fetid air. A cut-block pitch-black staircase was what was under the slab, and they took out their flashlights to see how far it descended into the earth.
Kayum had already jumped down and took a long rush torch from off the weeping fieldstone walls and scraped a sulphur match along the wall to apply to the head of the torch and bring it to blazing, smoking light. He preceeded them down the stairs which descended in angled flights down and down so that they had been plunging down for at least half an hour and the moisture on the walls increased, the humidity became oppressive and there were even small puddles on some of the stone treads.
He soon realized that they were going down below the riverbed until they reached a large bare antechamber and then went through a door until they found that they had come out onto a landing stage. It was another one of the tunnels, but this was a tunnel such as he had never seen.
The floor was inches deep in dust and dirt, and the water was stagnant and putrid. There had obviously been no maintenance done for at least decades, and it was also clear that no one had walked this space for decades. The remains of a single cayuco lay half submerged in the still water.
It came to him in a flash. If The First People had built Yaxchilan, then they had also built the tunnels. It wasn’t the Maya that had engineered the system, it was the Olmecs, the ones they call The First People, they were the ones that had built the tunnels and tied together the system, who knew how long ago.
He turned to Max to ask if he was aware of this tunnel. He replied that he knew nothing of it, and was sure that no one in the city of Xibalba knew of this, and from the stillness of the water and the lack of wind, it must be that this was a collapsed tunnel that was no longer a part of the system, and probably hadn’t been for millenia. He hoped there were no codices down here because he knew the dampness would long ago have rotted them out.
“Max, please ask Kayum how long ago He saw the codices.”
Max translated back for me that Kayum had last seen the codices maybe thirty years before, and he was filled with a feeling of dread. Surely no one would have thought to preserve fragile wooden books down here.
Kayum took them to the very end of the landing stage where they were treated to another example of ancient engineering in the form of another counterbalanced block. It was so cleverly concealed that it was almost impossible to discern its existence in the rough rock wall into which it had been built. It lifted easily to reveal a door in the wall and another flight of stairs, but this time narrow and ascending.
Again they climbed flight after flight of angled stairs until they were past the riverbed level and it became progressively drier as they rose. Suddenly the stairs just stopped at a tunnel which was buried deep in the limestone of the island. They let Kayum take the lead because it seemed that he knew where he was going.
He led them down the tunnel until they came to a large room about the size of a tandem tractor-trailer. The rear right quarter of the room had collapsed into a pile of rubble, but the rest of the room seemed intact, except for the layer of dust and small rocks that had fallen from the ceiling. There were footprints on the floor, but they were not really fresh and the dust was already drifting across them. The footprints couldn’t have been more than, oh, three to six months old, something like that. The walls were composed of incised shelving, but all the shelves were empty, as was the rest of the room, except for the collapsed section.
Kayum said that when he had been in the room before, the shelving along the walls had been full of lines of beautifully-carved rectangular jadeite boxes about the size of a two cereal boxes back-to-back. Now they were gone.
Mitch was disappointed that they were not there, but he was elated as well. He now knew for a certainty that the codices had existed, and that his search was not quite so chimerical after all.
Suddenly he heard Max yell for him. While he was glorying in what he knew, Max and Asti had been going over the rubble at the end of the room, and Max had found something that he was pointing at excitedly.
Mitch ran to where he was pointing, and there were the remnants of a box that had been crushed in the cave-in. He could now see that the green jadeite had a terra-cotta pottery lining, but now both the jadeite and the lining were smashed into shards and powder. Frantically he pawed through the debris looking for the codex that had surely been contained in the box. Soon he came upon a beautifully woven cloth that immediately reminded him of an old-fashioned dining-table runner in red and black, with Maya blue threads prominent against the background.
He forgot all about wonderful archeological questions and insights in his fever to follow his dream. Under a large flat rock that he had overturned he saw what looked like the corner of a white-painted board with pictures on it. Although the piece was no larger than a playing card, his heart almost stopped. For the next two hours, until the batteries were running down in the flashlights, Max, Asti and he went through the pile of debris, turning over and putting aside each and every little piece of rubble, searcing for the rest of the Codex that he had found. Only two other quarter-size pieces turned up.
After photographing and diagramming all the pieces of the box in situ, he gathered together all the pieces of the broken box, together with the precious three pieces of Codex and the wrapping cloth, carefully placed them in his backpack, and the four of them made their way back to the plaza.
It seemed clear that there had been a library kept in that hidden place, and that when a part of the room collapsed. crushing one of the boxes, that the room had been cleared out, the remains of the broken Codex taken, and all had been removed to another place for safekeeping. The question was, where?
There might have been another question, when? There was no point in asking because the condition of the box and the lack of serious signs of age on the breaks.
BACK TO SQUARE ONE WITH KNOSSOROV
He was able to solve his ethical and my INAH dilemmas all at one fell swoop. He sent the Codex scraps to Tulane University by Fedex and mailed the pieces of the jadeite box as well as the wrapping cloth to the Archeology Department at UNAM, the National University of Mexico at Mexico City. He also sent them copies of the photographs and diagrams he had made, and said that he was a tourist and had discovered it purely by accident.
He knew they would immediately contact UNAM, and he figured that would get him out of hot water with the Mexican Government. After all, he had no permit to do a dig in Mexico, and the Mexicans frowned on freelancers. Somehow he forgot to mention the Codex fragments.
Within a week he received a reply from Tulane, from a Tatiana Knossorov Professor of Sociology and Epigraphy at Tulane. Naturally she had a whole bunch of questions as to location, etc., and offered to come down and join them as soon as they sent the OK. Because the information and evidence was so fragmentary, she was unable to specifically place the pieces, but she had submitted them for carbon dating. She was able to postulate that what they had discovered was a portion of a cook book!
They remained at the site while they were waiting for the Tulane report which had been sent to Na Bolom in San Cristobal de Las Casas and then forwarded through the Maya network so it took a few days to reach them.
On the same day as it arrived, the boat carrying an eager and impatient Professor Tatiana Knossorov arrived. She looked young to be a full professor at a major institution, but she appeared confident, maybe even arrogant as she bullied the diminutive Maya captain in his own Quiche language.
Dressed in desert boots, Jean shorts and a faded, cut-off gray sweatshirt that hung on her like an overcoat, and sporting the slogan ‘XXXL, PROPERTY OF TULANE UNIVERSITY SPORTS DEPT.’ Her lithe tanned figure sported the long muscles of a swimmer and her walk was that of an athlete and hardly an academic. She had the softly angular quality of a young Katherine Hepburn.
She extended a hand to each of them in turn and shook theirs with a curt nod and a little bow. She turned to me, and in a faint Russian accent only said, “I presume that you are Mitch. You do not mind if I call you by your first name?”
He laughed. “Only if He am not required to call you Professor Knossorov.”
“Tatiana is fine, Mitch, and who are these two gentlemen and this lady, if you please.”
He introduced her to Asti and also to Max and Kayum, who she greeted in fluent Quiche. He also noticed that Asti reacted to Tatiana like a cat who had suddenly noticed that she was standing in a pool of water.
He laughed again. “We weren’t expecting you, Tatiana, what can we do for you?”
“I have received your Codex fragments, and it appears that you are engaged in a project that is very dear to my heart.”
“And what project might that be?” He asked.
“Why, your involvement with the Codex, of course.”
“We have no involvement, we found those pieces by accident, there can be no project, we don’t have a Mexican permit, and you know what that means.”
She laughed, a trilling, liquid laugh. “Mitch, let us not play with each other,” (don’t think he didn’t pick up on the nuance, but...) “We are not on opposite sides, you may have noticed that I did not have time to obtain a permit either.”
“I’m sorry, Tatiana, but that doesn’t mean I can trust you, not that I have any reason not to trust you, it just isn’t in issue because we are only tourists.”
This time she threw her head back and her laugh was full-throated. “Mitch, you think I have worked in the Yucatan with the Maya all this time without skirting INAH from time to time? I see that you have connections with the Maya, can I give you Chan K’in as a reference?”
“You know Chan K’in?”
“Not only do I know Chan K’in, but I have worked with Yum Chac to read inscriptions for them. They cannot read them, but I can, and they often want translations in their attempt to understand their own history. By the way, I think that I recognize Max there, even though I have only seen him once or twice. He is Yum Chac’s assistant, is He not?”
He turned to Max. “What about it Max? Do you recognize her?”
Max looked at her closely, mulled it over for a moment, and then said, “I am not sure, Mitch. I am usually occupied with my work, but I think that I have seen her before in connection with the work... Yes, now that I look at here, she has helped us with several of the sites.”
“Okay, lady, what is it that you want here?”
“Mitch, you have found the first new pieces of Codex that have been found for decades, so it is clear that you have knowledge and possibly help that others do not have. I want to join this little expedition of yours. I have much to contribute. I have book learning, but also much practical experience in the field.”
There was something in what she said. She was there, and she supplied all that he lacked, the academic credentials, the archeological background and field experience, the ability to translate the glyphs, and an existing connection to Chan K’in! By God, she was better qualified to do this job than he was!
he grinned. “Tatiana, you are the answer to my prayers, let me bring you up to date...” He tried to ignore the black looks that Asti was now not only shooting at Tatiana, but at Mitch as well.
They spent the next two hours, some of cross-legged on the ground and the rest perched on rocks as they explained and examined what they had done so far.
There was some arguing back and forth as to the next step, with Tatiana proposing that since they were so close to Piedras Negras, also on the Usamacinta, the site could be reached easily from Yaxchilan by the river.
Max said that “Piedras Negras is a waste of time, we should keep to the sites on the system, so we can cover more sites this way.”
“But Max,” said Tatiana, “Piedras Negras is so close, and it was controlled from Yaxchilan, so maybe the codices were taken there for safekeeping when they were removed from here.”
“Professor Knossorov, with respect, Kayum says that the place you call Piedras Negras, meaning Black Stones, is a deserted ruin, and that no one ever goes there. Certainly it is not a place where the Maya gather to greet the God Hachak’ayum. Why would the codices be there?”
Tatiana was pensive. “We are calling Piedras Negras by the Spanish name, but I am intrigued by the original Maya name, Yokib, meaning Great Entrance. While the site has been little explored, it has always been known that it is a major location and once wielded great power in the Yaxchilan confederation. There has always been a great deal of interest in it, and it is certainly on the list for a major dig. We know that the Maya did not give names freely and for no reason. If they called it Yokib, then there was a reason for it.”
“That doesn’t mean that the codices are there.”
“No argument there. The codices may not be there, but the closeness and the connection to Yaxchilan argues that the codices might have been moved there for safety.”
“It is but a waste of time!”
“But it is so close that it would be foolish not to at least take a look.”
The argument was becoming circular, so Mitch broke the tie. “All right Tatiana, you win. You get one day in Piedras and then we move on. Is that agreed?”
Tatiana smiled as if she had just eaten a delicious desert. “Is a deal, Mitch.”
Piedras Negras was a very much different proposition than Yaxchilan. Yaxchilan had been sparsely excavated, while Piedras Negras was still virtually pristine, meaning totally overgrown by jungle growth to the point where the man-made features were almost invisible. If Kayum had not been with them to point it out, they just would have ridden the river right by it and never seen the site.
They mounted the high riverbank with difficulty, pulling each other up and then hacking their way inland through the green tangle so intricate it was like facing a plate of green spaghetti. He began to see why a good, sharp machete was de rigeur for the average Maya.
As they became more accustomed to the lines and shadows of the jungle, it became easier to pick out the unnaturally straight lines of the structures. Kayum seemed to be somewhat familiar with the layout of the place and led them to a path that was already well on its way to being overgrown, but at least the going was easier. It was clear that there had been little traffic through here for decades.
“Max, ask Kayum how he knows where he is going.”
Max spoke to Kayum, and the translated, “How do you know where to go in the place where you have lived for many years?”
That was enough of an answer for me. “Max, ask Kayum where He is taking us.”
Max took another couple of slashes with his machete and talked to Kayum through the grunts. He translated, “He says He is taking us to the only place where the folios could have been moved recently.”
So there might be hope after all, and Tatiana might be right, but where the hell was Kayum taking them?
He had no idea where they might be in the midst of the great ceremonial complex, but they followed Kayum doggedly until he came to an enormous building that seemed to be in a step pyramid style with a temple on the top. The difference was that this pyramid’s steps did not begin until what looked like about the third floor, although it was hard to tell because of the jungle growth that covered the entire structure.
As they came closer he could see the tall, darkened trapezoidal shapes that marched entirely along the base of the pyramid, and he realized that they were a series of large doors that entirely pierced into the interior of that giant building. Kayum went straight (or as straight as He could considering the heavy growth that was everywhere) toward one of the central doors that seemed a little less grown over than the others. Kayum didn’t bother to wait for Max, but chopped his way through the vines with his own machete.
They walked into the dust on the block floors of the interior and some light filtered through the rampant vegetation to reveal what looked like nothing so much as a vast round black circle that, as his eyes became adjusted to the light, resolved into a hole in the ground.
Turning on their flashlights they closed in on the hole and soon saw that it contained a large spiral staircase that descended into the earth.
It couldn’t be!
They all looked at each other in astonishment, except for Kayum, who was already walking down the stairs, carrying one of the rush torches that had been lying in a pile on the stairs. Maybe no one had been there in eons, but the ones who had been there had known to equip the place. He did notice that the thick dust and debris on the stairs had not been disturbed, and there were definitely no footprints.
They followed him down into the blackness, above us, tree roots grew down through the ceiling and combined with stone to create strange stalactities. As they descended, they came upon a break in the stairs, a twenty foot chasm that separated the stairs, but had been bridged by one of those huge ladders constructed of branches and liana vines. It looked dried out, but Kayum tested it gingerly and it seemed sturdy enough, so they backed down it, one at a time.
He secretly prayed that it would hold together because otherwise they might be stuck below for good. Each creak of the stretching lianas made his heart play against his ribs like a xylophone as it beat a tattoo.
In the end the steps led down to what appeared to be a small round island about the size of two large houses, situated in the middle of what looked like a man-made lake. As they flashed their lights around, they found that they were in the middle of a huge cavern, and they could see entrances completely around the surrounding cavern. As he took in the fiberglass cayucos with shipped sails that lay against the island, He realized that they had stumbled upon a large transit terminal, larger than any they had been in before.
“Max,” He yelled. “What is this? Is it familiar to you?”
He looked perplexed. “No, Mitch. This is new to me. He am aware of the entire system that is known to us, but this looks like a terminal for an entirely different system, one that is unknown to us.”
“Well somebody knows about it. There are transit boats here, and look at that one.” He pointed to an unusually large cayuco that looked as if it might hold, maybe thirty people. It was the largest one he had ever seen, and boasted two masts instead of only the usual one.
Tatiana looked almost worshipful. “Yokib!” She breathed. “The Great Entrance. That’s what it means. It is a terminal for another system.”
“Max, ask Kayum if He knows where this system goes.”
Max spoke to Kayum and then turned back to them. “South, East and West, but it does not go to the North.”
“Max, Ask him if He thinks we can take it to Tayasal.”
“He says it does not go to Tayasal. This is the main terminal for the South, and Tayasal is the main terminal for the North.”
“Does He think we should take it?”
“Only if you know where you want to go, and if it is to the South. Here too there are many collapsed places and He does not know where they all are.”
There didn’t seem to be much point in asking for a voice vote from the rest of the party, but it was interesting that they had found stations at Yaxchilan and Piedras Negras, even if they were no longer connected because of a collapse.
Tatiana said, “This is enough to chew on for a while. A thing such as this will need much time and investigation...”
And Max said, “Just remember that such investigation would require the agreement of the Maya of the South, or investigation might stop in a sudden and violent way,”
“Yes, I know that. After all, Chan K’in has told me about the Northern system, with the understanding that it is to be kept secret in exchange for my having complete access to monuments and glyphs. If He could trust me with that, then there should be no question about this new system.”
He then asked, “Anybody got any ideas as to where we should go next to find the codices?”

WHERE TO FROM HERE?
“Okay, now what?”
It was Tatiana who answered. “Well, we’re still looking for the codices, right?”
“Right, but I don’t know where to look next.”
“Okay, Mitch, we are pretty sure that the codices were in Yaxchilan until recently. Why would they have brought them here?”
Max said, “Because it is an isolated location, and it is also a religious place, a place where the gods are.”
“Okay, Max, let’s say you’re right. Why would they move them?”
“Because it was no longer safe, Senor Mitch. They’d already lost one of the boxes in the collapse, and either they took it as a sign, or they couldn’t trust a new location.”
“So where would they have taken them?”
“Some place safe, and some place that was isolated.”
“Got any idea where that might be?”
It was Max who spoke. “Could they have been taken somewhere, such as the last refuge of the Maya?”
He said, “You mean Tayasal?”
“It was Tatiana who broke in. “Tayasal? You mean Flores? No, not isolated enough. Too many tourists. Too many people.”
“Really?” He said. “The tunnel is there, and the tourists haven’t found that.”
“It would be different with the codices. Too many would come. It would be seen. It would be remarked upon.” It was Max who poured cold water on the idea.
Tatiana was looking pensive, and she was still looking down at the ground, as she said, “Tayasal wasn’t the last refuge of the Maya”, she said quietly.
Max was taken aback. “What do you mean?”
“I mean it was not the last refuge of the Maya. That was Lamanai.”
“Lamanai?” He asked. “I’ve never heard of it.”
Tatiana was in her element. “It is in Belize, and Lamanai, which means ‘Submerged Crocodile’ was always the name.”
“So what?” He asked. “There was no Belize at the time of the Maya. No Mexico, no Honduras, no El Salvador. It was all under the religious umbrella of Guatemala, and the Maya were more or less slaves to the Spanish.”
“You seem to have the same misconceptions as most people about the Maya.”
“How so?”
“There is all this talk about a Maya Empire. There never was a Maya Empire as such. The Maya were comprised of many City-States, much more similar to the Greek model than anything else. Yes, there were Confederations, like the one headed by Mayapan. There were also vassal cities. Like Piedras Negras was a vassal city of Yaxchilan.”
“Did they fight with each other?”
“They were human, weren’t they? The Maya were as warlike as anyone else, maybe even more so. There are many warrior-chiefs in the history of the Maya, and many wars.”
“So were there other powerful cities nearby that we might take a look at?”
“Just as Yaxchilan was made rich and powerful by the trade on the Usumacinta, the city of Dos Pilas was less that 80 miles from Yaxchilan, and it was made rich and powerful by the trade on the Pasion River, and Se[1][1][1]
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“While it may be basically correct, that the Spanish conquered all of Mexico, including the Yucatan, there were still pockets of independence, pockets of resistance, and even uprisings. Lamanai was out of the way, and it wasn’t until 1597 that the Spanish got to Lamanai, and even then it wasn’t a full-blown military occupation, like it was in other places. No, Lamanai had only the Spanish Religious, but by 1950, the two churches had been burned, and the Spanish expelled.”
“But the Spanish came back, didn’t they?”
“They never did. Lamanai lasted for almost 3000 years. Its first signs of occupation were in 1500 BCE, and it remained occupied until the 1800s. There are still Maya in the area, and the old ceremonial site is still a place of the gods, but only the Maya go there. It would be a fine place to hide the codices.”
“Wait a minute Tatiana,” He said. “Before we go rushing off to Lamanai all the way across the Peninsula, what about this Dos Pilas? Since it is right here, is there anything of interest we should be looking at there?”
“Okay, Mitch. Dos Pilas means Two Springs in Spanish. The first thing you should know is that an American university has built a large research center called The Vanderbilt University Petexbatun Regional Archeological Project.”
“And this should concern us how?”
“Mitch, you should be concerned with the very real npossibility that all that there is to be discovered, has already been discovered.”
“Tell me, Tatiana, do you really believe that?”
She laughed. “Well, theirs is a major effort.”
He said, “They look with a shotgun, and I would use a target rifle. I seek only one thing.”
She laughed again. “Well, we are close enough so it isn’t a major undertaking to go downriver. Besides, Dos Pilas has a secret, but they may already be aware of it.”
“And what is this secret?”
“The limestone underneath the Forest of Petexbatun is honeycombed with sacred caves. It was the caves that they believed to be the entrance to the Xibalba of the gods.”
It was Max who asked, “honeycombed? What does that mean?”
“It is known that Dos Pilas has at least 22 caves with underground passages extending more than 7 miles. A mile long cave passes directly under the El Duende pyramid, and it includes an underground lake, the largest body of water in the area.
The Bat Palace, the political center of the site, covered the entrance to a cave that connected to the El Duende pyramid cave. The caves were considered so important that the pyramids were actually a representation of a mountain, and the passage leading down into the tomb was a replica of a cave.
“Have the University people discovered the caves?”
“Of course. How else would I know about them?”
“Then why look?”
“Only the entrance to the caves has been examined. They have yet to look at the interior.”
“Then how do you know about the rest of the caves?”
“A little birdie told me. And I too have friends among the Maya who have told me the legends.”
“Do you think that the codices have been moved to Dos Pilas?” “To be truthful, no, but just because there were codices at Yaxchilan, does not mean that there can’t also be codices at Dos Pilas. Maybe even older codices, because Dos Pilas and Aguateca were overthrown by the end of the Eighth Century.”
“That BC or AD?”
“Archeologists call it ACE.”
“So all that happened long before the Spanish came.”
“Sure, and that was about the time that Yaxchilan was active as well.
“So you think it’s worth going?”
“Sure. Why not, we’re close enough.”
“Okay then, let’s go.”DOS PILAS, ANYONE?
If he’d known what was entailed to get to Tatiana’s site, he would have said they should have taken a pass. By the time they had spent hours running the rapids of the Usamacinta and then more hours fighting their way up the Pasion River to land at Dos Pilas, they were soaked with spray and sweat, and exhausted from fending off rocks with their paddles.
They thankfully stepped onto the dock that the Vanderbilt students had built, and there, waiting for them with a sardonic smile on his face stood Commandante Luis Cervantes Obregon de la Madrid.
Now he was dressed in cami’s, complete with forage cap and black paratrooper jump boots. His black Nomex web belt supported a huge chased-silver 1911 Colt .45 with ivory grips, and several cartridge clips. The effect was somewhat spoiled by the fact that the boots were spit-shined, and the cami’s sported knife-edge creases.
“Ah! It is the Senor C.I.A. and his beautiful blond companion.” He moved forward, his arms outstretched in a welcoming gesture. “And who are your companions? I have not yet had the honor of making their acquaintance. Are these more of the C.I.A.?”
“No, Commandante, none of us are C.I.A., whether you believe it or not. Please allow me to introduce Senorita Doctora Tatiana Knossorov of Tulane University, and Senor Max, a resident of Ocosingo, and this is our friend Kayum from the villages of the Selva Lacondona. Senores y Senoritas, may I have the honor to present the Commandante Luis Cervantes Obregon de la Madrid, who belongs in San Cristobal.”
With a slight bow, the Commandante said, “No, Senores y Senoritas, it is I who have the honor to make your acquaintance. But as far as belonging in San Cristobal, I belong where my Republic tells me, and right now, I belong here.”
He didn’t like the sound of that. “You have business in Dos Pilas, Commandante?”
“Yes, Senor C.I.A., but first I would know of what the Senorita is a Doctora of?”
Tatiana threw her shoulders back and placed her hands on her hips. “Sociologia y Epigraphia,” she replied.
“Ah, so you read the old tongue of the Maya, perhaps?”
“Yes, I have that honor”, said Tatiana.
“So, Senor C.I.A., you have brought me a group of much interest. You and your companion of the American C.I.A. A Russian Professor of the old tongues. An Ocosingo rebel, and a primitif from the jungle. Surely these are strange to be together.”
“Oh, not so strange, Commandante. It just happens that we all came down on the same boat together, but I assure you that we are only acquaintances and travelling companions. The Senorita Asti and I are simple tourists. The Professor is interested in what her Vanderbilt colleagues are uncovering here in Dos Pilas. Max is only a student of history, and Kayum comes to pay homage to his ancestors. There is no great mystery here for you to be concerned with.”
The Commandante drew himself up to his full height, about 5”5”, and suddenly went from affable to aggressive. “With respect, Senor C.I.A., I do not need you to tell me what it is that I should be concerned with, or what it is that I should not be concerned with.”
“Sorry, Commandante, if that was the impression that you obtained from my statement, then, of course I apologize. Such was not my intention.”
The Commandante relaxed somewhat, then continued. “Your apology is accepted, Senor. It is true that I have some business here. I have been appointed by INAH to supervise several of our archeological sites to make sure that all finds are reported and recorded. It is also my assignment that none of our heritage shall be removed from the Republic.”
The Commandante looked directly at Tatiana. “Do you have plans to take anything from Mexico, Senorita Profesora?”
Fire blazed from Tatiana’s eyes. “Look, Commandante whatever-your-name-is, I do not know you and you do not know me! You have no right to accuse me! I am known in Mexico City, and respected at UNAM and in the highest offices of INAH, and if you have any questions about who I am and what is my competence, I refer you to your masters in ‘day-effay’, and I will hear no more of your macho bullshit!”
He looked over at Mitch, as if to say, this should be only between men, who understand the differences among women. “Ah, this one has fire, Senor C.I.A. We of Mexico love women of fire. Yo soy Mexicano!”
Tatiana was almost out of control, and in fury she snarled, “Chingada su madre, Jefe!”
Mitch was embarrassed and suddenly afraid. She had uttered the worst epithet possible to a Mexican man. The Commandante might be a caricature, but He was obviously not without influence. Mitch made as if to ‘shush’ her, but she brushed him away and stood defiant, ready for anything that might happen.
The Commandante merely made a wry smile and turned again toward Mitch, and with a small bow, said, “Ah, Senor, I see no reason to keep you from your fascination with Dos Pilas. You and your,...ah... traveling companions may proceed without hindrance, and may I wish you much luck with your curiosity. I will ask that you keep in mind that you have no permit to disturb things of scientific interest to Mexico. I advise you that if you do make some significant discovery, that you must apply to INAH in Mexico City for a permit that specifies what you may do, and what you may not do.”
It was Tatiana who replied. “Senor Commandante, I have worked in Mexico for many years and there has never been a question. Max and Kayum are native to this region and are hardly likely to remove artifacts. Now, I admit that I know less of Senor Mitch and Senorita Astrid, but you have my word that we will keep a close eye on them.”
The Commandante waggled a finger at them. “There is much that has been taken or sent from my country, and just because you are a Profesora, and your friends los Indios, does not mean that you are above the suspicion.”
The group continued on into the Vanderbilt compound and there, Tatiana paid her respects and established her credentials with the Archeological project, solely to provide a foundation for looking around the site. The staff waxed rhapsodic about the new Vanderbilt site at Cancuen, a site that had clarified the never-ending wars involving Calakmul, Tikal, Cancuen, Tamarindito, Dos Pilas, Piedras Negras and Ceibal.
Dos Pilas now appeared to be a fairly minor site, with most of the laurels going to Cancuen, the Place of the Serpents, but the major protagonists in the area had now been established to be Tikal and Calakmul. Tatiana’s registration and discussion was all so that if the Commandante chose to follow up, no suspicion would be aroused.
Though Dos Pilas was more open than Yaxchilan or Piedras Negras, it still had the typical jungle canopy, and in ten years only a very small portion of the extensive location had been cleared, and further exploration had been put on hold while Cancuen had taken over as the new ‘glory hole.’
Even though overgrown, Dos Pilas was in remarkably good condition. Unlike the usual mud and concrete construction, Dos Pilas was more durably constructed of stuccoed limestone. That may have been a little overkill in that the walled city was founded in 645 but was hurriedly abandoned for the more secure nearby City of Aguateca when Dos Pilas was under seige by the City of Tamarindito in 761.
Even in its shrunken form, where it had been reduced to a more easily defendable fortress surrounded by walls, the city was still impressive once one got past the cloaking vegetation. Many of the ceremonial sites had been dismantled to get the building materials for the walls.
They looked around to get their bearings, and realized that they had no idea where to start looking for the sacred caverns.
“Well, how about where the Vanderbilt people entered the caverns?” Asked Mitch.
Tatiana responded with, “I don’t think so. Their entrance was outside the initial city site, even before it was reduced in size. They must have had an entrance within their walled city, they would not have abandoned their gods. There must be an entrance here, and they would have walled it off from outside access. If there are codices here, they will be underneath the inner city.”
But it was Max who finally revealed that he was quite knowledgeable about the area. “Why wouldn’t they have removed them up to Aguateca, or even their final defensive position, Punta de Chimino out in Lake Petexbatun?”
Tatiana was surprised, but ready with a comeback. “They were under seige, and they were forced to move from place to place, they would not have had time to prepare a proper dwelling for the sacred folios.”
“So you think that they would have just abandoned them to the enemies? That doesn’t seem right.”
“Oh, I don’t know about that,” said Tatiana. It is not as if they were abandoning them to savages who would destroy them. The attackers would venerate the codices just as the people of Dos Pilas did.”
“But they would have taken them away from the people of Dos Pilas, and might even have carried them away.”
“Yes, but I am not saying that the people of Dos Pilas would have left the codices out for the attackers to take, certainly they would have concealed them, so it is up to us to find them.”
“What makes you think we can find them if the attackers from Tamarindito couldn’t.”
“I’m betting that the attackers might not have known of the sacred caves, and if they didn’t, they would not have looked for, or found the codices...”
“If they even exist.”
“Yes, if they even exist.”
THE SACRED PLACE
Tatiana knew right where to look. She’d been told of the caverns beneath the location, and the legend was that the entrance was in the Bat Palace. Even so it might have been difficult to find if it were not for the scrawny, starving, wandering dog came upon an opening barely a foot by a foot with a breeze blowing out of it.
It was concealed beneath a stele that looked out of place where it was. Maybe when the palace had been filled with statuary and such, it would have been hard to see that the stele was out of place, but when there was nothing else, it clearly did not belong there.
It swung open in a similar fashion to the door at Piedras Negras.
From a small opening at the top, a long, spiral staircase had been carved into a 30’ limestone vertical shaft leading down to a dazzling narrow, oval, 50’ long diagonal tunnel, paved with large, ridged flagstones that facilitated walking, leading down to an open area with a jewel-like 7-gallon exquisitely-carved greenstone basin for collecting water. Everything except the basin was carefully plastered in a still-brilliant white, which made the basin the center of attention.
An underground spring supplied water that fell into the basin from a small flat opening in the tunnel’s side, creating an artificial waterfall with a trilling sound that filled the space. The whole creation reproduced a water-bearing cave on a miniature scale, and allowed the residents of the site to center their community over a feature with mythic and sacred qualities.
At the back and side of the basin were numerous seemingly random holes that at the time of ceremonies were filled with animal fat and set alight to mimic the flickering stars above. Dazzling and amazing to a primitive, and almost as impressive to anybody else, even if they knew the mechanics.
The Maya had religious sites, such as the presentation cave at Dos Pilas, that were attractions for pilgrimages from other cities. The Maya had a flourishing tourist trade much like that of medieval Europe, where they too visited sacred places and relics. Even today, the Maya continue their ages-old custom of paying homage with holy journeys to the sites.
Added to the attraction for the Maya was their ever-present fascination for the Underworld.

THE UNDERWORLD
Like every other profession, Archeology has stars. For most of its short history, ‘dirt’ archeology was king. Recently, the ‘hot button’ area of exploration in archeology has been underwater, with the high tech robot submarines and unknown environments; then it was ‘remote sensing’, the discovery of ancient locations by satellite technology; but the rising star in the discipline, especially in Central and South America, is speleology, known more familiarly as ‘caving’. There are good reasons why underground archeology has taken so long to become acceptable. Archeology is generally thought of as a relatively sedentary pursuit, with the digging and the heavy lifting provided by students, volunteers, or cheap local labor. Until now, archeological spelunking had been confined to quick in-and-out forays and exclamations of surprised delight at the findings.
Caves were originally considered as middens, ancient garbage dumps, where artifacts that were thrown out or accidentally broken were allowed to build up.
As time passed, there was an increase in accidental discoveries that indicated there was more to be seen under the earth than had been thought. It soon became clear that the caverns were at least ossuaries whose scattered bones and skeletons contained answers to questions that had long troubled sociologists.
One of the mysteries was posed when it was discovered that the Mexican pyramids had the tombs of the kings buried deep inside them, and it had been theorized that the pyramids were only imitations of caves for the burial chambers.
Even so, the academics were reluctant to move from the light into the darkness of the underworld.
But move they would have to. They would actually have to live in the underworld of the caverns. In order to thoroughly explore the extensive caverns, they would have to forsake the light and move down into the caves themselves to set up a base camp from which to extend operations. Then maybe a Camp 2 and a Camp 3.
Setting up a serious camp underground is a massive effort but more than worth it to avoid the trek in from the nearest town for even the smallest piece of equipment, and there was lots of that. There are the simple filter masks to avoid Histoplasmosis, then the oxygen masks, regulators, computers, and tanks with hardbacks for the places where poisonous gases such as carbon dioxide had built up for centuries. Wet suits and dry suits. Hard hats with built-in lights. Auxiliary lanterns. Flashlights. GPS locaters. A generator for recharging and camp lighting. Emergency lanterns. First Aid kits. Potable water. Endless amounts of rope mounted on reels. Marking tags. 2-way radios. A base camp radio and its antenna. Coveralls and other clothes. Portable toilets. Toilet paper. Soap. Freeze-dried foods. Pop-tents if you want to be luxurious. Sleeping bags and sponge mats. Laptop computers. Climbing equipment, ropes and cables, non-slip buckles. Pitons, hammers, backpacks, cooking stoves, pots and pans, dishes, and so many other things it would be impossible to name them all.
But there was another way. To take as little as possible and trust to luck.
It has to be faced, caves are a chamber of horrors for the explorer. Unfortunately, speleology is an ultimate discipline that combines rock-climbing, scuba diving, snorkeling, and extreme camping, all in a hostile, and pitch-black environment. You’ve got to be in shape. It also helps to be courageous and maybe a little stupid as well. It requires a good eye to spot relics that may be masked and buried beneath flowstone. Oh, and it helps to not be claustrophobic or agoraphobic.
There are roaches the size of mice. Scorpions of various kinds and degrees of lethality, and lots of tarantulas. Caverns where the ceilings are fairly well alive with vampire bats are matched by floors that are knee-deep and deeper in bat guano that may suddenly turn as treacherous as quicksand.
Among the dangers faced are, but are not limited to, falling on jagged karst that can be compared to going through a plate glass window, and not safety glass either. Getting lost in the labrynthine passages, drowning in total darkness in suddenly flooded passages that were dry just a minute ago. Caves literally crawling with deadly venomous snakes. Without a breathing apparatus worn all the time, there is a danger of histoplasmosis, a fungal pneumonia with a spiking fever caused by spores from bat guano. It can be cured, but the cure is almost as bad as the disease. Another ever-present danger is Chagas’ Disease from the anaesthetic bite of the assassin beetle which lives in dry caves. The victim is not even aware that they are bitten. The bite causes a slow, debilitating, eventually fatal disease that attacks the heart.
Caves are living and changing things. Wormholes in the soft limestone of the Peninsula. They may have been formed 100,000 years ago, their blueprint carved during the Ice Ages of times long past.
But their map was not immutable because just as a stream changes on the surface, the inexorable tempo of the natural processes shaved the walls, ceilings and floors millimeter-by-millimeter, or added on drop-by-drop of minerals leached from the surrounding fundament.
Flowstone. Waterfalls. Flood surges. Movement and deposit of tiny grains building and building. Tunneling through the rock. A spiderweb of emptiness spreading and joining right there beneath the earth.
Maya Caves had individual purposes. Cities were called ‘The Navel of The Earth’, and were located because the caves were the connection with Xibalba, and also the source of water for the community. Where there was no natural cenote or cave, one would have to be created, such as had been done at Dos Pilas, utilizing the ever-present water table of the Peninsula.
THE SEARCH GOES ON...
It seemed to be a dead-end. The tunnel was not a hiding place for the codices. It was a sacred place, but not a place for the codices, and yet...
There was something about the tunnel. Something that just didn’t sit right. They began to examine the tunnel by the shifting, wavering light of the lanterns. Inch by inch they went over it, the walls, the ceiling, the focal space behind the basin.
Nothing.
They went back to the vertical shaft and crawled over it carefully, by fingertip touch this time, every riser and tread of the carved stone stairway, the walls, every part of the vertical passageway.
Nothing.
It was Max who stumbled over the slightly raised lip of the flagstone, and in falling, his boot tip pulled it up just a little more. On a hunch, they prised up the stone to reveal the a narrow opening, a little Maya-sized opening. They sent Max down. They had to. He was the slightest of them. Even smaller than the women.
Max went down carrying the sum total of their advanced technology. An Eveready two-cell flashlight. He was down there quite a while, and other than a shout from him when he reached the bottom of the inner shaft, there had been no word from him. Not a sound.
They sat there, ‘on tenterhooks’, around the opening, waiting for something, anything, from their diminutive companion. Mitch’s irrelevant mind skipped to the story behind ‘on tenterhooks’. In the past, when manufactured cloth had been dried, it was hung suspended on frames called ‘tenters’ by hooks, so the phrase came to mean ‘being in an state of anxious suspense’.
Max emerged from the hole looking like a ghost, covered with white plaster dust, with sweat from his hair cutting brown rivulets in his face. He lifted himself by his arms, and sat on the edge of the hole. “Just like Piedras Negras,” He said. “A room, shelves, a room for books, a room near the sacred well, but the room was empty. There were no books. They were taken somewhere. They are not here”.
Mitch questioned Max about the state of the room, and from the relatively small amount of dust in the bare footprints and where the books had rested, compared to the other surfaces, it seemed that not too long had passed since they had been moved. Maybe the haste to remove the folios accounted for the oh so small lapse of not carefully replacing the flagstone.
They were disappointed. But they were elated too. The ‘lost’ codices had existed. They were being moved. They were somewhere. The more time passed and the more discoveries were made, the more real Mitch’s ‘chimera’ was.
“Okay,” said Tatiana. “So now we have done Dos Pilas. In each of the places we have learned much, but we have yet to find the codices. Does anyone have any suggestions as to where we should go next?”
“Should there even be a next?” It was Asti that asked the question. “I’m beginning to think that it is time to give this up.”
“Give this up? Why would I give this up? I now know that the codices exist. That they are still protected by the H’men, who have moved them to a safe place. All I have to do is find that safe place.”
“What makes you think they will let you find it, Mitch? They have killed before and no doubt will kill again to keep the secret.”
“That’s just the point, Asti. I don’t want them to give up their secret.”
“Then what’s the point, Mitch? Is this then your personal quest? Tell me you don’t see yourself as rich and famous. Tell me you don’t see yourself as the discoverer of the codices. The codices that all those others couldn’t find and don’t even think exist. Can you tell me those things?”
“But listen, Asti. I have the best chance to find them that anyone has ever had! I have Kayum and Max and even Tatiana to help me. I have a pass to the H’men, and that is all I need.”
“You haven’t answered my question.”
“Yes, yes. Of course you’re right. But I won’t do it without them. I would help them to present themselves to the world as more than savages, but as an ancient and sophisticated race that the world can learn from.”
“Mitch, they don’t want us to learn from them. They are hiding until we go away. That is their whole reason to be. They just want us to go, and they believe in their hearts that one day it will happen.”
“But they have to live in the world today. They have wives and children and families. They can’t just live for some tomorrow that may never come.”
It was Tatiana who answered. “Mitch, two years ago, I was in San Cristobal and the American Indians held a convention in the city. By American Indians, I mean the Indians from ALL of the Americas, North, South and Central. One of the seminars was one on the future of the Native American peoples. One of the offshoots was how to split up the continents after the White man left! They pretty well decided that they should destroy the structures of the White man. The cities, the power plants, the cars, everything, so that they can return the land to nature and heal the wounds that have been done to the earth.”
“What, are they nuts?”
“No, just believers.”
“Believers in what?”
“In a future without the White man, Mitch, as has been foretold in prophecies from all over the Americas. You know what they say, ‘A hundred million Frenchmen can’t be wrong’.”
“Yeah, but we’re not talking about Frenchmen here, Tatiana.”
“You get the picture. They all believe the same thing.”
“So what?”
“Mitch, you are missing the point. They are forced to allow the White man to live here, but in their hearts they have never surrendered. Many of them still retain their own tribal identities and worship in the old ways. They believe in their eventual emergence from the shadow of the White man, and they are never going to help the White man, or teach him anything. They will keep their secrets.”
“But Kayum and Max...”
“You just don’t get it, Mitch. Kayum and Max will never let you get near the codices. They are Maya. You’re not.”
“Just a minute there, Tatiana. Kayum and Max have taken us to all the sites...”
“The sites were empty, Mitch. They took us to the empty sites BECAUSE they were empty. And if you want, I’m sure they can take you to a hundred more. BECAUSE they are empty. They will not take you to where the codices ARE, only to where they ARE NOT! Do you get it now?” Tatiana was getting angry because she did not seem to be getting through to me.
“I get it, I get it. I just don’t believe it. You’re telling me these two are leading me down the garden path to keep me away from the codices?”
“That’s my take on it.”
“All right, I’ll think about it, but we may as well get back upriver to someplace where we can get to someplace else.”
The group went back to the landing stage where they had seen the Commandante, and there was their boat, the one they had come down on, complete with their surly Captain sitting on the edge of the dock smoking an evil black Yucatecan cigar. Most of the Maya smoked the cigars, even the women and the children, for the thick clouds of noxious smoke that they emitted were the only things that kept the vicious biting bugs away. Even Kayum and Max smoked the damn things.
As we stepped onto the dock, all hell broke loose. A fusillade of shots rang out, and the surprised-looking Captain toppled into the water, lasif he were a lifeless bag of sand, his cigar fizzling as it floated for just a moment. They stood frozen until a rocket-propelled grenade arrowed in from one of the vegetation-covered buildings on the site, trailing a tail of smoke and flame. An enormous blast obliterated the boat, leaving in its place a rising ball of flame, and flattening them all where we stood.
The firing stopped. The shooters didn’t want to kill them, just frighten them. They stayed on the deck cowering until they were suddenly surrounded by a crowd of Vanderbilt University people who had come rushing out of their ‘temporaries’ at the cacaphony of sounds.
They slowly got up and brushed each other off, then retreated with the students to the ramshackle offices where they were shown to the lounge and had coffee shoved into their shaking hands.
Astrid was hysterical. All her aplomb had fled with the grenade explosion. It seems she was okay with the bullets, but she was unnerved by the blast. Mitch was pretty shook up himself. She was actually screaming at him. “Enough! Enough! I want to go home. I have had enough of this foolishness. I will not be shot at. I am afraid. Why do we have to do this? Why?”
He heard the change between ‘I’ and ‘we’, and thought there might just be a chance if he gave her enough time to cool down a little. He put his arm around her to steady her shaking, and she broke down bawling. “Asti, you know why. It’s a chance to show the world that the Maya aren’t savages, that they have a history and a culture.”
“What if they won’t let us?”
“Then only you and I will know, and the world will be the poorer for it, but it is for the Maya to decide. For us, we have codices to find. How about it?”
“Oh Mitch, I thought, I thought... maybe you and Doctora Tatiana...”
“Sure, she has information that I need, but she was not here for me from the beginning, you were. It’s you and I that will find the codices, and it doesn’t matter if she comes along or not.”
“But Mitch, why all the shooting?”
“Shit, I don’t know Asti. I can’t figure who would be after us, but it’s pretty clear that they don’t actually want to hurt us, they are just trying to scare us.”
“They killed the Captain.”
“To frighten us, Asti, to frighten us. If they had wanted us dead, we would be dead now.”
“Maybe next time...?
“If they see we don’t scare, then maybe they will come out in the open, and we’ll face it then.”
It took a little while to calm her down, but soon the students launched another cayuco and their own pilot volunteered to take the group upriver.
The return boat trip, back up to Yaxchilan, against the current, took around 6 hours (over three times as long as getting to Dos Pilas). It was getting late, and the air was cool and misty, with odd bursts of rain. They wrapped up in plastic ponchos that had been given to them by the students. They worked pretty well - another item that could be added to the handy-dandy camping list. Asti was dressed for tropical heat but now that it was cool and damp on the river, she had arms like a plucked chicken, a plucked chicken with a tan.
Tired from the start, he fell fast asleep - Asti and he leaning on each other, sitting upright in a plastic boat with hard wooden bench seats. Every time he opened his eyes, the scene was the same - a broad racing black river stretching into the distance with green banks partly concealed by mist and the darkening evening. The stars above were unblinking piercing the indigo sheet of sky. The seats vibrated with the insistent thrumming of the outboard motor that pushed against and through the current.
“Max, tell Kayum that I want a conferencia with the H’men.”
Max was suddenly stricken speechless. Finally He stammered, “Y-you don’ w-want no more books? You don’ want to look no more?”
“Tell him.”
Then followed a conversation between Max and Kayum, and even Kayum assumed a stricken look on his normally unemotional features as his eyes shifted from Max to Mitch.
“Kayum says that regretfully, such would not be possible, Senor Mitch.”
“Why?”
“Kayum says that the H’men are known only to the Maya.”
“You tell him that I have been working with the Maya and that I have been accepted by the Chan K’in, and made myself an enemy of the Mexican government. I am entitled to a meeting, and that’s what I want. Tell him.”
Max again spoke to Kayum, Max was almost pleading, but Kayum was angry. When Max turned back again, his face was almost sorrowful. “He says it cannot be done, and that even if He wanted to do it, it is not his decision alone, but if it were, there would never be a meeting,”
“Well fuck him... wait, Max, don’t translate that. Instead, ask him respectfully if He will take my request for a meeting to the Council back at Xibalba.”
Max turned back to Kayum and translated. Kayum told him something and then he turned back again. “Mitch, He says it will do no good.”
“Tell him that all I ask is for the chance to present my case to the Council. Surely I have earned that right, at least.”
More conferring and more shaking of heads before Max finally turned back with a sigh. “Kayum says that he will take your request to the Council, but that will mean that we must return to Xibalba. Would you not rather continue on to Lamanai? It is said that there are many of the books you seek at Lamanai.”
“I bet! No, I’ve had enough of chasing red herrings. Let’s go back to Xibalba, and maybe, just maybe we can get somewhere with the Council. At least we’re going to try.”
Before translating Max only asked, “Red herrings? What is this red herrings?”
“Nothing, Max. Just forget that part of it.”
XIBALBA REDUX
We landed at Xibalba and we were immediately ushered into the presence of Chan K’in. “Mitch, what the hell are you doing?”
“Pardon me?”
“Let me be straight with you. I gave you Max to get rid of you. I figured that you would tire of your search soon enough, and in the meantime, you were a distraction here that I did not need. Now you come back and want to go before the Council?”
“Look, Chan K’in, we went out of here with a theory and not much more, but we found things out there that amount to proof. The codices exist somewhere and I want to find them. They belong to the world and shouldn’t be moldering away in some dark cave buried in a jungle backwater.”
“Really? Why not?”
“... why not what?”
“Why shouldn’t they remain in their cave?”
“Come on, Chan K’in, you are an educated man, you are in the Army, you are a man of the world, think of how much these codices would mean to the Maya and to the world.”
“You said that already, Mitch. You are repeating yourself. Do you think that these codices of yours would get us our own State? Maybe our own Country? Would they get the Mexican Army the hell out of our territory? Well, would they?”
“... Shit, I don’t know, Chan K’in. There are no guarantees, but the codices would bring great respect to the Maya.”
“Really, Mitch? More respect than Chichen Itza? More than Tikal? More than Coba? You really think your codices would mean more than that?”
“It would be different, Chan K’in. They would respect the learning and the literature and probably even the artistic qualities.”
“Mitch, you are even more of a fool than I took you to be.”
“Really? And just why, Chan K’in?
“All those things are already known from the sites all over the Maya regions, why would the codices do more?”
“They could teach us all how to live. We haven’t been able to learn that from the sites. they might learn enough so that the damage already done to the land might be repaired. They had many more people than are presently in the Yucatan, yet they were able to co-exist with nature.”
“With respect, Mitch, you have no idea what you are talking about. Chichen Itza died because of the failure of their ecology. So did many others of the sites.”
“That may be true, but look at how many centuries they lasted and thrived. We could learn from the codices.”
“They would learn nothing. The only thing that would happen would be that their tame Indians would be taught to make crude miniature copies for sale to the tourists, and even then the middlemen would rob them. The codices will change nothing and we will not give them up.”
“Chan K’in, we didn’t come back here to argue with you. We came to speak to the Council.”
“And what makes you think that I am not a voice of the Council.”
“You may be, but you are only one voice and there may be others that are more reasonable.”
“All right, we’ve both had our say and we’ll let the Council decide. Meanwhile, I know the lovely Astreed and Max, of course. Kayum I know from Yaxchilan, but this beautiful young woman...” He made a slight bow to Tatiana, “I have not yet quite had the pleasure of meeting.”
Tatiana looked pissed. “It is possible that the Chan K’in does not recall that we met two years ago when I was down here before, working on some translations with Yum Chac.”
“Ah yes, the Gringa Profesora. I remember now. My apologies to the Gringa, I am filled with shame that I had no memory of such a beautiful woman.” He made another slight bow, then took Tatiana’s slightly resisting hand and kissed the back of it. She simpered prettily for a moment, and then merely looked annoyed. “And you, my dear, what do you think of Mitch’s business of the codices?”
“First, Chan K’in, I am not ‘your dear’. Then too, the codices are not only ‘Mitch’s business’, Chan K’in, they are the business of all of us, the Mayanists who have made the Maya the work of their lives.”
Chan K’in sat back, visibly controlling his anger. “Profesora, to us, to the Maya, you ‘Mayanists’ as you call yourselves, are nothing but grave robbers!”
Tatiana looked as stricken as if she had been slapped. She actually sputtered. “G-grave r-robbers? Grave robbers? How can you call reputable academics grave robbers? What graves do we rob? What are you talking about?”
“What else do you call those who dig up skulls and bones and take them away?”
“Not to put too fine a point on it, we call them Archeologists and Sociologists. Yes. we dig up bones and skulls and carry them away, as you say, but we do it to preserve them for the future. We do it for academic reasons.”
“But you do not leave them where the ancestors left them, and you take them to where? Mexico City to be seen by the Gringo tourists? There are no Maya in Mexico City. That is all the realm of the Azteca, our enemies. You take our ancestors for the use of our enemies.”
“Why, Chan K’in, I hardly know what to say. You compare us to grave robbers when we only take for the sake of knowledge.”
“No, Profesora, I do not compare you to grave robbers, I say that you are grave robbers.”
“We covet the past to provide for the future.”
“Ah, a very pretty sentiment to excuse stealing our patrimony to take it to places all over the world. So it is everywhere but not where it belongs, with the Maya.”
“Chan K’in, what about all the work that is provided for your Maya in the moving of the artifacts.”
“Always you want us to sell ourselves. Our patrimony, our bodies in slavery, now you want to pay for our help to give away our heritage. So generous of you.”
“But you don’t seem to understand. It is for the world to see the glory of the Maya. So they can admire the heights that the Maya reached.”
“Of what use is the heights when they treat us like dogs?”
“They respect your heritage.”
“How, by having a Sala de Maya at the Museo Nacional de Antropoligia in Mexico City?”
“It is world famous!”
“Who cares? Certainly none of the Maya, they are too busy being slaves to the masters of the coffee plantations of Sonocusco.Not their wives who pat their tortillas out of corn and have no chicken to feed to their children. Do you think the children care? Or do they care more about having no shoes, or about their torn shirts and pants. Which do you think they care more about?”
“It is just the way of the world, Chan K’in.”
“Then to hell with the world, Doctora. We do not need to care about a world that does not care about us.”
“That’s just it, Chan K’in, you must be part of the world, you and your Maya, each of you fighting for your place in it, forcing them to notice you, beating them over the head with the accomplishments and the achievements of the Maya.”
“Why? That has been done for decades, centuries even, and still the Maya have no real homeland, there are no Maya rulers who can lead us, and our people are treated like slaves and the Mexican Army and their auxillaries have even massacred the people.”
“Do you imagine that yours are the only peoples that have had to struggle?” Through the ages, many people have struggled to exist. Some succeed, but others simply give up and are never heard from again because they have been submerged in a sea of their conquerors. Is it your wish to be submerged into the sea of Mexicans?”
“It is our wish to be left alone.”
“Yes, that may be your wish, but the world will never leave you alone. The problem will always be the children. Even if the elders want to be left alone to continue to be Maya and not polluted by the world, there will always be children, and their curiosity will not allow you to hide them from the world.”
“And yet here we are, alone in our underworld and cut off from the pollution above.”
“No, that’s not quite correct. Some of you are down here, but most of your people are still above and still contending with the world. You must take an active part in the part or you will be a dying race.”
“The Maya will never die, we will remain until the White man leaves, and then we will emerge into the light once more.”
“Wake up, Chan K’in. Your Maya are already dying, not only physically, but more importantly, culturally as well. How many of your children go Ladino every day, seduced by television and electronic games, by cars and money, by all the things that a vibrant, living world has to offer them?”
“Those are the things of corruption. It is for us to remain pure and await our return to the light.”
“You can’t, the world won’t let you. The only thing you can do is emerge and fight for your children. Become more engaged and not less engaged, bring the children with you. Offer them a real alternative to the Ladino culture.
“And the codices are part of this plan?”
“Of course. The past of the codices could bring you into the 21st Century. Make the present-day Maya relevant to the world. Make the Maya relevant to your children and save the Maya.”
“There is no need for this so-called ‘relevance’ of yours, we need only wait for the fulfillment of the eyes black and piercing as He glared at us. “... for the strangers among us to be gone.”
“Chan K’in, it’s time to wake up and smell the roses. Your Maya might as well be dead.None of you can read the glyphs and you have to bring in a gringa...” He nodded toward Tatiana. “... to read them, and even other experts to tell you what they mean. You need the strangers even to tell you who the kings were. It is the strangers who are discovering the secrets of the ancient cities.”
“... Excuse me, Mitch, what is this ‘smell the roses?’
“It means to understand the situation, Chan K’in. Hell, your people couldn’t even build a ceremonial site today. All that you use is a gift from the ancients.”
“Maybe, Mitch, but it would be well for your archeologists to remember that the gift is to us, who are their inheritors, and not to the strangers who would take away our gift, and give it to others who are far away.”
“The fact remains that your people know little of the Maya, and you may call yourselves Maya, but you are all a mix of legends and stories of your people and of the ones who came after. Even your religion is now a mix of little-remembered tales of the old men and the Christianity that the Spanish brought.”
“Yes, for some of us that is true, I might even say for most of us, but there are still a few, fathers and sons, who hand down and still practice the old ways. It is those who are faithful to the old gods. So it shall always be, just the few who are faithful, and who wait for the prophecy to come true.”
“So what would it hurt to bring the codices into the light? It could be that it might bring some of your young back to the people, and that could only be good.”
“It is up to us only to live until the time the prophecy is fulfilled.”
“Fine, Chan K’in, but is there anything in the prophecy that says that you can also live in the present while you are waiting for the future?”
“It is by your ‘living in the present’ that we could lose all in the future. We could lose all of the people to the outside world.”
“That’s already happening. If you do just what you have been doing, just hiding from the world, then it will go on until none of you are left to carry on the old ways. The world will have swallowed you all.”
“The world has not swallowed us yet.”
“The Maya have never had to face what is against you now. There is a worm that is gnawing at the heart of the Maya.”
“And that is ...?
“Simple. Look around. The young Maya girls now prefer Mexican or ‘Mexicanized’ boys. So that is driving the young Maya boys to turn ladino to attract the girls. You are losing your young, and that could be the end for you. The Maya could become only a part of Mexico.
“I am weary of this, Mitch. What is it that you want of me?”
“Of you, Chan K’in. Nothing. I do not expect a decision from you. I only want you to take our position to the Council, and if possible, allow us to talk to them about the codices.”
“I will take what you say to the Council, but as for you going before them, I do not think that will be possible. I don’t recall that there has ever been a stranger before the Council unless it was Le Plongeon, and that was many years ago and led to the discovery of the crystal skull, and look what happened to that.”
“Yeah, I know. There are still arguments about its authenticity, even though experts say that it cannot be reproduces, even with modern technology. It seems to have some qualities of fiber optics built into it that direct light in strange ways. It is theorized that if light were directed into it in the right way, it might appear that it was talking.”
“So, even if we provide the proof, still they call us liars and doubt us, Mitch.”
“Because your technology is not our technology, and our ‘experts’ are threatened. It is stupid, but understandable.”
“There is much we have known that would be of interest to your ‘experts’ if they would but listen.”
“I understand, Chan K’in, and in my readings I have found much that is of interest, but our ‘experts’ know nothing of it and seem unwilling to consider it. The Maya were scientific, but maybe in ways that we have yet to understand.They were experts in light and shadow, creating effects that our ‘experts’ only vaguely understand. The solstice illusion of the moving Snake God Kulkulcan at El Castillo.”
“In music they will not give respect to our whistles and our drums, and they only imperfectly understand that the place of performing alters the sound of the instrument.”
“I am aware, Chan K’in. Then too, your people are experts in audio effects, creating whispering galleries and amplification achievements that we moderns can only strive to copy, and then usually fail. Our concert halls are an example. We build them and then spend years changing them so that they are acoustically acceptable.”
“Our ancestors had secrets your ‘experts’ cannot even imagine.”
“Of course not, the sciences of the Maya and our sciences have different foundations. Our scientists have no way of relating to the Maya scientists, they would never understand each other. Our scientists stand on the shoulders of all the scientists that came before, all the way back to the Greek and Arabic traditions. The Maya scientists come from a whole other tradition that we know nothing about.”
“But are they not curious about some of the effects that they can see with their own eyes?”
“Chan K’in, they close their eyes to what they don’t want to see.”
“Can they not tell that there are wonderful things that might be learned from our ancestors, Mitch?”
“You know that and I know only some of it. I have been made aware of the phenomenon of the ‘recording’ of the cry of the quetzal in the stone sculptures of The Temple of the Magician and El Castillo, where the clap of the hands accurately reproduces the unique song of the sacred quetzal, speaking with the tongue of the gods.”
“And none of you have any knowledge of ancient healing by smells.”
“Smells?”
“Yes. Our curanderos have the understanding of how different sicknesses of the body and the mind can be repaired by the use of smells, sometimes just from flowers, spices or herbs, some from crushed rocks or of gold or gems such as jade, even obsidian. Often they use fire, but not all the time.”
“Jesus, Chan K’in, we don’t have a clue that such things are possible. Don’t you think this is important?”
Chan K’in wearily waved his hand. “All right, Mitch, all right. We cannot settle this now. I will present your position to the Council, but you understand, I can promise nothing.”
“All I ask is that you try.”
The meeting of the Council took place in an open-roofed temple on the roof of the tallest pyramid. The structure was more of a truncated cone than a pyramid and looked like the Pyramid of the Magician at Uxmal. Most of the members were ancienos, but a few, such as Chan K’in, were part of the new breed of ‘fire-eaters’ that might just be a little less willing to be patient until the prophecy was fulfilled.
The Council sat in a circle surrounding a glowing brazier. The members were all equals, and there was no actual ‘leader’ as such, all of them were responsible for the continuing existence of the tradition of the Maya that had existed for thousands of years. It was they who would make the decision and render the verdict. Render the verdict on Mitch’s dream.
Mitch waited with Asti in the room they had been given while the Council met, and it must have gone better than Chan K’in had expected, because after some hours, he returned. He apologized to Asti, telling her that it would be unacceptable for a woman to come before the Council.
Mitch made his pitch before their impassive faces, and then waited for the questions he was sure would be forthcoming.
There weren’t any, and the silence grew heavier as the time passed without comment by the leaders of the Maya. He was led away. Not by Chan K’in this time, because he stayed with the Council, but rather by a stolid young man who he had not seen before.
It was two days before Chan K’in returned, and he looked exhausted.
“Mitch, I have done what you asked, presented your arguments to the Council. They have made their decision. You are to be allowed to look, but you have to understand that they do not know where the codices are now. They know where the codices were in the past, but no longer. The task of hiding the codices was given to a small group who were to hide the folios in a place that no one knew, a place that was not even known to those exalted men of the Council.”
“Who was in this small group that you speak of?”
“They were of the world”
“You mean they weren’t Maya?”
“Oh, they were Maya, but they were Maya who had gone out in the world and who had returned to help us in any way they could.”
“So you gave them the codices?”
“No, we told them where they were hidden at the time”
“Where were they?”
“Masuul.”
“Where is this Masuul?”
“It is not far from here, although it would have been closer had you remained in Yaxchilan.”
“What should I know about this place?”
“You must ask your Profesora.”
WHERE AND WHAT IS MASUUL?
Tatiana knew of Masuul, and was eager to tell what she knew to get them started on the next leg of the journey. Her tale of the small kingdom explained to Mitch what it was like in those days.
She said that the place that the Maya knew as Masuul, had more familiarly been called Naachtun (Far Rocks) by the academic community. It had been named by one of the early Mayanists, but it was in actuality called Masuul, and was the capital of a small kingdom 27 miles south-south-east of Calakmul, and 40 miles north of Tikal.
Lying directly between two such powerful entities, Masuul held not only a strategic position, but also a vulnerable one during the frequent wars of the time, and control of the city must have been seen as a necessary prologue to any attempt by Tikal or Calakmul to attack the other all in the area that is today the frontier between Guatemala and Mexico along the Usamacinta River.
The Usamacinta and its tributaries were the major highways for these kingdoms and their client kingdoms, and each of them fortunate enough to be situated alongside the rivers demanded tribute for passage and soon became vastly wealthy.
This minor kingdom appears to have been like a cat’s paw between the two major powers in the area vying for primacy roughly between the 4th and the 9th Centuries ACE. During this centuries-long war, the two antagonists fought over their minor client states, exercising alternating power over the satellite cities such as Dos Pilas,Tamarindito, La Joyanca, Palenque, Yaxchilan, and Piedras Negras. And that didn’t preclude skirmishes among these smaller civic entities. While these others were simply awash in the seas of power, and controlled trade routes that were the rationale for their existence, not so the kingdom of Masuul.
Masuul began as a backwater town that somehow realized that it occupied a strategic position between its two great neighbors. Someone realized that there might be profit to be made from its fortuitous location and Masuul soon became the trigger point between the two antagonists.
A raid on the city became a declaration of war, and it was soon understood by all that the conquest of Masuul by one was a prelude to an attack on the other because Masuul was soon powerful enough to comprise a force in and of itself, and to fail to subdue it preliminary to an attack on the oponent was to leave a formidable force behind the lines that could well wreak havoc.
And it wasn’t long before Masuul became different from other cities. Masuul built a defensive wall. At points this wall is 13 feet high, and it is well constructed with large cut blocks of limestone. It is a carefully planned and executed structure.
This is very different from the one at nearby La Joyanca, another war-tossed kingdom whose wall was only about 19 inches high and served as a base only for a wooden palisade. Masuul’s barrier also differs from the walls at Dos Pilas, which, although large, were not well constructed, and were made by hurriedly removing the exterior stone facing of the surrounding buildings.
There were other defensive walls, but they had been built as a measure of desperation, while the Kingdom of Masuul built their wall for another purpose.
Not to put too fine a point on it, they sold themselves to the highest bidder, and Masuul did it over and over. Even made a business of it.
They became a courtesan with two suitors. Masuul was a client state of whichever paid best, and did very well at it, becoming wealthy and comfortable over the centuries.
They proudly recorded their history in hieroglyphic writing, carved onto the more than forty stone monuments called 'stelae', and documenting events in the lives of their kings.
The ‘experts’ suggest that ultimately the endemic warfare was an important factor in the downfall of the Classic period Maya, resulting in the abandonment of most cities and their surrounding territories by ACE 900, but that is only the usual unfounded conjecture. It is more likely that the warfare provided the impetus for Calakmul and Tikal to grow strong and flourish in the face of constant challenge.
The dates recorded on the Masuul monuments span a period from ACE 504 to 762, suggesting that the city flourished for most of the Classic period.
Masuul's central position and fluctuating political affiliation is evidenced from the architectural diversity found at the site. Buildings in the Tikal tradition are evident in the main plaza, while the extensive, rambling, elite residential section is reminiscent of the Calakmul palace precinct.
Another of the buildings was constructed with cut-stone masonry that is characteristic of Río Bec architecture. This widespread architectural style is found across the region to the north of Masuul.
This array of architectural influences reflect the site's shifting political affiliations and regional connections.
Originally rediscovered in 1922, the true name of Masuul was not found until the mid-1990’s. References to the Masuul kingdom are found not only in hieroglyphic inscriptions of the city, but also on scattered monuments throughout Guatemala and Mexico. Taken as a whole, the inscriptions on these monuments record a history for the Masuul kingdom that spans from ACE 486 to 761, and includes details of familial relationships, warfare events and funerary rites.
The earliest dated reference to the Masuul kingdom so far discovered is found on Tikal Stela 10. Dating to 486, the passage states that the capital of the Masuul kingdom was conquered by Tikal. The defeated king was brought before the Tikal king and is the captive shown on the front of the Stela.
These earliest recorded hostilities between Masuul and Tikal were the result of power struggles with Calakmul, Tikal's bitter enemy. Masuul had been in Calakmul's sphere of influence. Yet during the early fifth century, Tikal went on the offensive against Calakmul, and pushed northwards in a series of campaigns aimed at enlarging and consolidating its northern frontier.
During the late sixth and early seventh centuries, Tikal suffered a series of defeats at the hands of Calakmul and its allies. Consequently Masuul switched allegiance back to the nearer neighbour, and a hieroglyphic block from Structure 4 at Calakmul includes a reference to the Masuul kingdom from about this period.
In the late seventh and early eighth centuries, Masuul's loyalties changed again. Tikal resurged, defeating Calakmul's armies in 695. The next reference to the Masuul kingdom is on Tikal Altar 5, which records a series of events beginning in 692 and involving the king of Masuul and the king of Tikal. The final passage dates to 711, and describes a ceremony are depicted on the face of Altar 5, where both kings appear to be related to one another.
A familial relationship with Tikal is also suggested by texts and images on Masuul Stela 9, dating to 731 suggesting that the political and familial alliance with Tikal continued until at least this period.
Finally, Masuul changed allegiances again during the later half of the eighth century. In the texts on Masuul Stela B5, titles closely associated with Calakmul are used to describe an individual at Masuul and states that he was responsible for the erection of the stela in 761.
So in the roughly 300 year ascendance of Masuul, it changed alliance four times, and obviously profited by its ephemeral allegiances during this fractious period.
Mayan hieroglyphic texts that are as yet incomplete suggest that Masuul's Late Classic existence continued to be a precarious one politically, alternating in affiliation between Calakmul to the north and Tikal to the south.
“And that’s all we know about Masuul to date, although the Maya may know more.”
“Okay, that’s all well and good Tatiana, but if Masuul was in such a precarious position, a pawn between the two antagonists, why would anyone lodge such a valuable treasure in a place of chaos?”
“Ah, Mitch, but that is precisely the reason to place it there. In fact, Masuul, of all the client states, was exempt from chaos. It was never fought over, at least not after the very beginnings. It was well fortified, and that meant that both Tikal and Calakmul had, at least by default, allowed it to be fortified. ‘Masuul was never conquered, it was sold to the one that could afford to buy it. It was a prize, and as such became a showplace for the city whose client state it had become. With each change of allegiance, the successful bidder trumpeted its success by constructing some extravagant structure, some magnificent showplace, or by placing some monumental masterwork in Masuul to establish their ascendance over their enemy.
‘What better lavishness to place in Masuul than the codices library? It would establish that the donor was proclaiming that Masuul was forever theirs. Just a little psychological warfare.”
“So I guess the next stop is Masuul. What do you say?”
SEEKING IN MASUUL
Masuul was isolated and near inaccessible when it was rediscovered in 1922, and its inaccessibility has kept it isolated and free from explorers and academic meddlers ever since then. That may soon come to an end, for in 2002, a joint exploratory team from the University of Calgary and Guatemala’s Universitad Del Valle came, and has since recommended a long-term archeological expedition to map and explore Masuul, but it has not happened yet, thank God.
For now, the jungle had clearly claimed Masuul, and if it were not for the guides provided under the auspices of the Xibalba Council, we would never have found it.
Even having found it, we were at a loss as to where to start the search, and it was only by accident that we stumbled upon an opening that forecast the entrance to a cave, and foolishly, without consulting the guides first, He decided to take a quick look at the cave.
The entry point was tiny and brush-covered and at first it appeared that it led to a natural cave. As we hacked away the thick brush with our machetes, it was clear that the opening had actually been framed in a stone enclosure that was covered in glyphs, and once enough of the thick vegetation had been cleared away, the remnants of the brilliant paint once used to decorate the carvings. Against everybody’s advice he decided to go in alone first for safety, and he took the hardhat with lamp attachment and a belt reel that they insisted he take. He trailed a line from the reel attached to my belt as he got down on his belly and crawled into the tiny opening.
Past the entrance the cavern had been left in a natural state because it followed a gentle slope down to a natural spring which still flowed. Rubble covered the floor and it was obvious that the friable limestone had been continually flaking for eons.
Recalling Dos Pilas, he went out to get his collapsible shovel and crawled back into the cave, his helmet lamp throwing animated shadows across the walls. He started about three-quarters of the way in toward the quiet pool that lay at the end of the passage. He began shovelling the shale back out toward the entrance, and in his eagerness sometimes struck the wall, and once or twice even the roof of the cavern. He was so into his feverish work that he failed to notice the minute shifting that was taking place within the earthen tube that he was enthusiastically trying to excavate.
He was in the middle of a swing of the shovel when it started, like a light sprinkling of gravel falling on me and the floor of the tunnel. It increased continually, and then he was backpedaling toward the ancient spring. All at once, the entire middle section of the tunnel collapsed with a great roar, completely filling and blocking the passage. His own yells echoed back at him, and he knew that he would be unable to hear the responses from any possible rescuers on the other side.
He was surprised that there was light in the cave, even aside from the helmet light which had been knocked off in his backwards stumble, and had rolled along the rock-strewn floor. He couldn’t understand where the light was coming from after the rockfall had closed the passage. The light seemed to come from a point just on his side of the cave-in and he crawled up over the rubble to look up through a rock chimney to the green of the branches and the blue sky above.
The chimney seemed to be mostly composed of loosely-packed horizontal shale of various sizes about three stories tall. Thank God, it looked like an easy climb, and besides, it was the only way out so it was time to get to it. The shale was rougher than it looked, and he cursed leaving his gloves behind.
Tatiana had warned him that they’d be useful, but he was just too damned pig-headed to listen. It wasn’t long before his fingernails were gone and his fingertips shredded and bleeding, leaving cr[1]‚[1]ƒ[1]„[1]…[1]†[1]‡[1]ˆ[1]‰[1]Š[1]‹[1]Œ[1][1]Ž[1][1][1]‘[1]’[1]“[1]”[1]•[1]–[1]—[1]˜[1]™[1]š[1]›[1]œ[1][1]ž[1]Ÿ[1] [1]¡[1]¢[1]£[1]¤[1]¥[1]¦[1]§[1]¨[1]©[1]ª[1]«[1]¬[1]­[1]®[1]¯[1]°[1]±[1]²[1]³[1]´[1]µ[1]¶[1]·[1]¸[1]¹[1]º[1]»[1]¼[1]½[1]¾[1]¿[1]À[1]Á[1]Â[1]Ã[1]Ä[1]Å[1]Æ[1]Ç[1]È[1]É[1]Ê[1]Ë[1]Ì[1]Í[1]Î[1]Ï[1]Ð[1]Ñ[1]Ò[1]Ó[1]Ô[1]Õ[1]Ö[1]×[1]Ø[1]Ù[1]Ú[1]Û[1]Ü[1]Ý[1]Þ[1]ß[1]à[1]á[1]â[1]ã[1]ä[1]å[1]æ[1]ç[1]è[1]é[1]ê[1]ë[1]ì[1]í[1]î[1]ï[1]ð[1]ñ[1]ò[1]ó[1]ô[1]õ[1]ö[1]÷[1]ø[1]ù[1]ú[1]û[1]ü[1]ý[1]ÿ[1]ýÿÿÿ
imson fingerprints all over the chimney for some future archeologist to puzzle over. The sweat was running down into his eyes so it made it harder to see and to concentrate. He heard it before he saw it. He was almost half the way up and into the bright sunlight when he heard the familiar flat buzzing that they had all come to know so well.
They were no strangers to snakes in the jungles, the reptiles were everywhere, and of every type and color. The emerald green anaconda that wrapped around and hung down off the trees, their glittering black beady eyes warily upon them as they passed.
Dun-colored rattlesnakes had clattered at them in salute from the trailside and the tiny but oh-so-deadly colorfully-banded fer-de-lance they called the yellowbeard snakes lay openly and unafraid on the path, looking harmless, but ready and capable of jumping high enough to bite above their boots. The natives called these the twenty-minute snake because once bitten, the victim only had twenty minutes to live.
Climbing, he had put his hand on one of the flat rocks only inches from the fat-bodied old grandfather that had been sunning himself. Too startled to coil and strike, He was reduced to a warning buzz that made him snatch his hand back so fast that he damn near fell off the wall. That probably saved him from the grandfather, but his alarm awakened all his children and grandchildren that had been snoozing on their own heated rocks. In turn they had startled the odd fer-de-lance that had also taken advantage of the natural sunning places. All snakes loved the heat. Craved it. Moved toward it. Gloried in it. Until they were disturbed, and he had disturbed them.
He froze where he was, praying that the heat of the shale exceeded that of his own sweaty body. He sure didn’t want their sensing pits pointed in his direction. He stayed absolutely still for as long as he possibly could, until his straining muscles began to quiver, then he began to move. Ever-so-slowly, look where the next foothold is, then right foot, look where the next handhold is, then carefully place his right hand, look, place left foot, look, then his left hand, over and over again, very slowly, the snakes finally back at rest and hardly stirring, until, without realizing it, he ran out of rocks and almost slipped back down the chimney. He saved himself only by grabbing onto an overhanging tree branch.
Working solely on adrenaline, he moved sideways hand-over-hand along the branch until he reached the trunk of the tree, and then he carefully lowered himself down the trunk and dropped shaking and exhausted onto the ground where he lay breathing through his mouth like a hard-ridden horse.
He tried to call out, but couldn’t get his breath and couldn’t stop shaking. All that came out of his mouth was a kind of weak croak. After a while he was able to get up and make his way down the hill that hid the cavern, and when he got back to the entrance, there was no one there.
He had begun to look around when he heard sounds that seemed to be coming from the cave. Once again, but with some reluctance, he belly-crawled back into the underground chamber and got up to make his way back to the cave-in point where he came upon a scene from hell. Half-naked, dirty and sweat-streaked troglodytes digging and scraping frantically at the cave-in in the coruscating light from their lanterns bobbing and weaving across the rough rock walls.
He asked what they were doing and one-by-one they turned around open-mouthed.
“What the hell are you doing here?” Asti asked.
“You got some place you’d rather see me?
Tatiana looked as if she were looking at a ghost.“Jesus, Mitch, we thought you were dead.”
“As the man said, ‘the rumors of my death have been greatly exaggerated’.”
Tatiana glanced back at the wall of rubble that blocked the cave. “Just how the hell did you get out of there?”
“Magic.”
“No, seriously.”
“Found a chimney and went out that.”
“Thank God.”
Tatiana was contemplating the rubble when she said, “See anything in there?”
“I didn’t actually see anything, but the whole setup reminded me of that cave at Dos Pilas, especially with this artificial entrance. This cave must have gone somewhere important, must have some significance.”
“Maybe, but it wouldn’t be much of a showplace.”
“We don’t know what it was like at the time.”
“True, but this cave is outside the protective fortification, what about that?”
“It was here before the fortifications.”
“So what?”
“So if you had a valuable treasure, you’d want it inside the breastworks where it would be protected, and not outside.”
“You don’t think it’s worth checking out?”
“Maybe if it was an easy thing, just a walk through, then it would be worth it, but if we have to rappel down a chimney, and maybe have rocks fall on our heads...”
“And snakes.”
“Snakes?”
“Yeah, the chimney is loaded with them, it’s a nesting place. Rattlesnakes, yellowbeards, they’re all there.”
Asti shivered, “That’s not for me. I hate snakes.”
Tatiana snickered. “Then you picked a hell of a place to come to.”
“Oh, come on Tatiana. That’s not fair.”
“Enough of this stupid bickering. It is a waste of time.”
“Do we go back there or not?”
“Let’s put it down as a fallback, and try to find a site behind the walls. A place that they could have protected, and yet still be accessible and in an important enough place to lend majesty to the showing.”
“Like where?”
“Does Masuul have a pyramid?”
“Sure. Right over there at the end of the plaza. It’s where that lopsided hill is, the one covered with trees.”
“You think...?”
“Sure. Is there a better place?”
“I don’t know. I was thinking... Is there a Ball Court?”
“Are you kidding? Of course there’s a Ball Court. It’s there. See between the two low mounds over there to the left of the pyramid?”
“Yeah, I see it. So what?”
“So, does it have a temple up on the wall?”
“Yeah, if there’s a Ball Court, then it has to have a temple on the wall. You should know that.”
“Okay, I know there should be a temple on the wall, but what I want to know is, is the temple still there?”
“I don’t know, we’ll have to go see, but why do you ask?”
“What better place to display the codices?”
“Okay, it’s as good place to start as any.”
They chopped their way through the undergrowth until they burst out into the blinding sunlight at the base of one of the facing walls. They were so covered with the all-encompassing jungle that trees grew out of the mound, their roots growing into and through the deposits of rotting and rotted vegetation, then piercing and crumbling the masonry, a snakes-nest of intertwined and commingled roots and vines.
They climbed into and up through the verdure, hacking their path through the tangled climbers. At the top of the wall, they crawled along, looking for the temple, and hoping that it had not collapsed under the onslaught of the questing roots and suckers. They had been at it for quite a while when a vagrant beam of sunlight exposed the stucco corner of a shapeless vegetation-covered structure on the top of the opposite wall.
It took three hours to cut their way through to the structure and hack their way into the entrance. The floor of the interior was alive with cockroaches, the refuse scavengers of the earth. Watching their steps, they moved gingerly toward the rear of a long, rectangular room, probably forty by ten feet, as if it were a viewing stand, which, of course, it was. A perch for the ruling elite to watch the drama of the pok-ta-pok game, which was never really a game, but rather a re-enactment of the ‘Hero Twins’ legend.
Heavily padded teams were not allowed to use their hands or kick the ball, a severed head to begin with and only a hard-rubber ball towards the end of the Classic period. Rather than the popular but falacious notion of a man having to butt a forty-pound ball twenty feet in the air through a vertical hoop hardly larger than the diameter of the ball, attached to the wall, the actual goal was a small water-filled cavity in the center of the court. The hole was a representation of the entrance to the underworld of Xibalba, the place of the legend.
At the back of the room was a ten foot stone altar, its front a carven frieze of a Maya lord, his foot on the neck of a prostrate captive. A line of cockroaches ran across the altar and disappeared into an almost invisible crack that ran around the sculptured figure of the Maya lord and his captive.
He pushed against the backside of the lord, and with a grinding noise, the frieze pivoted to reveal a black opening, then an interior in the glare of a flashlight. It had been fashioned into an imitation of a natural cave that widened as they crawled through from the entrance and stood up in a five foot oval that ended in a large, square-cut room. They were getting used to not finding anything in the places they looked, and, true to form, the room was empty except for some broken pots that were lying on the floor and a pile of broken statuary and wall friezes.
This looking for codices was becoming frustrating. They were trying to find folios that were book-size, 4 X 9 inches, and of different thicknesses, but usually about 8 inches. They were the size of two or three hardback books, a package that could be hidden almost anywhere. If it wasn’t for the fact that they were expecting to find a whole library of them together there would be no chance of ever finding them.
As it was, what they had was a large, dusty room with broken potsherds and statuary on the floor. On a whim, he gathered up the pieces and tried fitting them togeher and what developed was that the pot had been maybe a foot across, and there was no reason why it had not contained one of the folios. Of course there was also no reason why it had contained one either. It was all so frustrating. All they had was a broken pot, a concealed empty room filled with broken works of art, and someone’s unsupported word that the codices had once been there.
They didn’t find anything, but there was something about the room that was interesting. The broken sculptures had been hastily swept aside to make room for the codices. It was an act of desperation and showed that moving the folios had been hurried and frantic. They searched the room thoroughly, looking for clues about where the books had been taken. HABLAR QUICHE MAYA?
By now their little entourage had grown to seven, composed of Asti, Tatiana, Max, Mono, Kayum, myself and their Masuul guide, Charlie, obtained as a result of Kayum’s negotiations and Max’s representations that he was a representative of Chan K’in.
They went out and found the guide and told him that they wanted to speak to the Maya of the city. Every city had Maya living in villages nearby. Sometimes they were there to gather in the place of the gods for their ceremonies, sometimes they were just there because their ancestors had been there and it was their place to be, and sometimes they lived there because the plantings were fruitful.
It was true that everything was changing with the coming of the destroyers that the Mexicans had let into the Peten. The loggers who took out the mahogany trees that were each supposed to be worth $20,000 US in los Estados Unidos, even though the Maya believed that one of them died for each tree that was cut down, and that at the same time a star fell from the sky.
And that was not the worst, because once the trees were gone, the Mexicans brought in the cattle, and in their grazing they totally destroyed the vegetation and ruined the land for planting.
And as the destruction below, so also came the destruction from on high. Twenty percent of the great Selva Lacondona, the enormous forest preserve that the Mexican Government had ‘given’ to the Lacondones, has now been cut, and the cutting continues. If the Lacondones were so much against the cutting of each and every tree, how is it that so much of the forest has now been harvested?
The impulse for this generous ‘gift’ arose at a time when environmentalists were bemoaning the continuing loss of the rainforest, while at the same time there was also an outcry about the treatment of indigenous peoples around the world. This was also coupled with the rise of the media attention paid to the ‘glamour’ of the EZLN and its fight for Maya rights. Rigoberto Menchu’s Nobel Peace Prize for her struggles on behalf of the Guatemalan Maya also raised the world’s consciousness.
There was also one other consideration. The Mahogany trees were worth big money and the Mexican Government was not getting it’s share. The Rain Forest was filled with illegal (and often armed) poachers who were felling the trees willy-nilly and the Government was not getting a piece of the action. It wasn’t mentioned that the creation of the Selva preserve allowed the Mexican Army to come in and flush out the poachers, ostensibly to allow the Lacandons to exploit their own heritage.
All this drove a Mexican media coup. The Selva Lacondona, a combination environmental and politically correct media blitz all in one package.
So the Selva Lacondona was born after negotiations with the acknowledged leader of the Maya, the legendary Chan K’in Viejo. There really wasn’t much negotiation, it was presented to the Maya as a fait accomplis. Once the media circus had died down, a new proposal was placed before Chan K’in Viejo. The Mexican Government wanted the Maya to sell logging rights to the Selva Lacondona. Chan K’in Viejo was horrified. Once more he went into the ‘cut a tree and a Maya dies, and then a star falls from the sky’, speech, neatly conveying that all things in nature are connected.
The Mexicans applied pressure, but Chan K’in Viejo absolutely refused to buckle. He was adamant that the Selva had been given to the Maya, it was their home, and they would not sell the right to cut one single tree. The Mexican negotiators promised that if the Maya would allow the sale of the logging rights leases, then an amount would be set aside for the cutting of each tree, and that the money would be put into a trust fund for the Maya, guaranteed by the Mexican Government.
Of course, the history of Guaranteed Mexican Trusts had been somewhat checkered. During the Second World War, the Mexican Government participated in the Bracero program, which allowed Mexican workers to come into the United States as laborers to assist the war effort, and in return, a certain portion of their wages were to be placed in a Guaranteed Mexican Trust for the benefit of the workers who participated.
Nothing more was heard about the Guaranteed Mexican Trust until the 1990s when someone asked for an accounting. The result was that the Mexican Government fell all over itself to explain that they were very sorry, but that the Guaranteed Mexican Trust for the benefit of the Braceros seemed to have disappeared.
So, to get back to the Forestry leases, the Mexican Government had been thwarted by Chan K’in Viejo and they were at a loss. The sales of the leases were worth millions to the economically-straightened Mexican Government.
They hit upon an interesting strategy. They plucked Chan K’in Viejo’s 23-year-old nephew from one of the villages, and they named him as the Official Representative of the Maya. It was He who signed the leases, and in return He got a pickup truck and the equivalent of a 7-11 franchise in one of the villages. So much for the Selva Lacondona. The Mexican Government swore that money was being set aside for the Lacondones in a guaranteed trust.
But that was only a part of the damage. The Rain Forest had always been a bulwark against the depredations resulting from the frequent hurricanes that blew in from the sea. The people in the built-up areas had come to rely on the Rain Forest as their first line of defense.
Now it was slowly disappearing, and as the Rain Forest vanished bit-by-bit, so the fury of the hurricanes, their power naked without being blunted by the trees, caused greater and ever-greater damage and death through winds, flooding and mudslides.
The truth was that as the forests were cut, nature would take ever-increasing revenge in the form of hurricanes, maybe not precisely as Chan K’in Viejo had envisioned it, but with the same general principal.
Regardless of the problems, the Maya who followed the old ways, still clung to the remnants of their fallen civilization, often living in small settlements near enough to the old cities that they could still use the temples to communicate with their gods.
Mitch, Astrid, and Tatiana knew that the Maya wanted nothing to do with them. They were etrangeros, foreigners, and for nearly 500 years, foreigners had meant destruction and death for the Indians of the Peninsula, and the incursion of massive amounts of Mexican in response to the relatively peaceful uprising of the EZLN had continued the tradition.
Maybe 70,000 troops sounds like a little overkill for the State of Chiapas where there are only 700,000 people, but someone in the Mexican Government had read some history, and they must have been aware of what a Maya uprising could be.
The EZLN comprised a tiny minority of those 700,000, but they were well aware that they had the good wishes and fervent hopes of the more than 4 million Maya who knew what had been stolen from them over many years. The Mexican Government must also know that this was hardly the first uprising of the Maya. In fact, over the centuries there was a revolt about every 50 years, some major and some minor, but the spirit was always simmering.
The tone was set in the mid-1500s when the Spanish dominated the area from a fortress city that was later called (ironically) San Cristobal de Las Casas in honor of the great 16th Century Spanish civil-rights advocate. The city began its existence as a fortress-barracks for Spanish troops from which they launched violent lightning raids against the surrounding territory. It became known as Ville Viciosa.
Even today there is a massive army presence, and in the town square facing the City Hall and the Cathedral, the boy-soldiers stand on every street corner carrying their automatic rifles. Mitch noticed that the soldiers were carrying all different rifles, M-16s, Kalashnikoffs, Belgian FNs, and even an Israeli Uzi. Curious, Mitch sought out the Commandante of the contingent, a spit-and-polish Colonel with a pearl-handled silver-plated Colt Commander slung from his cartridge belt.
“Disculpe me, mi Colonel...”
He looked Mitch up and down disdainfully, and immediately saw that he was a Gringo, and so responded in clipped English, “What?”
“I have noticed that your men all have different types of weapons. I always thought that the idea was that in a fight they would be able to exchange ammunition...”
He looked at Mitch as if He had suddenly gone mad. “Did you think I would leave them out on the crowded streets with bullets in their guns?”
Somehow the logic escaped Mitch, but somehow it was also typical Mexico.
They were led into a large open lodge house where a semi-circle of eight village elders, the Cargo, sat waiting patiently. Juan Nohoxna was ‘first among equals’ and he wore the feather headdress and sat stolidly, silent in the center of the semi-circle, looking at them unblinkingly from under wild-haired eyebrows.
They sat cross-legged facing the Cargo. They had already decided that Charlie would be the one talking directly to Juan Nohoxna because he spoke the dialect, then he would be relating the conversation in Quiche Maya to Max, and Max would tell it to Mitch in English. So, they weren’t talking straight communication here, but it was the only way it could be made to work.
Mitch began by saying that he came as a friend of the Maya. Max translated to Charlie, and Charlie translated to Juan Nohoxna.
Nohoxna broke into a toothless grin, and said something to Charlie that caused the others of the Cargo to smirk in response. Charlie translated to Max and Max spoke to Mitch. “The Elder says that this is what is always said when foreigners come to steal from the Maya.”
Mitch said that he came at the will of the Chan K’in, but Nohoxna did not seem impressed. Mitch asked if the Cargo would help to find the codices. Nohoxna said that the books were no longer at Masuul, that they had been taken away since two years. Mitch asked where they had been taken and Nohoxna answered that he did not know, that maybe no one knew, for they had been taken to be hidden away from this age, from these terrible times that were such a danger to the Maya.
Mitch asked if there was anyone who might know, but Nohoxna was only able to tell him that the men had taken the codices in two of the motorized cayucos from the river, but he did not know which of the many river cayucos had been used. When Mitch asked if there was anything else that Nohoxna could tell, Nohoxna directed a question to Max speaking in Max’s dialect, and letting Mitch know that the charade with Charlie had only been to give Nohoxna time to consider the questions and answers.
Mitch saw that Max was shocked by Nohoxna’s question, but answered nevertheless, and then was even more shocked by Nohoxna’s response.
“He has one of the codices.” Max said.
“What?”
“He has one of the codices. He had asked the men for one of the codices so that his people could remain in touch with their roots, and he had explained that codices had been with Masuul for hundreds of years. He agreed that they should now be hidden before they were found by the outsiders who were everywhere these days, but he still wanted to keep one for his people.”
“Can we see it?” Asked Mitch.
Nohoxna grunted as he rose, his joints cracking as he straightened. He led the group to one of the overgrown pyramids, and into the outer shell, because the pyramid was actually many pyramids, one inside the other, like a Russian babushka doll. Between the outer pyramid and the one beneath it, there was a two foot space, Nohoxna and Mitch sidled alongside the inner pyramid, between the inner and the outer, until they reached a niche in the wall, in which rested one of the small jadeite boxes that Mitch was familiar with. In the flickering orange-yellow light that came from the reed torch that Nohoxna held, the jadeite shimmered with a grass-green translucence. Nohoxna took the box from the niche and handed it carefully to Mitch, who accepted it as a great honor.
They edged back out of the pyramid and took the jadeite box out into the sunlight, to a flat stone platform where the rest of the team waited. They gathered around as Tatiana examined the intricately carved lid of the box, but didn’t immediately recognize what it represented.
He gingerly opened the box, and there it was, the culmination of his quest. His own Holy Grail.
He handed the box to Tatiana, and she looked at him quizically.
“Well?” He asked. “Can you translate it?”
Tatiana looked confused. “Here?” She asked. “Now?”
Mitch was practically hopping up and down with anxiety. “Of course! It’s what we came here for.”
Tatiana laughed. “You think I can just read the glyphs like this was some paperback book?”
“I don’t know, I thought you could.”
“It’s not quite that easy. Oh, I can read the glyphs all right, but it takes some time. I need time. I need a place to work. Paper. I could use a computer, but I guess that is out of the question.”
Sardonically, Mitch responded. “No, not at all. I’ll just run down the the local Best Buy and get one for you.”
“Please, don’t be sarcastic. I can translate this, I just need a couple of days.”
Nohoxna gave her a choza to herself, a place apart where she could work on the glyphs. Mitch was almost beside himself with anxiety to see the result of his quest, and he made himself a total nuisance, running into Tatiana’s choza continually, demanding a progress report.
Meanwhile, Tatiana was ‘up to her ears’ with the glyphs, translating the individual glyphs and transposing them into some kind of cohesive format. Many of the glyphs eluded her, as did many of the references within the body of the work.
Finally, Tatiana ‘had had it’ with Mitch and his interruptions, and to his great frustration, she went through Max to get Nohoxna to post guards at her hut, with specific orders to keep Mitch away.
It took her four-and-a-half days before she sent word that she had a rough draft of the translation ready. It had been four-and-a-half days of Mitch’s grumbling, and the group was getting tired of him. They were anxious to see the translation as well, but he was driving them crazy.
When they finally gathered together back at the platform outside the pyramid, Tatiana explained her difficulties with the translation, and told them that a lot of what she had written was speculation because she was missing so many of the cultural references, and she also explained that for that reason, parts of the document made no sense. The document needed a lot more work under better conditions, and consultations with H’men and other Maya who might be able to explain or connect some of the references. Finally, she presented the handwritten translation to Mitch, because she was afraid that if she gave it to anyone else, he might well have a heart attack. He grabbed it and immediately started reading. Max and Charlie translating for the Maya, with Nohoxna nodding sagely as the story progressed.
















TRANSLATING THE CODEX
Many thousands of years that can go back to millions, and much before the Maya arrived in the sacred lands where today we trod and live, they were in other lands that today are under the waters of the sea. They emigrated to many places as well long ago, as did other different peoples.
In very remote times they lived in places with very high mountains sometimes covered with many trees and other times with a lot of ice; they were also in desert lands that sometimes became very fertile lands. Many of those lands arose from the waters, others disappeared with time; some transformed into very big lands, others into small lands.
As it is said in the Annals of the Cakchiquels, All time begins and also finishes. The cycle indicated cosmically by the calendars also marked that their land would arrive at its end.
This is how The People came to be in the Land of the Deer. The People were created in the east, in Civan-Tulan, and lived there in darkness. They multiplied there. All lived together, they existed in great numbers and walked there in the east. There they were then, in great numbers, the black man, the red man and the white man, many of many classes, men of many tongues. The speech of all was the same. They did not invoke wood nor stone, and they remembered the word of the Creator and the Maker.
There came a time when their prophets foresaw an age of darkness, when their ancient traditions would be threatened. To preserve their knowledge, they decided to disperse and to find refuge in the loneliest parts of the earth. They came from the northeast, from Civan-Tulan, the Land of Caves and Ravines, and also from the Empire and city of Khurri from where the sun rises.
When they first came to the Great Sea, the Balam Qitze touched the water with his staff, and at once a white road opened through which they could pass from the great distance, and having passed, closed again behind them as the Great God decreed.
In that way they came to he first of the lands that lay in the sea. From there, the Vulkamag, who had been a distinctly peculiar race of fishermen and sailors, built, seven great ships, for the many companies of The People, and in those ships over much time under the leadership of the snake-man Votan, they drifted westward from land to land there in the Great Sea.
There were many hardships, and they lived in caves, and great were the deeds of the Great Maya Gods in service of The People. There were the three nations of the Quiches; the Cuacs, the Greathouses and the Lord Quiches, those of the large-nosed, sloping forehead and high cheek-boned red race as well as the thirteen other nations we know as the Vulkamag, the ‘Dwellers in the Hollows' and they were of the flesh-faced big noses and pouting lips, of the black race, a distinctly peculiar race of fishermen and sailors wise in the ways of the Great Sea.
They drifted from land to land having first passed over great lands and seas, until getting to this land at a place called Panuco.
The People moved onward from Panuco with good diligence without either a warlike encounter or a battle...by chance coming as far as Tula (where they arrived and were received and given lodging by the natives of that place) until they came to a place they called the seven caves -- a part of the kingdom of the Mexica who were pleased to have them. Here they founded the city of Tula.
When The People arrived in Tula, they brought with them a very important person as chief, who governed them, and whom they called Quetzalcuatl, from whom sprang the ruling families of the Tolotec and the Quiche Maya.
After the foundation of Tula, and all the land, new people came, from toward the north, and they too landed at Panuco, they wore long clothes, open in front, without cowls, with low-cut collars, short sleeves, and wide, which from them until this time the natives had used in their dances, imitating that Nation, which without opposition passed as far as Tula, where they were well received, for they were a people of much industry in whatever art, and in cultivating the land, and thus they were loved by all; and not being able to sustain themselves in Tula, for being very populated, they passed to Cholulan, where they established themselves.
From there they settled in Guaxaca, and in Mixteca Baxa, and Mixteca Alta, and also in Capotecas: they taught good administration in all the land: and for this reason, in being some men of prudence, and industry, they called them Tolotecas, for in Tula they commenced to teach; and it is thus.
Shortly after The People arrived at the place where Tula would be built, the leaders, according to the traditions, left to return to the first home of The People in Civan-Tulan. Those voyagers who remained in the region settled near the highest mountains they could find and commenced building the city of Tula in an easily defensible location.
Eventually they married into the local population -- to whom they taught the arts of civilization. When Quetzalcoatl returned, the settlers would not leave their new lives and accompany him homeward.
Since they no longer wanted him as their ruler, Quetzalcoatl went away alone, back to the home in the east, announcing that he would one day in the remote future either return himself with an immense army or send someone in his name to take back what was his by right.
So highly skilled were these Tolotecas, that nothing they did was difficult for them....They cut green stone, and they cast gold, and made other works of the craftsman and the feather-worker....And these Tolotecas enjoyed great wealth; they were rich; never were they poor. Nothing did they lack in their homes....
The Toloteca men, particularly in time of warmth, dressed in their cloaks and trunks of cotton; and in times of coldness they donned some long jackets without sleeves, which reached to their knees, with their cloaks and trunks; they wore shoes in their style, cotaras or catles of henequen -- the women their huipiles and petticoats and likewise their cotaras of their own; and when they went outside they donned some white cloaks embroided with many colors, sharp-pointed at the shoulders, as in the manner of a hood although they reached to the knee pits; they called this cloak toxquemitl.
The priests wore some white tunics and others black ones that reached to the ground, with their hoods with which they covered their heads, their hair long, plaited, which reached to the shoulders, their eyes always lowered and humble, their feet bare at the time of their fasts; and when they were in the temple they seldom wore shoes unless they went outside on a long journey...
When the Tolotecas fought, they donned some clothes in the manner of long tunics of a thousand colors to their heels, embroidered and very thick and heavy...and some had long lances and others atlatl spear throwers and clubs studded with iron of wondrous sharpness. They wore morriones y celadas of copper and gold, and some used bucklers, principally those who carried clubs.
Likewise the Tolotecas wore the rest of the clothes that mentioned above, tunics like those of the priests, white although different, neither more nor less than the tunics that our religious priests wear underneath; for besides being like these, they have had sleeves like those of the oidores and certain hoods.


BUT WHAT DOES IT MEAN?
As he finished his reading, Mitch looked up at Tatiana. “What is this?” He asked.
Tatiana laughed. “A translation, Mitch. Maybe flawed and maybe incomplete, but the best I can do
right now under the circumstances.”
“But is this religious, or historical, or mythical, or maybe just a fairy tale?”
Tatiana laughed again, but this time the laughter may have been just as little forced. “Mitch, you have a peculiarly American attitude, but not only that, it is the peculiarly American attitude of an amateur.”
“I don’t understand.”
“I am sorry, Mitch. I don’t mean to make you small. It is just that you want everything to be ‘cut and dried’, to be either one thing or the other. The Maya were not like that, it may be that they even are like that today. There is no hard and fast dividing line between religion and politics, as there is in America. There is also no line between religion and history, or between history and morality fairy tales.”
“So then what is it?”
“It is not a history text, Mitch, although there may be history in it. It is probably also not the literal truth, in spite of the fact that there is some truth in it.”
“If it is not religion or history and only has some truth, then of what use is it?”
Tatiana was becoming angry. “Do not be such a child, Mitch. One might as well ask of what use is the Bible, because it has all the same features. It may not be literal truth or history, it may even be fictional or allegorical, but it has value, Mitch. It has value.”
“But I still don’t know what it is.”
“Mitch. it is what it is. It will take decades, maybe centuries of study to truly understand what it is, and the reality is that we may never fully understand it. Or, it may be asked in another way. Do we yet fully understand the Bible?”
“But look at this: Who or what is Caqchikel?”
Tatiana raised her eyes to the heavens. “Mitch. Mitch. You are such a naif in this business. You know nothing, and here you are, chasing the codices...”
“... and finding them Tatiana, and finding them. Don’t forget that, Profesora.”
“Believe me, Mitch. I have not forgotten. I could not forget even if I tried. You will not let me.”
“Jesus Tatiana, can you just answer the question? So I’m dumb, so teach me. What is Caqchikel?
“It just means the Guatemalan Maya, Mitch.”
“And the ‘Annals of The Caqchikel’?”
“Well, to be truthful, that’s my phrase, and it doesn’t really mean that. Certainly it doesn’t refer to the medieval works that Mayanists are familiar with. It just means the myths of the Caqchikel. Think of it that way.”
“And the millions of years and the lands now under the sea?”
“Just allegorical, Mitch, like the ‘living in darkness’ and the lands that sank and arose from the waters, the cycles of time and the end of the homelands, all a way to explain the inexplicable.”
“Civan-Tulan and all living together? The Empire of Khurri?”
“I don’t know about Civan-Tulan, but it sounds familiar, like a little research might just turn up something. Khurri sounds like a made-up name. All that about all the races living together could simply be another allegory. Maybe it is something like the Tower of Babel.”
“Now that’s interesting. The Creator and the Maker. Do you think they are one in the same, or are there two of them, a duality?”
“Mitch, now you are getting as bad as the Bible theorists, the ones who continually debate over the phrase, ‘the sons of gods’. Who knows what it all means? Plurality, duality? Who knows?”
“But it is important, Tatiana. We may be talking here about the Maya having One God before anyone else thought of the concept.”
“Aaaach! Mitch, I leave that for the theologists. I only do the translation and I cannot read the minds of the long-dead Maya.”
“How about prophesying of the time of darkness? The dispersion to other lands? The parting of the waters? Can you make sense of any of that?”
“It’s a fairy tale about the ‘Old Country’. All strangers in a strange land bring tales of the ‘good old days’ in the ‘Old Country’. Usually there were no ‘good old days’, that’s why they left in the first place.”
“Got any ideas about the ‘Balam Qitze’?”
“Yeah, well, the ‘Balam’ part we are already well acquainted with. It is a kind of chief. The ‘Qitze’ part, I don’t have a clue. We’ll have to let that go for now.”
“Now we get to that really interesting phrase, ‘the Great God’.”
“Oh, it is interesting all right, especially if we can tie it back to that ‘Maker’ and ‘Creator’ stuff, because this might all be one thing and from that we can speculate that they are saying that there is only One Great God, who is both the Maker and Creator.”
“Can we really do that?”
“Unfortunately, no. We have no way of knowing if the words all tie together, or not. It is another puzzle for the Theologists. Not only that, but my translation cannot be exact, and I am not sure of the exact translation.”
“And what about the parting of the waters, Tatiana? What’s that, a Moses story?”
“No, the parting of the waters story is really interesting because it talks about ‘the white road’. The Maya also talk about the white road, but they call them sacbes. The sacbes ran all over the Yucatan, they were walking routes from place to place, there were countless numbers of them, and there is even one that seems to run into the Caribbean, going to who knows where.”
“Tatiana, what do you think about ‘first of the lands that lay in the sea’?”
“Yes, Mitch, I thought that was pretty interesting, but there is all kinds of archeological speculation over that. Everybody knows that the Maya have always said that they came from the east, and that later part about Quetzalcoatl and travelling back and forth to the homelands to the east...”
“But what about the lands that lay in the sea?”
“Mitch, seems to say there are stepping stones in the sea that led to the Yucatan.”
“Aren’t too many stepping stones in the Atlantic, Profesora.”
“Some thing that the stepping stones are the Antilles, Greater and Lesser. They would qualify as stepping stones.”
“But they don’t go across the Atlantic.”
“No, Mitch, but they could have been part of a confused memory that wound up in the Codex.”
“Speaking of Quetzalcoatl...”
“Which we weren’t, Mitch, but I guess we are going to.”
“Interesting, isn’t it?”
“Not any different from what we have all heard before, other than the fact that it’s wrong.”
“Wrong how?”
“The Codex compresses the timeline. It is generally recognized that Quetzalcoatl was an honorific, a title, and that there were at least four men with the title of Quetzalcoatl. Just another example of how facts get distorted by time.”
“What do you make of ‘the Volkmarg’?”
“Oh, Mitch, that is a hard one. It would be easy to say that they are Phoenicians and let it go at that, for the Phoenicians from off the Red Sea were known as the Sea People. Many have tried to say just that, and indeed there are some incised sculptures that seem to show Semites from the Middle East lands. The truth is that no one knows, and there were many other seafaring peoples throughout the world, including the Polynesians.”
“Votan?”
“Now Votan does strike a familiar note. There are some who say that Votan echoes in the Viking Woden. Certainly the Vikings were great seafarers, and although they did cross the Atlantic to Greenland and then to the east coast of Canada, there is little to say that they ever came all the way down to Central America.”
“So again, you don’t know what it could mean.”
“It isn’t only me, Mitch, it’s the Archeological community.”
“Ah yes, the ‘experts’ again.”
“Yes, the experts again, but there are also others who have suggested that this might be St. Brendan who came from Ireland, but still others think that St. Brendan is really the original Quetzalcoatl.”
“You trying to tell me that you ‘experts’ don’t have a clue what the hell you are talking about? Shit!” He spat. “I already knew that.”
“No”, Mitch, I am not trying to tell you that. What I am trying to tell you is that we have not yet found enough evidence to support any of the theories.”
“Ever heard of this Panuco?”
“No, but I am sure we can find some town or place with a name close enough so that we can pinpoint it. It is engaging that the strangers were supposed to have moved from the Yucatan all the way across the country to where Tula is.”
“And without fighting? Is that possible?”
“Probably more wishful thinking. A way of setting the new arrivals apart. You know the reaction of the people of Mexico when Cortes moved through on the way to Tenochtitlan, why would you think that it would be any different for any group of strangers moving through Mexico?”
“I guess it wouldn’t be. So we can chalk up one lie for the Codex.”
“Not a lie, Mitch, a fanciful attempt to explain how they made it through, while minimizing the difficulties. Trying to set up how superior they were.”
“And the natives of Tula helping the new visitors, Tatiana?”
“Sounds almost like the Indians helping the Pilgrims on their landing in America. Another fiction with some little bits of truth thrown in. Maybe there was some trading, some exchanges of goods, who knows?”
“The seven caves?”
“Under the pyramid in Tula there is a cavern with seven branches, it may be the beginnings of the Xibalba legend, or a justification for the site.”
“And here we are back with Quetzalcoatl again.”
“You mean here we are back with the legend again. And now we have at least a possible explanation of the title and the successors.”
“I guess that Tolotec is pretty well self-explanatory. Tell me Tatiana, have you got any idea when this Codex was written?”
“Well, it is pretty clear that it was written after the Toltecs had pretty well left the scene and after enough time had passed for the real memories to fade. These fairy tales take the place of lost history, so, I’d guess, and it is a guess, that it was written somewhere about 1,000 ACE.
“How about these New People? Any idea about those?”
“Again, this is all speculation without any real evidence, but the text says they came from the north, and this may be your Norsemen, but that could be all wet, and 14 other Archeologists will probably come up with 16 other theories.”
“The New People. Why would they welcome them?”
“I don’t know. Now there are two groups of strangers but they still get along. I don’t know what to make of that, except that these new people seem to be pretty exceptionally civilized, so what they may be saying is that the original strangers were the equal of these great new strangers, and that together they were all the ancestors. Again, strictly a guess.”
“What about the fact that they couldn’t make a go of it, and had to move on to Cholula?”
“Could be a couple of things. Maybe there just wasn’t enough land or whatever for them and they decided to continue on, but I don’t think so. It is more probable that the original strangers were pretty well established, and they didn’t need competition from these new people, and so there was a battle, and the Toltecs won.”
“What about the clothing, Tatiana?”
“Bragging about how rich and how civilized they were, I would guess. It might also support the theory of Semitic landings, but this is all just speculation.”
“Then it looks like they built Tula in the mountains, Tatiana, in a place that could be easily defended.”
“Looks like it. For such a peaceful people who get along with everyone so well, they appear very concerned with defense, don’t they, Mitch? Then, after establishing a secure base at Tula, they seem to have spread out to be an empire. At least that’s what the story appears to say.”
“Then Quetzalcoatl returned to the homeland, but most of The People stayed at Tula. What about that, Tatiana?”
“Well sure, here they are, they’ve come across half the world, endured terrible hardships, fought their way up to the pinnacle where they are rich and comfortable, and along comes this guy and tells them they have to go back and do it all again. No wonder they refused, Mitch.”
“And all this about the clothes?”
“I don’t know, Mitch. Could be more support for the Semitic theory, because the locals sure didn’t wear clothes like that. It also tells about how successful their crops are, how well they are able to live in their chosen home.”
“Look, here is finally an admission about fighting.”
“Yes, Mitch, now, right at the end, they finally come right down to what they have been skirting around all this time. They do fight, and they even have a uniform for fighting, but the description is the part that is strange.”
“How so?”
“The description of their uniform, it sounds more like the armor and weapons of the Spanish. It certainly isn’t anything like the cotton armor and obsidian-edged weapons the Indians used. If it wasn’t for the fact that firearms are not mentioned, this could be a very good argument for this Codex being written after the Spanish came. As it is, well, I just don’t have enough information yet.”
Pointing to the end of the last board of the Codex, Mitch asked, “What is this word? What does it mean?”
“What word? Oh, this one. ‘Oidore’. Now that is a word that causes me great problems.”
“How so?”
“Oidore is a Spanish word, and I think that is the correct translation, even though I have had to do it phonetically, which is not really the way it should be read.”
“So what’s wrong with it?”
“An ‘Oidore’, literally, a ‘hearer’, was a judge of the Audiencia, the Inquisition, and the way that it is used is a reference to the distinctive gown worn by the Oidore. That means that the writer knew what that gown looked like and who an Oidore was.”
“I don’t understand. So what?”
“It is almost positive proof that the Codex was written after the coming of the Spanish!”
“Shit!”
“The only thing I am hoping for is that it was written after the Spanish came, but that it was copied from an earlier work, and the copier only used a commonly known reference to describe a piece of ancient clothing for which no other reference was readily available.”
“Tatania, is that the way it happened?”
“I don’t know, Mitch. It sure looks that way. It was written in the time of the Audiencia.”
“Do we know anything more about it?”
“Well, we can probably carbon-date the paints or the inks, and maybe analyze the configuration of the glyphs. See, the glyphs change over time. The painters take shortcuts, or they add their own kind of signature. With enough examples it is even possible to identify individual sculptors, even on friezes. Naturally, we cannot tell them by name, of course, although sometimes we give them our own pet names.”
“All this is very frustrating, Tatania.”
“Only because you are an amateur, Mitch. The first thing an Archeologist must learn is patience. We are dealing with hundreds, maybe thousands of years, and these are old years, they will not be rushed.”
“What about the Codex? What do we do with it now?”
“Are you kidding? We take the translation and we leave the damn thing right where it is. If we try to take it, not only will we have the Commandante and INAH to deal with, but we’ll start our own little Civil War with the Maya right here, and we’ll be the only two on our side.”
“But...” “But nothing, Mitch. Think about it for a minute. If we leave the Codex where we found it, and not alert the whole world, think about the credibility we’ll have with the Maya?”
“Damn it, Tatania, this Codex is my credibility. Something to wave under the noses of all the skeptics who’ve questioned my sanity all these years.”
“To hell with your credibility with your friends. All you should be interested in now is your credibility with the Maya, because we are still looking for the codices.”
“Come on, Tatiana, we’re at a dead end here. What do you expect we should do?”
“Mitch, I am very disappointed in you. I joined your little expedition because I thought you had the fire in your belly. My God, look at what you have accomplished so far. You have actually found a Codex that has been missing for at least 500 years!”
“Which we can’t even show to the world. All we have is a slap-dash translation with no provenance.”
“Tell me Mitch, since we have what is likely to be a translation of one of the codices that the Spanish destroyed, what makes you think this is the only one? In fact, what makes you think this is even from the only set? Think about it, there must have been thousands of codices, maybe even tens of thousands. Take any little town library, even those have a few thousand volumes, and we are talking about a highly civilized society with a full system of writing. And you are satisfied with just one Codex?”
“So you think there are more.”
“Is there even a question? Mitch, the scribes were an honored class in Maya society. Look at the sculptures and friezes that were left by the Maya. Do you think their written works would have been less?”
“But...”
“Even today there are rumors that other codices exist. Guatemala is supposed to have three.”
“Makes sense, but then where are the rest of them?”
“We know that the Maya were highly intelligent. When they saw the Spanish destroying the codices as ‘the works of the devil’, they realized that they were dealing with madmen, and they hid the remaining codices.”
“Okay, we’ve pretty well established that, but we still don’t know where they were hidden. The only thing that we know is that there are certain codices which were kept, and have been moved around to keep them away from the strangers.”
“Simon, I’ve kept this to myself because I have absolutely no proof for my theory, except for one relatively important event, which I think shines a light on the hiding places.”
“Places? You think there are more than one?”
“Sure. I think there may even be hundreds of hiding places. Hiding places that are as close to being in plain sight as can be.”
“I don’t understand.” “Mitch, I think that the key to the mystery is with a Spanish Bishop named Diego de Landa.”
“And who is this Diego de Landa?”
Tatiana pulled a slim book from her backpack, opened it to the frontispiece, and said, “Here Mitch, take a quick look at this. I wrote this some time ago, but it might be pertinent here. It might help you to understand an idea that I’ve come up with. Maybe you’ll understand that you aren’t the only one who can chase chimeras.”

Facing the title page was a black-and-white rendering of a small man with a monk’s tonsure and a dour visage wearing a robe with cowl thrown back. He looked like nothing so much as a vulture - a waiting bird of prey.

DIEGO DE LANDA
(1524 - 1579)
Prof. Tatiana Knossorov
B.Sc. M.Sc. PHD.

One of the most important documents for the study of the Mayan civilization, its calendar and its writing system - is certainly the manuscript "Relación de las cosas de Yucatán" of Diego de Landa

Diego de Landa was born in Spain in1524. He joined the Franciscan Order at the age of 16, but it was not until 1549 when he was 25 years of age that Fray Diego de Landa accompanied 6 other friars to Yucatán.

Assigned to the newly founded mission of San Antonio of Izamal and he was appointed as assistant to the Guardian. Izamal was the site of a religious shrine of the Maya goddess Izamna. Somehow, the Indians gave the friars one of the ancient constructions at Izamal as a place for a monastery.

1550 he was elected Custodio, and lived at the Convent of Conkal, but by 1553 he was given charge of the convent at Izamal, replacing some little houses of straw in which the clergy lived and supporting many Indians in the great famine.

In 1560 he became "guardian" of the convent in Mérida, and in 1561 became Provincial of the Yucatan, a leader of the Church.

The Franciscans had created an atmosphere of paranoia in the Yucatan. The ‘New Christans’ had been the product of forced mass conversions, often performed in Spanish, with haphazard translations explaining the procedure to the Indians.

While the conversions may have been found wanting, the Franciscans left little to be imagined in their expectations of these ‘New Christians.’ Christians they now were, and Christians they must be. There would be no heresies allowed.

The Indians considered the new religion as a curiosity, and busily set out to translate the Christian symbols into the more familiar Maya ones. Thus, the Saints became Maya Gods and the Maya priests continued their priestly functions in the old ways. The following Spring, evidence of idolatry came to light.

Maya idols abounded and Maya codices were brought out to educate the Franciscans on the ages-old co-existence with the forces of nature. Soon, the Friars became uncomfortable with the continuing practice of the Maya religion, realizing that without a true conversion, the moral imperative for the Conquest will have failed.

Continuing pressures resulted in the Maya religious practices being driven underground - literally. The codices and the religious practices of the Maya began to be conducted in caves, while Maya idols and codices were buried at the base of the Church crosses, so that the Maya might seem to be fervently praying to Jesus while secretly paying homage to the Maya symbols. Especially since the Catholic Churches were usually constructed using blocks from pyramids and Maya shrines.

The Franciscans were soon rewarding informers and when children informed on their parents and presented idols and codices to De Landa he was outraged by the heresy.

This resulted in the infamous Inquisitorial proceeding against the Yucatecan Indians. De Landa’s actions in place of an ordained Bishop would resonate down through the centuries, but a Papal Bull allowed the Provincial of the Franciscan order to serve as governing prelates for the whole body of the Church of Yucatan , with authority to serve as ecclesiastical judges and to perform all Episcopal functions.

Under Landa's auspicies as Prelate, the ‘investigations’ were brutally carried out, imprisoning many Indians, torturing them, and eventually convoking the infamous ‘Auto da Fé’ of Maní on Sunday, July 12, 1562. In addition to digging up the bodies of dead backsliders and burning them, he ‘relaxed’ several of the village caciques to the Spanish civil authorities, who promptly executed them. Then, in front of the assembled Spanish guests from all over Mexico, as well as crowds of Indians who had been forced to attend the proceedings by gun-toting Spanish Marines, he ordered statues and idols destroyed and burned 27 codices.

His own words set the scene:
“We found a large number of books in these characters and, as they contained nothing in which there were not to been seen superstition and lies of the devil, we burned them all, which they regretted to an amazing degree, and which caused them much affliction.”

De Landa described the codices that he had seen, and later burned, as:
“...books were written on a large sheet doubled in folds, which was enclosed entirely between two boards which they decorated, and they wrote on both sides in columns following the order of the folds. And they made this paper of the roots of a tree and gave it a white gloss upon which it was easy to write. And some of the principal lords learned about these sciences from curiosity and were very highly thought of on this account although they never made use of them publicly."

But De Landa was not the only Spaniard present at his event, and the Indians were not the only ones who were upset by his actions. An eyewitness wrote:
"Thus he collected the books and the ancient writing and he commanded them burned and tied up. They burned many historical books of the ancient Yucatan which told of its beginning and history, which were of much value if, in our writing, they had been translated because today there would be something original. At best there is no great authority for more than the traditions of these Indians."

And another wrote:
"With the suspicion of this idolatry, they collected all the books and ancient writings which the Indians had and in order to erase all the danger and memory of their ancient rites, as many as they were able to find were burned publicly on the day of the "auto" and at the same time with this (were destroyed) the history of their antiquities."

There were many Spaniards there that day, and more than a few of them did not agree with the actions of Provincial De Landa.

“In the province of Iucatan, where is the so-called Bishopric of Honduras, there used to exist some books of leaves, bound or folded after fashion, in which the learned Indians kept the distribution of their times and the knowledge of plants, animals and other things of nature and the ancient customs, in a way of great neatness and carefullness.

It appeared to a teacher of doctrine that this must be to make witchcraft and magic art; he contended that they should be burned and those books were burned and afterwards not only the Indians but many eager-minded Spaniards who desired to know the secrets of that land felt badly.

Afterwards some of our friars understood and knew how to read them, and even wrote them, but because in these books were mixed many things of idolatry, they burned almost all of them, and thus was lost the knowledge of many ancient matters of that land which by them could have been known. It is shocking to realize that some friars could read and write the Maya hieroglyphs, and that we ourselves have been studying already all a century long to know so little of the writing system. We have to find the note-books of these friars in order to move ahead faster.”

From 1545 to 1562, when Toral arrived in Yucatán, the ecclesiastical affairs were in the hands of the "prelados".

The man who would later become Diego de Landa’s nemesis had arrived in Mexico in 1542, seven years before de Landa, but Francisco Toral was not appointed Bishop of Yucatán and Campeche and consecrated until 1562, the same year as De Landa’s Auto da fe.

Toral arrived in Yucatán on August 14, 1562, just after the famous "auto de fé" at Mani, full of anger against de Landa, disapproving his methods of christianization and "stupid zeal".

As a result of agitation among both the Indians and the Spanish, Toral demanded that De Landa and other friars, who had taken part in the Maní investigations, should be sent to Spain together with all the documents concerning the case. De Landa was recalled to Spain, but because of a shipwreck and a serious illness, it took him almost a year and a half to reach Spain in October 1564.

De Landa had his own version of the events:
"... At this time, there arrived at Campeche Fray Francisco Toral, a Franciscan friar, a native of Ubeda, who had been 20 years in the(bishopric) of Mexico, and who came now as Bishop of Yucatán. He, on the information given him by the Spaniards and on the complaints of the Indians, undid what the friars had done and ordered the prisoners to be set at liberty. the Provincial (Landa) was ordered to Spain, carrying his complaints in the first place to Mexico.
And so he came to Madrid, where the members of the Council of the Indies censured him severely on account of his having usurped the office of Bishop and Inquisitor.
He alleged as his plea the powers which his Order had received for those countries from Pope Adrian, at the request of the Emperor, and the aid which the Royal Audiencia of the Indies had ordered to be given him, similar to that which had been given to the bishops.
And the members of the Council showed still more irritation at these excuses, and resolved to send him and his papers and those which the bishop had sent against the friars to Fray Pedro de Bobadilla, the provincial of Castile, to whom the King wrote, giving him orders to look into the matter and to do justice.
And this Fray Pedro, on account of sickness, intrusted the examination of these procedings to Fray Pedro de Guzman, one of his own order, a man learned and well experienced in matters connected with the inquisition.
There were presented the opinions of 7 learned men of the kingdom of Toledo, ...., who declared that the provincial had acted justly in making the "auto de fé", and also in the other things which he had done in punishment of the Indians...
After reviewing the case,the Council of the Indies remitted it to the Franciscan provincial of Castile, and in January 1569,Landa was acquitted and formerly absolved of the charges against him.
Moreover, he received in the convent of San Juan de la Cabrera a 'Real Cédula', saying that he was appointed Bishop on April 30,1572 by Philip II, one year after the death of his bitter enemy Toral in Mexico in April 1571. The bulls of Gregorio XIII of 15 and 16 november give all the details concerning the election and relative explanations.
In 1572 he sailed away from Sevilla for Yucatan.

The natives gave him a great welcome, and he remained as Bishop until he died in Mérida, April 29, 1579, at the age of 54.

Seen through the reversed telescope of history, De Landa’s actions appear unnecessarily cruel and autocratic, but many of his actions were dictated by the circumstances and the times in which he found himself. On one hand, he was sincerely friendly to the natives, whom he protected constantly from slavery and from the violent acts of the conquerers.

To be fair, it is necessary to look at the situation. De Landa himself was not a conqueror, yet he effectively found himself and relatively few Spanish in control of the occupation of millions upon millions of Indians. Under the circumstances he simply could not afford to show weakness, nor was it in the Spanish character to do so.

The most interesting thing about De Landa is that, having consigned the culture and history of the Maya to the fire, he suddenly experienced a remarkable turnaround in writing the document that originally provided us with most of what we knew about them.

The present document which we know as ‘Relación de las cosas de Yucatán’ is only a copy of a part of the original manuscript which is lost. Many chapters are missing which indicates that the original manuscript was much longer than the one which is now available.

The manuscript was doubtless written during the two years that De Landa spent confined to a monastery while awaiting trial on the charges before The Council of The Indies.

Some might say that De Landa underwent an epiphany while confined, and resolved to undo all the harm that he had done by the destruction of the Indian artifacts. Those more cynical might allege that De Landa underwent a ‘Jailhouse Conversion’, and that his manuscript was a self-serving ‘mea culpa’ designed solely to exonerate himself.

Landa’s little book presents almost every phase of the social anthropology of the ancient Mayas, the history of the Spanish discovery and conquest, the native and ecclesiastical history, religion and rituals, and the first knowledge of the hieroglyphic writing as well as the symbols of days and months, their ancient matters and their sciences, their methods of administration and religion and education.

-0-

WHAT HAS DE LANDA GOT TO DO WITH IT?

“Okay, so I read it. So what? I don’t see what this has to do with the search for the codices.”
“Not the whole thing, Mitch. Most of it is just for background, sort of give you an idea of what was happening at the time. The reason that they had to hide the codices. No, to me the interesting part is where they hid their treasures.” Tatiana pointed to a paragraph from her book.

‘Continuing pressures resulted in the Maya religious practices being driven underground - literally. The codices and the religious practices of the Maya began to be conducted in caves, while Maya idols and codices were buried at the base of the Church crosses, so that the Maya might sem to be fervently praying to Jesus while secretly paying homage to the Maya symbols. Especially since the Catholic Churches were usually constructed using blocks from pyramids and Maya shrines.’
“The part I mean is that part about burying the idols and codices at the base of the crosses.”
“What? You think the codices are under the crosses right in the middle of the churches? Sure, maybe it was right in the middle of the High Mass. A bunch of half-naked Indians ran into the packed church, and right in front of
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þÿÿÿþÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿ the Priest, they dug up the cross to bury the codices! Are you nuts?”
“No, I’m not nuts, but you may well be stupid.” She said coldly. Let me take you by the hand as if you were blind, and maybe it will open your eyes.”
“Okay teacher, show me.”
“Mitch, let’s stop talking about all of the churches, although codices might be there as well, and let’s limit this discussion just to the cathedrals that the friars built. There was, and still is, an enormous cathedral impressively built to hold a huge congregation of Indians. They were made to be overwhelmingly magnificent to show the Indians the Glory of God. You with me so far?”
“Sure. I’ve seen some of the cathedrals, and they are magnificent.”
“And how many of them do you think there are?”
“I don’t know. Maybe hundreds?”
“Okay then, Mitch. Who do you think built those cathedrals? In your mind, do you see the armored conquistadores doing the carpenter work on the beams, or cutting the building blocks? Is that what you see?”
“Come on, Tatiana. Of course not. They used the Indians to build the cathedrals. The Indians did all the work, even the intricate carving and the finish work. They had real talent, those soul-less heathens.”
“And don’t you think that those soul-less heathens knew that the purpose of the church was for the Indians to worship before the cross?”
“Of course. They weren’t stupid.”
“No, they weren’t. They knew the Indians would all be facing the cross, and that the cross would not necessarily be a Christian symbol, but rather a symbol of what was buried underneath.”
“Okay, Tatiana, I’m getting the picture here. So this wasn’t a question of going in there after the church was built to bury the codices, but rather they buried the codices before the floor was laid and before the cross was hung.”
“Right. And once everything was finished, it would have taken a Papal Bull to rip up the floor and take down the cross.”
“And the fact that the friars were forcing the Maya to tear down their own temples to build the cathedrals would have only added fuel to the fire.”
“So you think the codices might have been buried in the cathedrals.”
“I don’t really know, but what do you think of the theory?”
“Tatiana, I haven’t thought of that before, and you’ll have to give me a minute to get my mind around it.”
“Come on, Mitch. Aren’t you the one that thinks the codices still exist?” Haven’t we proved it? What did we just look at?”
“Maybe, but we weren’t looking in a church at the base of a cross.”
“Look, Mitch, I’ve been thinking about this a long time, and so have you, but my approach has been a little different than yours.”
“Okay, let’s say that you’re right. Surely after 500 years at least one of those churches has been renovated, or burned, or otherwise destroyed. Wouldn’t you think that one or more of the buried codices would have turned up by now?”
“Very good, Mitch. I got you thinking, didn’t I?”
“You didn’t answer the question.”
“I think they have.”
“...have what?”
“Turned up.”
“So where are they?”
“They could be several places. For myself, I think they are at the Vatican.”
Mitch laughed. “The Vatican? What the hell would they be doing at the Vatican?”
“Probably not much, but I think that if one of the local priests or bishops turned up a codex, he might think about it for a couple of days, and then pass it on to the next Religious up the line. A Monsignor, A Bishop, an Archbishop, whatever. And somehow, eventually, someone would have taken a ‘hot potato’ to Rome.”
“Jesus, what are you, another ‘conspiracy theorist? Maybe Kennedy’s body is there right next to it.”
“Hey, Mitch, I’m trying to be serious here. We already know that at least some of the Religious in Mexico believed the codices to be scientifically valuable, their letters complaining about De Landa’s Auto da fe make that clear.”
“Well then, be serious. Why wouldn’t the Church just announce such a find to the world?
“And revive the ‘Black Legend’ all over again?”
“The ‘Black Legend’, what the hell is the ‘Black Legend’?”

THE BLACK LEGEND
At the time of the 1492 landfall of Christopher Columbus at what he perceived as India (hence ‘Indians’.) there began a tale of greed and cruelty that spread throughout the world and has lasted even until the present day.
While the Spanish were overrunning Central and South America, with the approval of the Pope, who usurped the power to divide the world into two spheres of influence, one for Portugal and one for Spain.
But it was Spain and England who were in actual fact the two ‘Superpowers’ of their world. They were in a constant battle for the hearts and minds, but also for the bodies and assets, of the Indians of the Americas, in front of an audience of what they considered the ‘Civilized Nations’. Composed for the most part of Europeans of the Western World.
It was Catholics vs. Protestants in a war of words, a titanic propaganda struggle. But it was a war not only of words, but of weapons as well. It was a time of the ‘Privateers’, pirates operating under ‘Letters of Marque’, licenses from their own government to prey upon the ships, persons, property and land settlements of the enemy. Sir Francis Drake was a such a Privateer before he commanded the English defense against the invasion of the Spanish Armada.
The Privateers and the ‘real’ pirates were particularly attracted to the famous ‘Black Ships’ of the Spanish. These were the treasure ships transporting the riches of the Americas, the gold and the jewels, back to Spain under the command of the Jesuits.
How much gold was brought from the Americas to Spain is seen by the estimate that in 1492, the gold reserves of Europe, including Spain, were estimated at 90 tons, but less than 100 years later, the reserves had risen by a multiple of 8!
Even today, treasure hunters search underwater for treasure ships sunk during the violent storms of the Caribbean. A finding of a treasure-laden wreck like the ‘Atocha’ off Florida, is still front-page news all over the world.
Aside from this worldwide conflict, there arose an internecine conflict, Spanish Conquistadores against plantation owners and merchants, against various factions of the Church, against the bureaucrats and the representatives of the Spanish Crown, and from this came the tales of Spanish cruelty that became known as ‘The Black Legend’.
While all this was happening, a Dominican monk by the name of Bartolome de Las Casas was made Bishop of Chiapas, and in the position he was appointed by the Crown as the ‘Protector of the Indians’. He was horrified by the way that the Spanish, merchants, plantation owners, mine owners and even the Religious misused and abused the natives, turning them into disposable slaves.
A great theological battle raged in Spain as to whether the Indians had souls and were thus human beings. It was theoretically won by those in favor of the Indians humanity, and that was fortunate, because the Religious had been baptising the Indians all along. The Royal edict granting them souls did not seem to measurably improve their lot. That seemed a shame because, what with the plagues that had been brought by the Spanish, the great numbers of Indians had noticeably dwindled.
Of particular note to De Las Casas were the excesses of his Religious Brothers, and typical of these was a man who later was known as Bishop Diego De Landa.
Diego de Landa was born in Spain in1524. He joined the Franciscan Order at the age of 16, but it was not until 1549 when he was 25 years of age that Fray Diego de Landa accompanied 6 other friars to Yucatán.
Assigned to the newly founded mission of San Antonio of Izamal and he was appointed as assistant to the Guardian. Izamal was the site of a religious shrine of the Maya godess Izamna. Somehow, the Indians gave the friars one of the ancient constructions at Izamal as a place for a monastery.
1550 he was elected custodio, and lived at the Convent of Conkal, but by 1553 he was given charge of the convent at Izamal, replacing some little houses of straw in which the clergy lived and supporting many Indians in the great famine.
In 1560 he became "guardian" of the convent in Mérida, and in 1561 became Provincial of the Yucatan, a leader of the Church in Central America.
The Franciscans had created an atmosphere of paranoia in the Yucatan. The ‘New Christans’ had been the product of forced mass conversions, often performed in Spanish, with haphazard translations explaining the procedure to the Indians.
While the conversions may have been found wanting, the Franciscans left little to be imagined in their expectations of these ‘New Christians.’ Christians they now were, and Christians they must be. There would be no heresies allowed.
The Indians considered the new religion as a curiosity, and busily set out to translate the Christian symbols into the more familiar Maya ones. Thus, the Saints became Maya Gods and the Maya priests continued their priestly functions in the old ways. It wasn’t long before evidence of idolatry came to light.
Maya idols abounded and Maya codices were brought out to educate the Franciscans on the ages-old co-existence with the forces of nature. Soon, the Friars became uncomfortable with the continuing practice of the Maya religion, realizing that without a true conversion, the moral imperative for the Conquest, the purported reason for the influx of the Spanish would have failed.
Continuing pressures resulted in the Maya religious practices being driven underground - literally. The codices and the religious practices of the Maya began to be conducted in caves, while Maya idols and codices were buried at the base of the Church crosses, so that the Maya might seem to be fervently praying to Jesus while secretly paying homage to the Maya symbols. Especially since the Catholic Churches were usually constructed using blocks from pyramids and Maya shrines.
The Franciscans were soon rewarding informers and when children informed on their parents and presented idols and codices to De Landa he was outraged by the heresy.
This resulted in the infamous inquisitorial proceeding against the Yucatecan Indians. De Landa’s actions in place of an ordained Bishop would resonate down through the centuries, but a Papal Bull allowed the Provincial of the Franciscan order to serve as governing prelates for the whole body of the Church of Yucatan , with authority to serve as ecclesiastical judges and to perform all episcopal functions.
Under Landa's auspicies as prelate, the ‘investigations’ were brutally carried out, imprisoning many Indians, torturing them, and eventually convoking the infamous ‘auto de fé’ of Maní on Sunday, July 12, 1562. In addition to digging up the bodies of dead backsliders and burning them, he ‘relaxed’ several of the village caciques to the Spanish civil authorities, who promptly executed them.
This was done so that the Religious would not be seen to have blood on their hands. Then, in front of the assembled Spanish guests from all over Mexico, as well as crowds of Indians who had been forced to attend the proceedings by gun-toting Spanish Marines, he ordered statues and idols destroyed and burned a 27 codices.

His own words set the scene:

“We found a large number of books in these characters and, as they contained nothing in which there were not to been seen superstition and lies of the devil, we burned them all, which they regretted to an amazing degree, and which caused them much affliction.”

De Landa described the codices that he had seen, and later burned, as:

“...books were written on a large sheet doubled in folds, which was enclosed entirely between two boards which they decorated, and they wrote on both sides in columns following the order of the folds. And they made this paper of the roots of a tree and gave it a white gloss upon which it was easy to write. And some of the principal lords learned about these sciences from curiosity and were very highly thought of on this account although they never made use of them publicly."

But De Landa was not the only Spaniard present at his event, and the Indians were not the only ones who were upset by his actions. An eyewitness wrote:

"Thus he collected the books and the ancient writing and he commanded them burned and tied up. They burned many historical books of the ancient Yucatan which told of its beginning and history, which were of much value if, in our writing, they had been translated because today there would be something original. At best there is no great authority for more than the traditions of these Indians."

And another wrote:

"With the suspicion of this idolatry, they collected all the books and ancient writings which the Indians had and in order to erase all the danger and memory of their ancient rites, as many as they were able to find were burned publicly on the day of the "auto" and at the same time with this (were destroyed) the history of their antiquities."

There were many Spaniards there that day, and more than a few of them did not agree with the actions of Provincial De Landa:

“In the province of Iucatan, where is the so-called Bishopric of Honduras, there used to exist some books of leaves, bound or folded after fashion, in which the learned Indians kept the distribution of their times and the knowledge of plants, animals and other things of nature and the ancient customs, in a way of great neatness and carefullness.
It appeared to a teacher of doctrine that this must be to make witchcraft and magic art; he contended that they should be burned and those books were burned and afterwards not only the Indians but many eager-minded Spaniards who desired to know the secrets of that land felt badly.
Afterwards some of our friars understood and knew how to read them, and even wrote them, but because in these books were mixed many things of idolatry, they burned almost all of them, and thus was lost the knowledge of many ancient matters of that land which by them could have been known. It is shocking to realize that some friars could read and write the Maya hieroglyphs, and that we ourselves have been studying already all a century long to know so little of the writing system. We have to find the note-books of these friars in order to move ahead faster.”

From 1545 to 1562, when Toral arrived in Yucatán, the ecclesiastical affairs were in the hands of the "prelados" such as De Landa.
The man who would later become Diego de Landa’s nemesis had arrived in Mexico in 1542, seven years before de Landa, but Francisco Toral was not appointed Bishop of Yucatán and Campeche and consecrated until 1562, the same year as De Landa’s Auto da fe.
Toral arrived in Yucatán on August 14, 1562, just after the famous "auto de fé" at Mani, full of anger against de Landa, disapproving his methods of christianization and "stupid zeal".
As a result of agitation among both the Indians and the Spanish, Toral demanded that De Landa and other friars, who had taken part in the Maní investigations, should be sent to Spain together with all the documents concerning the case. De Landa was recalled to Spain, but because of a shipwreck and a serious illness, it took him almost a year and a half to reach Spain in October 1564.

De Landa had his own version of the events:

"... At this time, there arrived at Campeche Fray Francisco Toral, a Franciscan friar, a native of Ubeda, who had been 20 years in the(bishopric) of Mexico, and who came now as Bishop of Yucatán. He, on the information given him by the Spaniards and on the complaints of the Indians, undid what the friars had done and ordered the prisoners to be set at liberty. the Provincial (Landa) was ordered to Spain, carrying his complaints in the first place to Mexico.
And so he came to Madrid, where the members of the Council of the Indies censured him severely on account of his having usurped the office of Bishop and Inquisitor.
He alleged as his plea the powers which his Order had received for those countries from Pope Adrian, at the request of the Emperor, and the aid which the Royal Audiencia of the Indies had ordered to be given him, similar to that which had been given to the bishops.
And the members of the Council showed still more irritation at these excuses, and resolved to send him and his papers and those which the bishop had sent against the friars to Fray Pedro de Bobadilla, the provincial of Castile, to whom the King wrote, giving him orders to look into the matter and to do justice.
And this Fray Pedro, on account of sickness, entrusted the examination of these proceedings to Fray Pedro de Guzman, one of his own order, a man learned and well experienced in matters connected with the inquisition.
There were presented the opinions of 7 learned men of the kingdom of Toledo, ...., who declared that the provincial had acted justly in making the "auto de fé", and also in the other things which he had done in punishment of the Indians...
After reviewing the case, the Council of the Indies remitted it to the Franciscan provincial of Castile, and in January 1569,Landa was acquitted and formerly absolved of the charges against him.
Moreover, he received in the convent of San Juan de la Cabrera a 'Real Cédula', saying that he was appointed Bishop on April 30,1572 by Philip II, one year after the death of his bitter enemy Toral in Mexico in April 1571. The bulls of Gregorio XIII of 15 and 16 november give all the details concerning the election and relative explanations.
In 1572 he sailed away from Sevilla for Yucatan.

The natives gave him a great welcome, and he remained as Bishop until he died in Mérida, April 29, 1579, at the age of 54.
Seen through the reversed telescope of history, De Landa’s actions appear unnecessarily cruel and autocratic, but many of his actions were dictated by the circumstances and the times in which he found himself. On one hand, he was sincerely friendly to the natives, whom he protected constantly from slavery and from the violent acts of the conquerers.
To be fair, it is necessary to look at the situation. De Landa himself was not a conqueror, yet he effectively found himself and relatively few Spanish in control of the occupation of millions upon millions of Indians. Under the circumstances he simply could not afford to show weakness, nor was it in the Spanish character to do so.
The most interesting thing about De Landa is that, having consigned the culture and history of the Maya to the fire, he suddenly experienced a remarkable turnaround in writing the document that originally provided us with most of what we knew about them.
The present document which we know as ‘Relación de las cosas de Yucatán’ is only a copy of a part of the original manuscript which is lost. Many chapters are missing which indicates that the original manuscript was much longer than the one which is now available.
The manuscript was doubtless written during the two years that De Landa spent confined to a monastery while awaiting trial on the charges before The Council of The Indies.
Some might say that De Landa underwent an epiphany while confined, and resolved to undo all the harm that he had done by the destruction of the Indian artifacts. Those more cynical might allege that De Landa underwent a ‘Jailhouse Conversion’, and that his manuscript was a self-serving ‘mea culpa’ designed solely to exonerate himself.
Landa’s little book presents almost every phase of the social anthropology of the ancient Mayas, the history of the Spanish discovery and conquest, the native and ecclesiastical history, religion and rituals, and the first knowledge of the hieroglyphic writing as well as the symbols of days and months, their ancient matters and their sciences, their methods of administration and religion and education.
Bursting out of the strictures of his calling after being ignored by the Spanish bureaucracy, De Las Casas produced a little book called "Brevísima Relacion de la Destruycion de las Indias" and in it he documented (and maybe even fabricated a little) the sufferings that were being inflicted upon the Indians. Slavery, torture, rape, murder, tearing apart by wild dogs, burning alive; nothing was beyond this little book.
It was a horror in Spain and the Catholic world and set off a storm of controversy, but in England and the Protestant countries it was a ‘godsend’ (no pun intended). This was the beginnings of the legendary cruelty of the Spaniards and the unbelievable excesses of the Inquisition, and this indoctrination was so successful that the legend still persists until this very day. That is what was called ‘The Black Legend’.”
“All right, but that was 500 years ago. What the hell has that got to do with the Church hiding the codices?”
“Because bringing out the codices at this time would bring the whole thing to life all over again, the Church and its treatment of the Indians.”
“I still don’t see where they would have a motive to keep the codices hidden?”
“Then you don’t understand what is happening to the Catholic Church, not only here in Central America, but all through the Americas.”
“Okay, what is happening?”
“The Church is under serious attack from many competing doctrines. Most particularly the Evangelicals who are gaining converts by the thousands every day, and even the Mormons have made serious inroads.”
“I’m sorry, Tatiana. Maybe I’m dense, but I don’t see what anthropology has to do with religion.”
“You must be. The Catholic vs. Protestant clash has been revived right here, and if you add into the mix the Church hiding the sacred books of the Maya, I don’t know what the result would be, but it would be catastrophic for the Church.”
“Okay, but maybe there is a way around it.”
“Really? I can’t see what it might be, Mitch.”
“What about the codices that have been found to date?”
“Yes, what about them?” “Well, Tatiana, where and how were they found?”
“Always under strange circumstances where there is no provenance, Mitch.”
“How about where they were found?”
“In various European cities. Do you see some significance in that?”
“Not really, Tatiana, but I do see significance in where they were not found.”
“I’m sorry, Mitch, but I don’t understand.”
“Well, for instance, they were not found in the Vatican. Not in the archives of the Franciscans, but most importantly, they were not found at a Maya site.”
“So they may have all been in the Vatican?”
“Why put that in the past tense, Tatiana?”
“Oh, now you think the rest of them might be in the Vatican?” Tatiana said archly.
Mitch was pensive. “No, I didn’t say all of them were in the Vatican, because there are probably hundreds of them still left, but I think that some of them are still hidden away in the Vatican.” It just seems so coincidental that of all the found codices, not one of them comes with any sort of explanation about where they have been, or how they got there. Sounds strange to me.”
“Okay, so what do we do next?”
Mitch was frustrated. “Oh, I don’t know. What do you say we find ourselves a big, fat cathedral, and ask them if we can dig up their floor.”
“No, I’m serious, Mitch.”
“And I’m not?”
“You might as well suggest we go to Rome and dig around the Vatican.”
“Yeah? Well, that’s what I’d really like to do, Tatiana, but we can’t.”
“Why not?”
“Well, for two reasons, Tatiana. One, because we have promised not to ‘out’ the codices to the world, and, two, because if we went up to the Vatican and banged on the door, asking about something that could revive the ‘Black Legend’, we would likely wind up very dead.”
“Okay, so we need to be a little circumspect.”
“Yeah, Tatiana, you might say that.”
“Well then, do you have any suggestions as to how we might proceed?”
“Oh shit!
Tatiana was confused. She didn’t know what kind of a response ‘Oh shit!’ was, until she turned in the direction that Mitch was looking and saw the unsmiling face of Commandante Luis Cervantes Obregon de la Madrid. He was striding toward them, dressed in his overpressed camis, but he was accompanied by two Mexican Army Colonels in the traditional dress of ‘Pinks’ that echoed the WWII uniform of American Army officers... all of them carried sidearms.
LUNCH WITH THE COMMANDANTE

“Senor Mitch and the Professora Knossorov, how pleasant it is to again make your acquaintance. I do hope that you have not come to Maasul for some purpose that might be construed as illegal.”
“We are tourists, Commandante.” Said Mitch.
“Just as I am the Queen of England, Senor y Professora.”
“What can we do for you, Commandante?”
“Well, you could start by leaving my Country.”
“Why would we want to do that?”
“So that you might avoid my prosecution for the interfering with the heritage of our nation.”
“Exactly how do you think that we are interfering?”
“You are looking for the codices. We know. We have the information. We know from our Orejas, our Ears.”
“Look, Commandante, we are simply going to some of the ruins looking for possible sites for future investigations.”
The Commandante backhanded Mitch, who went to the ground while Tatiana screamed, but was held back by the two army officers.
“Get up, you liar.” The Commandante yelled and pointed at Mitch. “You think we not know about the Masuul codex?”
Mitch levered himself up off the ground, the Commandante’s red handprint visible on his right cheek. “Hey, look. I am an American citizen, and I demand my rights to contact my Embassy.”
The Commandante laughed. “Look about you, Gringo. We are here in La Selva. I don’t see no Embassy here. Here, I am the law. I decide who you call, not you! I will tell you what rights you have in my Country!”
It was time for Tatiana to speak up. “Hey. Commandante, you better tell these goons to let go of me. I don’t know about Mitch here, but I have contacts in this country of yours, and I demand that we be treated with respect and allowed to contact our Embassy.”
“You demand? YOU DEMAND?” He roared. Here in my jungle, estupido Gringa, you demand nothing. I care nothing for your contactos.” When it comes to INAH matters, I am the only contacto”. He had puffed out his chest and crooked his arm, pointing to his chest with his thumb. His face was red and his eyes glittered.
He walked over to where she was being held between the two army officers. “You demand, Professora? You are in Mexico. You are an anthropologist. You are conducting an investigation. “Where is your license for this investigation, Professora who demands? I have information that an artifact of the heritage of my Country was sent to Los Estados Unidos for examination. Where is your permit to send our patrimony to your country? Eh, Professora who demands?”
“Senor Commandante, an anthropologist can be a tourist just as anyone else. An anthropologist can be as curious as anyone else. If you have the evidence that something crossed the border illegally, then arrest us. I don’t think you have that evidence.”
The Commandante began to look like a balloon that had been pumped too full of air and was about to fly away with a flatulent WWHHHOOOOSSHH! “And do I not have the evidence that you have been translating the Maasul Codex? Do I not have the paper with a translation in your own writing? Was this not an investigation? Where is your permit for such an investigation? Where is the Mexican anthropologist who would be assigned with such a permit? Did he get lost? Did he take a wrong turn at the last Maya ruin?” Now that he thought he was on solid ground, the Commandante was smiling with an evil grin.
“No, Commandante. Contrary to what you may believe, my scribbled notes about a Codex are not an investigation requiring a permit. If I was here on a scientific expedition with a specific purpose. If, during that investigation I had disturbed or otherwise interferred with an in situ artifact, you might have a point, but if all I did was look at an already separated Codex and not remove it, then your Government has no case. Comprende?
“You tell to me the laws of Mexico? Maybe I just shoot you one time, and then see if you tell to me my own laws.”
“Give it up, Commandante. All you’re building here is an international incident. Why don’t you just let us go, and we’ll forget the whole thing.”
Maybe the Commandante had enough of Tatiana, and now turned to Mitch, who had been standing by quietly all this time, figuring that Tatania was doing just fine. The furious Commandante wagged an angry finger at Mitch, and said “Ju een beeg trouble, Senor.” Then he just walked away. The two army officer dropped Tatiana’s arms as if they had suddenly become superheated, and left to follow the Commandante.
Just then Max walked up with sandwiches in waxed paper, but the two of them skewered him with such looks that he immediately turned and walked away.
Mitch turned to Tatiana. “What the hell was that all about with the boy Colonel?”
“I don’t know, Mitch. Your boy, the Commandante definitely has issues with us.”
“Yeah”, Mitch said, fingering the mark that still marked his face. “The old bastard has a bug up his butt about something.”
“Well, it seems to me that he somehow turns up where we are. I wonder why that is? I wonder how that is?”
Mitch thought for a moment. “You know, I thought that I knew who the Commandante was. I thought he was some bigwig in the San Cristobal cops, but I don’t think so anymore. Maybe he’s with he PRI. Maybe with the army. Maybe with INAH, but I think he has more clout than we ever imagined.”
“Do you think he is a danger to us?”
“Hell, yes, Tatiana.”
“Do you have any idea what he wants?”
“Maybe he wants the same thing we want.”
“Do you think he even knows what we want, Mitch?”
“Yes, I think so.”
“But how could he know?”
“Tatiana, remember the fires in Xibalba? I’m sure that the Commandante has people there. He talked about the Orejas, his Ears? Those are the secret police in Mexico, or maybe just the paid informers. That’s where he gets his information.”
“But why would he care what we’re doing?”
“Well, maybe he is what he says he is, and he’s worried that we’ll take some artifact out of the country.”
“You think so, Mitch?
“Not really. Maybe he thinks we really have a chance to find the codices, and to the wrong people, they could mean an awful lot of money.”
“Yes, we all know that these artifacts are worth considerable money to certain parties, but for us they are for the world to treasure.”
“Yeah, yeah. Very noble of you. I’m sure that the Commandante feels that same way.”
“What, you think all Mexican officials are corrupt?”
“Hey! I’m not talking about all.”
“Yes, but...”
Mitch started, and put up his hand to stop Tatiana. “...Tatiana, wait a minute. Remember the shooting at Na Bolom?”
“How could I forget?”
“Remember who showed up unexpectedly right afterward?”
“You mean the Commandante, Mitch?”
“Coincidence? Do you think?”
“As coincidental as any of the other times, I guess.”
“I don’t believe in coincidences, Tatiana. ‘specially when they happen serially.”
“Another conspiracy, Mitch?”
“You know, sometimes there really are conspiracies.”
“Okay, let’s say you’re right, what do we do about it?”
“I don’t see that we can do very much about it. We can either continue on as we are, but watch our backs, or we can scamper back to the U.S. like frightened rabbits.”
“I’m not really much of a scamperer, Mitch.”
“Okay, that’s settled then. You know, I’ve been thinking about your theory. The one about the Cathedrals.”
“It’s just a theory, Mitch, there is nothing to prove it, nothing whatsoever...”
“Except what De Landa said, and it makes sense. Even today, when the Indians worship at the churches, often it is the ‘old gods’ that they are worshipping.”
“It doesn’t really matter. There is no way to prove out my theory.”
“Right. We’d need a way, an excuse, to get Indian workers in to work on the floor of the altar.”
“Do you have any ideas, Mitch?”
“Chan K’in would get us the workers, Tatiana.”
“That’s only a very small part of the problem.”
Mitch thought for a minute, and then a light seemed to come into his eyes. “Wait a minute. Maybe we’re looking at this the wrong way.”
“The wrong way? How?”
“We’ve been talking about digging up the altar so we can get under the floor, Tatiana.”
“So?”
“Tatiana, what would you think about digging up from underneath?”
“You mean running a tunnel under the floor, Mitch?”
“Why not? The Maya know all about tunneling from their cavern experiences.”
“We could do it at night, and if we keep the noise down, nobody will ever know what we’re doing.”
“Where do you think we should start,Tatiana ?”
“I think... maybe the cathedral in San Cristobal?”
“Well, maybe, but what about the Cathedral at Mani, where the Auto da fe was? Seems to me that would be an ironic touch, to be worshipping the old gods in the church where the friars tried to destroy the old gods. What do you think, Tatiana?”
“Oh, Mani is as good as any, I guess.”
“You know, now that I think about it, we do need a place to start, and at least I have some knowledge of San Cristobal. I even went to the church and asked about the tunnels underneath and they said there weren’t any, but I know there are. During the ‘Cristeros rebellion’ the believers hid out from the troops in those same tunnels, so I know they are there.”
“And how do we find them if the church says they don’t exist?”
“Chan K’in, Tatiana. Our old friend Chan K’in.”
CAN YOU DIG IT?
Back in Xibalba, Chan K’in was waiting for them, knew they were about to arrive.
“So you found one of your codices.”
Mitch was surprised that Chan K’in knew. “So you knew about the codex?”
“Of course.”
“So why didn’t you tell me, Chan K’in?”
“I had to know if it was important enough for you to follow the quest.”
“So what did you find out?”
“I found out that you had enough... enough, curiosity, at least, Mitch.” “Enough for what?”
“Enough to find a codex, but also to find an enemy.”
“An enemy?”
“The Commandante. He is your enemy, you know.”
“I think I understand that, but I don’t know why he is my enemy.”
“Don’t you have any ideas as to why?”
“Well, as I see it, either he’s worried that we might steal an artifact, or he wants what we find for himself.”
“Too simple, Mitch. The Commandante might be ridiculous, but he is one thing above all. He is a patriot.”
“A patriot to Mexico?”
“Well... Not really to Mexico. More to his idea of Mexico. He is not concerned that you seek, but he is concerned that you might find.”
“Find what?”
“A reason for the Maya to be equal to the conquerors. A reason for the Maya to take their rightful place among civilized nations.”
“Your saying his reason is political?”
“Of course it’s political.”
“Chan K’in, he would kill us for politics?”
“Are you being serious? What do you think most killings are for? He and his kind kill to protect their privileged lives. He kills so that we will not prevail.”
“Well, what? Are you willing to let him win?”
“Mitch, the plain truth is, we don’t know how to make him lose.”
“The codices are a way.”
“Do you know where they are?”
“The messengers that took the codices from Maasul...?”
“Their car was run off the road in Texas. It went down an incline and exploded. A fireball. Nothing and nobody left. That avenue is closed.”
“Do they know who did it?”
“They don’t, but we do. Make sure it doesn’t happen to you.”
“Do you have a plan, a place to look?”
“We think so, but we’ll need some help.”
“Whatever we can do, we will do.”
“Why the change of heart, Chan K’in?”
“It is because we are afraid. The Conquistadores still chase us after all of these years, but now they would not only destroy our bodies, but our heritage as well. They are too close now. They are even in among us. We must fight, and our weapon is the codices and what they have to tell.”
“We found the one.”
“You found the one that has the least importance to our survival. It is but our history, and there is nothing there that might make a contribution to the world today. Nothing that would raise our level of respect in the eyes of the world.”




Enough trouble with CM Priests
Crumbled into dust
Catacombs
THE BEGINNING

“What the fuck am I doing here?” Mitch was running down the unbelievably empty Calle 17th de Noviembre at 11:30 at night in San Cristobal de Las Casas, a Spanish colonial town in the highlands of Mexico down near the Guatemalan border.
His name was Mitch Claremont and he was tall, built like the linebacker he had never been. His full head of black hair was buzzed because he couldn’t be bothered with the daily hassle, and his glacier-blue eyes were almost pin-pointed by the gold-rimmed aviator-style coke-bottle bottom glasses that he needed to avoid carrying a white cane. He was burnt brown by the sun of the last two years he had spent in Mexico.
Before that he had been fishbelly museum and classroom white, the brilliant flourescents of the Sebastian College in Kansas, leaving little evidence of exposure. His doctorate, and his field while there had been Civil War battlefields.
While teaching there, his academic uniform had been the same for years. Pale blue button-down shirt with a dark conservative tie. His somewhat corpulent 40-year-old figure hopefully disguised by the ubiquitous blue blazer with silver buttons. Gray flannel pants and tasseled black loafers completed the serious picture he presented to his peers.
Since his escape (well, maybe he had been pushed out, a little, after the disaster in Maasul) from the limited indoor arena of academia, he had knocked around the Yucatan, until the courtesy of a small private grant allowed him to hold a seminar of 8 graduate students in the Chiapas Highland town of San Cristobal De Las Casas.
He had been able to indulge his passion for the Maya on their own homegrounds, even though the small college where he had taught had no real standing within the community of Mayanists. In truth he had almost no training in the field, but he often felt that it provided him with freedom from orthodoxy, allowing him to explore areas that others skirted. Since then, climbing and trekking had somewhat streamlined his frame, but he was still monstrous when compared to the little Maya.
His physical health was good, but his emotional well-being had been wrecked two years before by the loss of his wife and four kids in an auto collision with a drunk-driver. Lightly-bearded and big-eared, his pleasant face was beginning to age in the great furrows that started down from his nose and often crumpled his forehead in a smile. He didn’t drink, but he did smoke the occasional cigar.
Jeans and polos or sweatshirts with New Balance high-tops were now the uniform of the day, but the clunky glasses remained.
The whole town was jumpy. It had only been a couple of weeks since the Zapatista rebels had briefly seized the town overnight and then melted away without incident in the morning, leaving the military
to return to their vigilance, as vigilant they ever could be, toting their mismatched automatic rifles and scaring the hell out of the town residents.
Outside the town, out of the sight of the pesky tourists and newspeople, it was a different story. The military and their unrecognized allies, the paramilitaries, the private armies of the growers, invaded Maya villages, killing in wholesale lots.
He could hear the rapid, staccato, echoing clacking of their bootheels on the sidewalk behind him as the bastards chased him. Served him right. He knew better than to be out alone at night in the capital of rebel activity. He knew of the kidnappings for ransom, but he knew it could never happen to him. Criminal activity there in the picturesque colonial city never crossed his mind.
Too bad.
The first he had known about it, one of the sons-a-bitches hit him a glancing blow over the head, must have been hiding in a doorway, and the next thing he knew, he was down flat on his stomach, staring at the cobblestones of the street.
When his vision cleared, all he could see was a dusty black Mexican cowboy boot, elaborately tooled, and with a pointed sterling silver boot tip. ‘Cowboy Boot’ was arguing with someone, and from his extremely limited Spanish Mitch was able to pick up that they were hassling about what to do with his body. Since they seemed to be pretty well ignoring him, he rolled away, leapt up and ran like hell. So here he was, and now the bastards were chasing him again!
It was his second night in San Cristobal, and at that time he and his student group was still staying at the Na Bolom on the outskirts of the downtown area, a couple of miles from the Cathedral, but that night he’d been drinking with several of the students in the bars along Real de Guadaloupe, ending up at the Hotel Rincon del Arco, and he had decided to walk back up to Na Bolom against advice. After all, it was only a few blocks. That’s when it happened.
After he started running he realized that he had no idea where to go, that he was just running aimlessly away from the two assholes that were following. He ran and ran, until he was dripping with sweat and exhausted, his breath rasping in his throat, running through the echoing and empty streets, brightly lit by a full moon.
Suddenly, through the broken rhythm of running, he heard the sound of raucous Ranchero music coming from up ahead, echoing from a large private hall emblazoned with the name El Molino Rojo. The name was lit by floodlights focused on the outside brick wall where the copper letters stood out.
He ran into the place to find what looked like a wedding party in full swing, and many of the 500 or so guests were more than a little drunk, not really surprising in a town where there was at least one Grupo Alcoholico on every block, and the meetings went on ‘round the clock.
In that way he escaped the bandidos that were chasing him. He waited a little while and then went out through the back door, eventually wandering down until he hit the main street and took a taxi back to Na Bolom.
That was also when he learned not to take a foreign country for granted, no matter how charming it seemed.

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