The Puuc Route of the Yucatan

Pyramid of the Dwarf, Uxmal

A region in the Yucatan of rare hills (Puuc in Mayan) has a network of beautiful classical Mayan cities. The Puuc Route once teemed with many thousands of inhabitants, mostly tillers of the land in a dense region, around 600-1000 AD. The Puuc Region had extensive trade networks in the Classical era, and exported salt, honey, cotton feathers and wax for scarce items like obsidian. It flourished thanks to the development of underground water cisterns to catch the rain, called chultunes, which could hold up to 35,000 liters of water each.

So we headed south from Merida over the riverless limestone peninsula, passing truckloads of doomed pigs. Hawks soared and a few vultures stood by the road, sometimes even at bus stops.

Serpents of the sky, hiboux of the night

Uxmal

The beautiful Uxmal, "thrice built" center of power had no crowds to distract from the pale, cleanly restored architecture gleaming like the snakeskin it is meant to represent. It once covered 12 square km, with 20,000 people, but now we see only the civic and religious center. It had been built, legend had it, by a dwarf who defeated the old ruler with magic, aided by his mother the witch. The pyramid of the dwarf stands in silent dignity over the elaborately decorated courtyards on its west, and the intertwined levels of buildings like man-made hills. Inside the courtyards are beautifully faced buildings, with a gentler narrative than Chichen Itza and much more beautiful: birds, two-headed serpents and the mosaic "jalousies," diamond patterns resembling serpent scales, large masks, many of Chaac the rain god. Inside, under the peaked Mayan vaults, is coolness, guano, iguanas and sometimes the sense of an intimate, dangerous presence. The "Birds' Courtyard" has clearly defined themes on each of its four sides, of serpents, hiboux for the day and the night, and of course Chaac. Another cluster is around the

The "Cemetery", Uxmal

Governor's palace on whose roof is a serpentine design made of Chaac masks. W e climbed the Great Temple Pyramid to the Temple of Macaw where we could the priest's head emerging from the mouth of the terrestrial monster on two undamaged corners, a common symbolism. A simple and dignified House of the Turtles (900-1000 AD) showed the esteem toward these important animals, part of the Aquatic Cult.

We found an unadvertised area called "The Cemetery", a latter day name, decorated with skulls, bones, eyeballs and other

macabre symbols. But no explanation for it was given.

Temple of the Masks, Kabah

The second power was Kabah (The Powerful Hand), occupied since 500 AD, but mainly built later. The temple of the masks (decorated with 300 Chaac masks) bears systematic decorative motifs. Snake elements, like rattles, compose the Chaac faces. You can climb it to find 1 1/2 magnificent nobles, larger than life, standing at the decorative roof level. Only the Northern, aristocratic site has begun to be excavated. Across the road of Kabah is its famous Arch,

which has slight remains of red handprints, and the beginning of a sacbe (earth road) to Uxmal.

Lords of Kabah

Not far off is the third great city of Sayil, the densest area in the Puuc where 10,000 once lived, as well as a suburb of 7,000, in 700-1000 AD. Its glorious palace looks almost Minoan, with a roseate, monumental surface decorated with columns and masks. The 90 rooms (and 8 chultunes) could have housed 350 inhabitants but its actual history is not well understood. Flocks of red swallows lived inside the palace, spread their rusty wings and zoomed around us. They slithered up trees, lizard-like, as we walked further on the raked red soil to see more fragmentary buildings--a mirador with semi-collapsed rooms and a ragged comb on top, a half buried temple with blackened doorways, one with glyphs--a mount of rubble

Palace of Sayil

surmounted by remnants of a classic Puuc temple.

For lunch we went to the little village of Santa Elena there are, unusually, a "Bed and Breakfast" and a "Flycatcher's Inn" among others. We ate at a comfortable restaurant Chaac Mol filled with round women and children, geese and roosters, the cook over an open air fire. The large menu included vegetarian, the women were infinitely sweet, and we chatted with a bright eyed couple from northern New Mexico. (They later told us that lunch led to La Turista---but that was one day when my stomach was fine.)

Xlapac

These archeological sites seem all to have live-in guardians who keep sweet dogs, and close down at 4:30, so we attempted only one more that day, Xclapac, free of charge. In the red woods of this land of rare fertile soil, under slender rustling trees of mangroves and mimosas, the afternoon's fierceness had abated. We had a pleasant stroll to see a palace in Puuc style, a classical austere style compared with the hectic Chaac masks of the Chene style. The Chaac masks survived through the eras, along with other motifs such as a zigzag named for the centipede, chimez. The other Americans pulled in as we were pulling out, as the guardian watched TV without moving, and we drove off through gentle forest preserves to reach the

highway.

The Arch of Labna

On another day, the Mayan city of Labna cast an immediate spell. A wind blew the heat along under the bluest sky and trees creaked and spoke while palm leaves beat out rhythms in their dry restlessness. The palace, in its chaotic condition, was still beautifully, stately Puuc. We crossed the old plaza, on a sacbe, to the mirador, high on a pile of stones, that once held ball players standing on its high comb. Labna's arch is famous, with its remnants of decor, as is the Temple of Columns.

Nearby are the caves of Loltun, caves that had been inhabited from 10,000 years ago through the 19th c. Bones of the Pleistocene era, of mammals that have been extinct 14,000 years, have been found there. Pottery remains date from 1000BC-1250 AD. At the entrance is an Olmec-style frieze (500 BC) of the god Shibalba, of the underworld. Our chatty guide worked hard for his only pay, our tip, almost like a clever street guy from the Bay Area, gordito with a wispy

Shibalba, 500 BC, Loltun

Traps of mastadons, Loltun

Genghis Khan beard. He told us his theory that the Olmecs were Mongolians. His version of the Mayan story is that his ancestors were peacefully meditating in their caves till the Olmec introduced human sacrifice to please a whole pantheon of gods. According to his world view. the Mayan long count has been a long history of autodestruction. Now the new era provides the return to the peaceful roots. Do the Mayan villagers believe that? I asked. They live in fear of the Catholic church, but they feel it. We felt disoriented by his narrative and the spell of the beautiful cool caverns whose rocks told geologic and human time stretching back so many thousands of years. This was the realm that opened to the underworld in an older religion of light and dark, the living and the dead. Cenotes (sinkholes) opened up to the sky, but without water. Mastadons and sabre toothed tigers used to be trapped in

Handprints almost 10,000 years old

them. The Mayans covered the holes and stampeded them across. But now they are idyllic, dripping with green and sunlight from above.

Rutos de los Conventos of the Yucatan

St. Anthony of Padua, Tekit

From Merida there is an excursion through some of the villages of today's Maya, with beautiful churches of yesterday's Spanish, called La Ruta de los Conventos. We joined the route at a simple, dusty village in the outskirts of Merida, Kanasin, with an endless traffic jam of bicycle rickshaws, a busy market and countless stray dogs, to reach Acanceh, the first stop. Named "the moan of the deer" in Mayan, for the sound the Spanish heard on their arrival, Acanceh is made imposing by the 17th c gold painted Franciscan church, looming over a dusty parking lot and market. The church inside retains little of its former glory, quite spare with the purple-vested priest sitting on the side hearing confession. In fact, my impression of Acanceh was of difficult lives, human and canine, in the eyes of the lame beggars who approached us, in the market, in the huge dusty parking lot, in the eyes of the local men lined up to monitor the "modern" banos.

Defaced stucco mask, Acanceh

Squirrel god frieze at Acanceh

On either side of the mighty cathedral were Mayan ruins. Ancient Acanceh had flourished 300-600 AD when it had 400 structures and covered 4 square kilometers. The nearby pyramid protected five defaced stucco masks, 600-800 AD. The medium of stucco was easier to work than limestone and such masks have a beautiful realism, heavy Mayan symbolism, but vulnerability to damage. These were already defaced by the time they were uncovered in the 20th c. A few hundred metres away another pyramid has rare frescoes of a monkey god, a rabbit god and a bat god. Below, crumbling stucco walls led to poverty-stricken homes, of cement or straw. The neighborhood dogs also sought their living, covered in dust and fleas.

The firecrackers at the head of the procession

The procession

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Beyond was Tecoh where the road was blocked for a procession. We found our way, nonetheless, into the village (and parked across from Internet/Facebook/Skype Tecoh) on a route through the merciful shade of private yards, filled with makeshift arrangements of plastic containers, whose homes were concrete boxes or corrugated tin or traditional grass shacks. The procession, carrying a statue of the Virgin, approached the huge cathedral sitting atop the foundation of a destroyed Mayan pyramid. First came the men with firecrackers, then the young clergy in maroon and white robes, swinging incense, then swarmed the families, women in their pretty huipil, generations clinging to each other. Finally rickshaws brought up the infirm and the 1%. Inside the packed Cathedral a lush tenor sang something close to a mariachi song, people lined up with flowers and sprigs of green, to feed the large doll which had been carried there. Families squirmed all around. We walked through the convent, or rather monastery, with its comfortable, clean luxury and incredibly well stocked liquor cabinet. The crowds dispersed under the relentless sun, along dusty calles lined with crumbling stucco bars and convenience stores. Under the wilting sun it took forever to exit the dense village.

Mayapan

The next stop on the route is the archeological site of Mayapan, the last great Mayan settlement (1250-1450), thought by some to have been built by the Toltec conqueror Kukulcan. It is a minature of Chichen Itza, as many of the late Mayan cities seemed to have a reduced scale. Beautifully articulated pyramids and an astronomical cylinder tower bear remnants of decor. There are a few remaining masks of the rain god Chaac, a beautiful blue floor painting of an aquatic scene, frescoes of decapitated warriors, remnants of color. There were once 4,000 buildings, the vast majority still unexcavated, and many cenotes. There is dispute--having survived the fall of Chichen Itza--was Mayapan the conqueror of that huge realm?

View from a pyramid at Mayapan

We stopped for lunch at an eco hotel Na'Lu'um, Mother Earth, most unexpected on the barren roads which led to villages where not even primitive hotels could be found. I had an exquisite fruit salad but Jacques was less happy with doughy empanadas, covered nonetheless with perfect tomato sauce.

Spanish colonial pulpit, Tekit

The village of Tekit, where we went another day, had a more comfortable feel, much of the cement painted at least on the facade, and small tokens of decor, but still even more grass huts in the yards. These sometimes housed livestock, but mostly were spare living spaces with hammocks hanging inside. Some had becomes kitchens, some had TVs in the concrete lined interior, the exterior made of sticks and straw. The interiors of these traditional dwelling places feel soothing. The monumental church was dedicated to St. Anthony of Padua.

Convent at Mama

In Mama, where there is the oldest convent, we walked in the grassy yard toward the old stone blocks of a cloister, where two small teenagers emerged looking guilty. In an adjoining yard where a handsome Mayan woman was flinging palmetto leaves by her grass hut of rooster cages, and horse with a graing face stood tied, there was an old crumbling stone dome, perhaps the bishop's old house. Carefully enclosed in lower stone walls was some kind of Mayan ruin. The heat was devastating but school kids wore uniforms and some sweaters. At length we were led by a young man's rickshaw taxi in Ticul to the restaurant Los Almendros, where we ate under a grass roof in a grassy lawn bya pool, with swings from the trees and suspicious dogs, the only customers for the twinkly-eyed, hairnet-wearing staff.

At Chumayel

We wound back hoping to find churches had opened. Chumayel was, famous for being where the Chilim Balam had been found. During the years of the Spanish conquest in Yucatan, a chilam or witch named Balam (Jaguar) prophesied the arrival of Christianity, the war and the final enslavement of the Mayas. With the passage of centuries, other Chilamob added myths, legends, cryptic poetry in the voices of gods, histories, lineages, divine deeds, peregrinations, real and magic battles, explanations of celestial phenomena, and laments over the cruelty experienced in those times so difficult, as well as spells and incantations. Small and simple, the church's retable was lovely in the dim light, where the black crucified Christ with his embroidered diaper was almost invisible behind glass. The old spirits of the church hovered around two Mayan ladies as we wandered to the bare, except for another bloody yet immaculately diapered crucifixion, stucco cloister.

From Chilim Balam

Mani

The impressive pink Mani convent where de Landa had burned 700 books was closed, but preparations were under way for a rodeo in the stifling heat. A slab of bark, with some stone architectural frgments had a quote from Chilim Balam: "Life is wilting and the heart of its flowers is dead. And those who put their cup down to the bottom, those who stretch it until it breaks, damage and suck the flowers of the others."

Cloister at Mama

The oldest village, Mama, was beautiful, with its original wood painted retable, several chapels, and quaint Spanish colonial pulpits. Kids followed us, giggling, into the church were swallows zoomed. Behind the church, we entered the old convent with its atrium of palm trees and cool separate rooms under log ceilings, where mothers and children met in the various rooms, discussing, singing, working. It was a beautiful haven for mothers in the evening hours, to gather and bring their children. All these Franciscan buildings had been built on Mayan ruins, with Mayan stone, by the hands of the Mayan slaves. And in Mama, the ornate dense swirling carvings on the portal had been rendered by Mayan stone masons. We drove home in the dark, the small roads more mysterious than ever.

Chichen Itza and Human Sacrifice

Pyramid of Kulkulcan

Of all the archeological sites of the Yucatan, only the ancient city of Chichen Itza--"Mouth of the Well" or "City of Water Witches"--is mobbed with tourists and souvenirs. Well restored and vast, it was a powerful city of the late Mayan era (11-13th c.) that blended Mexican cultures under the Toltec symbol of the feathered serpent, reaching a large Mayan trade network. The friezes carved into its monuments have clear, often brutal images of skeletons and jaguars and eagles feasting on human hearts, with a theme of human sacrifice. Rebuilt numerous times over the 1500 years of its existence, it displays a blend of Mayan Puuc and Chene styles with the powerful Toltec style.

Steps of the pyramid

Proud and fierce are the first impressions on entering the site (after running the gauntlet of tour guides, souvenir hawkers, multiple charges at the ticket counter, not to mention the heat of the day) where the first pyramid, the Kulkulcan Pyramid (named for the cult of Quetzacoatl, Kulkulcan in Yucatec) is 25 meters high and an architectural calendar, with 365 steps and levels corresponding to the Mayan calendar. On the days of the equinoxes, the steps cast a lengthening shadow that resembles the great serpent himself descending down the pyramid to earth.

Toltec style serpents above and jaguars below

Head of Kulkulcan

Chichen Itza was a place of pilgrimage (and human sacrifice) even when it was not a great power, and its main cenote, or sinkhole (7 fathoms deep), was a sacred place where countless bones, jewelry and other artifacts have been excavated. The US Consul to the Yucatan in 1900, Edward Thompson, bought the ruin of Chichen Itza for himself and shipped its countless precious artifacts off to the Peabody Museum at Harvard. During times of drought humans were thrown in for sacrifice. Another custom was to load the victim, often a child, with jewelry before tossing it in at dawn. If it was still alive by noon, it was made to prophesy.

Eagles feasting on human hearts

The northern Toltec-influenced end of Chichen Itza includes the Temple of the Jaguars and the Temple of Venus, named for the planet (a dreaded heavenly body), symbol of Kulkulcan. These bear symbols of eagles and jaguars feasting on human hearts. On the temple of a thousand pillars, high above, the face of the semi-mythological Kulkulcan (Quexacoatl) emerges from the mouth of the terrestrial monster. This motif is repeated throughout the Mayan world: the king emerges from multiple layers of existence, monsters, dragons, mythical amphibians and birds disgorge one another and, finally, disgorge the king.

Decapitation--snakes and flowers gush out with the blood

The most important ball court in the Mayan world is one of the ten at Chichen Itza. The ball game, which was older than Greek or Chinese games by many centuries, culminated in the beheading of the leader of the losing team, and probably the teammates as well. On the smudged walls of the ball court the theme is repeated over and over, the captain seated or kneeling while he's decapitated, his neck sprouting serpents, flowers and symbols of the fertility that comes from death. We eavesdropped on a Spanish tour guide, who insisted that it was the winning team who was sacrificed, but most sources hold that the losers were killed. Nearby is the Tzompantli, on which every stone is engraved with a skull, another Toltec innovation.

Tzompantli

The gentler, older sites were beautifully preserved--the so-called nunnery group of elaborately decorated upper stories and combs on the roofs, dense, swirling assemblies of the rain god Chaac's masks with the elements we've seen on clay totems, bird, monster man. The colorado, the red house, ornate and solitary. The many images of the rain god, Chaac, an architectural element of the Puuc.

Chene style building

It was dramatic and interesting, and yet Chichen Itza was a circus, with vendors claiming to be the real Mayans (one of the guidebooks warned us against them) lining the ancient sacbe roads with their wares, calling out Chica! Argentine? Spanish? At the end of the day they called out: Quasi gratuito! (Almost free!) The finish they polished into their wooden masks smelled of gasoline in the jungle.

Masks of curly-nosed Chaac, the rain god

What was it like to worship gods who hated, who demanded human sacrifice like wild beasts, jaguars and eagles with their taste for human hearts? We could hear guides explaining to their tourists that the Mayans were good, gentle people, it was the Toltecs who were bad. But we would hear many Yucatecans wrestle with the fact that human sacrifice had been Mayan from the beginning, and was still practiced at the time the Spanish arrived.

Puuc style - the Colorado

Though some of the placards at various sites state that until recently the Mayan were believed to be gentle and peaceful, it is hard to believe that since Friar Diego de Landa's book, written 1563-1572, details sacrificial practices which were going on at the time. They included dancing circles around victims and systematically lettting loose arrows into their hearts (some of these victims were offered by their own parents), digging out hearts (and afterwards often the priest would wrap himself in the flayed skin of the victim), and most often dragging prisoners, who had been duly sanctified and purified, to the site of the sacrifice and slowly killing them by piercing them with spears and arrows. Miguel Angel Asturias (1899-1974), the Guatemalan Nobel laureate, grew up near the Maya, wrote:

"The warriors were dancing, raining arrows on the prisoners, fully attired and tied to the trunks of trees.
Upon the arrival of the chief, a sacrificer, dressed in black, put in his hands a blue arrow.

The sun was piercing the city, drawing its arrows with the bow of the lake,

The birds were piercing the lake, loosening their arrows with the bow of the woods.

Chene style

The warriors were forgetting their victims, careful not to wound them to death, to prolong the celebration of their agony.

The chief tightened the bow and loosened the blue arrow on the youngest of the prisoners, to mock him, to adore him. Then the warriors rained arrows on him, from far, from near, dancing to the sound of their drums."

The Spanish Conquest and Colonial Cities of the Yucatan

Spanish John the Evangelist

The Spanish burning 700 Mayan books

The Spanish Conquest of the Yucatan began in 1517 and took decades, for the Maya were a proud, resistant people, long accustomed to pain and self-sacrifice, and the jungles are tangles so thick that certain villages remained undisturbed for centuries, deep in their protection. It was a cruel conquest, made worse by the fact that the Spanish were fresh from fighting the fierce Islamic peoples in their own land. It was a complicated conquest since the mercenaries and soldiers eventually set loose on the Yucatan Peninsula were at odds with the Franciscan and Jesuit monks and friars, who fanned out to save Mayan souls, and who were at fierce odds with the Spanish settlers, in competition for Mayan slavery and products. Even among the clergy there were competitions and disagreements and at least one powerful priest was sent back to Spain to be tried for his conduct against the Indians: Friar Diego de Landa. The Spanish Conquest plays a prominent role in the Mayan story in the museums of Merida and Dzibilchaltun. In fact, many of the villages welcome you to the land of three cultures: Mayan, Spanish and modern. The conquest has many enduring stories, too numerous to recount here, but one is of Gonzalo Guerrero, a mariner who survived a shipwreck on the coast of Yucatan along with a priest. They were captured by the Maya, who kept them in cages. Eight years passed till Hernan Cortes, traveling through Yucatan, rescued the priest but Guerroro, who had married the daughter of the chief of Chetumal and had a family, refused to go with Cortes. Instead he trained the Maya in battle tactics and fought beside them against the Spanish, dying in battle.

Spanish churches were also fortresses

The visible remnants of the Spanish conquest are the colonial towns, built around village plazas before tall churches the Spanish had built (with the forced labor of the Mayans, on top of the Mayan temples they had likewise destroyed) in the 16th and 17th c. They are beautiful and lively in their centers, and celebrate the mixed Mestizan culture that resulted from the Spanish arrival. There are even small and poor villages with distinguished hulks of churches and cool cloisters, that retain significant history.

Vallodolid's Plaza

Our drive across the Yucatan Peninsula took us first to Vallodolid, whose inauspicious outskirts are low and crumbling cement buildings, rows of auto shops, hardware stores and bare dwellings. But Vallodolid's warm center radiates outward with low stucco buildings painted in bright pastels trimmed in white Spanish decor, noisy at night with brightly lit vendor carts. Children were everywhere, mostly with smartphones. Our hotel, away from the din and fumes, was a colonial oasis of bright tiles, a courtyard around a small pool, spacious rooms in a fine Spanish style. For $18 more, the famous Hotel Marquesas, filled with music and chatter and officiousness, is a somewhat kitsch but grand hotel with strange plaster statues from the Spanish world, a series of courtyards, and plenty of tourists.

Modern Folk Art at Vallodolid

Valladolid's center square has some of the most beautiful artisanal products we saw in all of Yucatan (especially the embroidery at Centro Artesanal Zaci), as well as numerous folk museums, a city hall with murals, and very little coffee except for the tourist hotels. Its tall stone church was rebuilt after the murder of colonial rulers by the revolting Maya in 1705. Down a sweet little street remade for deep-pocketed toursts, Calzada de los Frailes, is a chocolate factory and the Coqui Coqui perfume shop and hotel ($250 a night), that has been covered in a New York Times article, "Vallodolid, a City of Yucatan Cool", annointing it, somewhat bewilderingly, as the next cool thing. At the end is the San Bernadino of Siena monastery.

San Bernadino Monastery

"Outside the village, a little further than musket's shot away, there is a monastery populated by Franciscan monks who appear to be minors in age, very strong, with a vaulted church built of stonework and masonry, having a cloister of four rooms and passageways above, where there are many cells..." wrote the founders of Vallodolid, April 8, 1579. Construction began on the monastery in 1552 and ended in 1560, according to the inscription in the portico of the main entrance.

Cloister

Part fortress, part penitential quarters, it was built over the cenote, or rainwater filled sinkhole in the limestone. Artifacts have been found there, muskets and bayonets, from armed uprisings, especially the "Caste Wars" which came to this monastery.

Inside the Monastery

The monastery cloister is an orange grove is filled with palms and banana trees, next to the rough massive water wheel. Above are the monks' cells, brick red painted vaulted hallways lined with little wooden doors. Much has been looted, destroyed, profaned. Wooden crosses painted black have primitive symbols painted in a simplicitic iconography: nails, torture instruments, dice, the cock on a castle tower.

At noon the sound of gunshot or fireworks richocheted off the low, close walls. Wearily under the midday sun we wound back to see the Zaci cenote, worth the hot walk through the echoes of gunshot. Cool, messily natural, profound, beneath stalactites--if we had known how lovely, we would have swum among the little black fish.

Cenote Zaci

Then we hit the hot road, past men on bicycles with rifles over their shoulers, bicycle rickshaws under the oppressive sun, past congregations of vultures standing politely, perhaps waiting for something to die, through villages of curious people and dogs napping in the road.

Izamal's Monastery

Christ is always modestly covered

The potholed road through thickets started to improve immeasurably at Izamal, a beautifully gold painted village around another massive convent, which we would visit a few days later. This colonial town of strong character had been the headquarters for the Friar Diego de Landa, a bitter fanatic Franciscan who eventually burned 700 books of the Mayans (and a number of Mayans) but, while waiting in Spain to be tried for his overweaning role, wrote one of the most important sources we have on Mayan culture, An Account of the Things of Yucatan. Even his statue in the square acknowledges that he was a fanatical persecutor of Maya, who later promulgated the culture he had figured so largely in destroying.

Friar de Landa

Seventh Day Adventist Church, Izamal

Folk Art at Izamal

Izamal is a charming golden colonial ensemble that surrounds a huge and popular monastery built by de Landa, over the foundations of what had been an immensely important site of pilgrimage for the Maya. We climbed a remaining Mayan pyramid, towering over the low Yucatan forest. Village sounds were vivid up there, far above the Franciscan convent: roosters, dogs barking, scooters, conversations, among the slender umbrellas of trees below. Street corners are named for animals (rooster, elephant, etc) and bear little legends in Spanish of thwarted love and talking crosses. The golden stucco walls have doorways of beautiful wood, but a peek inside revealed strange mixtures of empty concrete dwellings and homes with only a hammock strung in the dark, or, further from the center, rubble. Despite the charming ensemble, one layer beneath is grinding poverty. A doctor's office or a restaurant door leads only into overgrown jungle and rubble. But on the square is the Centro Cultural y Artesanal, a little museum of exquisite folk art, advertising a closed down spa, cafe and a pyramid under construction in an elegant courtyard, with mention of an exhibit at the Parisian museum Quai Branly of 19th c photos of the Yucatan monuments in the jungle.

Merida's Plaza

We had lunch at a place on the plaza, served by a kindly dark haired man in a Guayabera (the hand sewn formal dress shirt of Mexico), his hair slicked down. I had papazules: outstanding tomato sauce over another sauce of pumpkin and manioc, covering starchy tortillas wrapped around hard boiled eggs.

The convent lacked the dignity of San Bernadino but was bustling with cleaning women, caretakers and laughing monks, who were making fun of the tourists.

Montejo's Palace, stark symbols of the Conquest

Merida, long the capital that answered directly to Spain, has an especially distinguished center. The cathedral is a tall stone fortress with astonishing interior detail, a Renaissance dome with extraordinary hatchwork, massive and ambitious for 1562. As was customary, the Mayan pyramid (of great significance) has been dismantled for these buildings. The conquistador of the Yucatan, Francisco de Montejo, lived in Merida's center. His mansion tells the story of ease and elegance for the rulers of fortunes made by Sisal (a hardy plant that was wound into rope, by the Mayans' bleeding hands); the Governor's palace (see blog) tells the bitter drama of the Mayans themselves, from a man sprouting from a corn stalk, to being conquered by instruments of torture. Most graphically the leader of a rebellion being quartered with red hot tongs. To the various heroes for their cause, to their eternal hard work, sold into slavery, and all in giant murals blazed with umber and black and brick red.

Rebel leader being quartered by the Spanish

The plazas of Merida, which were being set up for the Carnaval, have winding love seats like Valladolid where we sat when a Yucatecan man came to chat with Jacques for quite some time about the Europeans who come to really see Merida while gringoes just get off their ship for two hours. He directed us to the Indian market with hard bargaining Mayan sellers of jewelry and embroidery, pottery, huge clay penises, kama sutra figures, Mayan statues, beautiful and not cheap.

Campeche

The most beautiful colonial city is Campeche, declared a UNESCO historical site. It has an immaculate city center, brightly painted stucco with perfectly molded white trim, radiating from a calm and green square with wrought iron benches and a kiosk that sold a lemonade/spinach juice. The church was the oldest of the peninsula, tall stone, remade over the centuries, but inside where gorditos and their gorditas sat before the tranquil altar of saints and the Virgin is a deep calm.

Chatting with a pirate in Campeche

Campeche had been a prosperous trading port, then the prey of many English pirates. In 1868 it finally acquired stolid fortresses and battlements, thick walls with impressive portals. Now its center's cool internal courtyards of marble and arches and wrought iron and potted palms are havens and artesanal centers, hotels and reconstructions of Mayan environments.

The often portrayed battle between the Snake and the Eagle is said to be the battle between evil and good.  In modern Mexico, evil is corruption, drugs, murders, and such plagues of the Mexicans.  But the Serpent was one of the most sacred creatures of the ancient Mayans.  And the Eagle, of course, was the Spanish.