As instructed, we arrived at the Campamento gate at 7 and started calling. Just the phone answering message, to which we responded. We waited and phoned. There wasn’t even anyone at the gate to talk to us, so we decided to walk around it as coming staff were doing. As we passed the Campamento, Eduardo came out to greet us, sleepy-eyed. Off we went with an archaeologist and a guide to climb the Castillo, not really too long after sunrise. This was a thrill for the students, and we spent time looking at sculptures as well as the view. On the west door, the wood carving on the lintel is fairly well preserved, so we took turns lying on the threshold and looking up at it.
We left before 8, headed to the buses, and drove down to the Balancanche turnoff. The first tour was to start at 9 so we wanted to get there in time to make sure all of us could be included. But the gate at the turnoff was closed. There seemed to be time, so one van went back to Piste for breakfast while the other stayed so that I could get tickets as soon as it opened. Some students spent the time playing Frisbee. At 8:40 the staff came and opened the gate and we went in. We all enjoyed the hike through the cave, which is made completely safe and comfortable by concrete and lighting, though one has to put up with the sound track piped in. Arggh. The two offering chambers were thrilling. The first has a stone column that must have served as a world axis, with offerings of incense burners, large open vessels, and miniature manos and metates (grinding implements) arranged around it. The second chamber has arrangements of incense burners and the miniatures, but it also has access to an underground river that continues on through a low cave tunnel.
We drove on to Mayapan, generally thought to have been a capital of Yucatán, through alliance of the Itzá, Cocom, and Xiuh groups, from around 1240 to 1440. Smaller versions of Chichén Itzá’s Castillo and Caracol are constructed here within a downtown core that consists of a knot of residential groups with shrines, colonnades, and altars. The corbel arch is still used here, in the Caracol and in Structure 80. I pointed out many of the features from the top of the Castillo, where we started, noting that the central shrine of structure 81, the residential building in front of Structure 80, was the location from which the four super-fine incensarios had been taken that we saw earlier in class.
We had hoped to stop in Maní, the late capital of the Xiuh and also notorious as the place where Diego de Landa carried on his inquisition, torturing Maya leaders and destroying books and “idols” (likely incense burners) in the auto-da-fe of 1862. However, it was very late and students were ravenous, so we headed on to Oxkutzkab. After lunch, we looked at the mural paintings by Leonardo Paz and Bill led discussions of both. He spent most time with the market mural, fitting it into the 20th century tradition of mural painting as public art in Mexico, and asking students what kind of image of Oxkutzkab was being presented (Oxkutzcab as Yucatán’s orchard city). We noted the inclusion of many ideas from international popular culture, including the central group of 5 Maya women in traje, the largest figures in the composition and the only ones not engaged in any activity. We went on to the Zocalo and looked at the gazebo mural by Paz of Landa’s auto-da-fe, discussing its romanticist aspects and possible construction as a foundation of post-conquest Maya society. I also noted that this event has become increasingly prevalent in television documentaries because it is also considered foundational to the study of Maya hieroglyphic writing, understood as recovering the information that de Landa destroyed.
There was more at Oxkutzcab. By the time we finished discussing the second painting, the doors of the church were opened, and we went in to look at what is considered the most beautiful retablo in Yucatán. Some sat and looked from the pews but Rita and I, with some students, went up to the altar and worked on the interpretation of each panel.
Then we piled back into our vans and headed for our night’s stay in Ticul. I knew of Ticul from its famous pottery, which includes large public monuments based on Jaina figurines. But we found out that Ticul is also famous for the shoes that it manufactures, and that the Shoe Festival was about to begin. More to the taste of students and their shopping, the maker of the local Yucatec guayabera shirts was found, and he made 21 sales of shirts to our group, including at least one custom made.
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