derecho de no migrar

I am an artifact of the global economy. Within a spread of about three hundred years the economies of Norway, England, Ireland and Wales strained to support their people, and my people got on boats and came to America.

My great great grandfather Soren landed a job in this box factory, owned and operated for many years by Nabisco in Marseilles, Illinois. Other kin opened boarding houses in Chicago; manned stage coach stops, opened saloons and mined copper in Butte; farmed the earth in Virginia and Kansas; operated grocery stores and washed laundry in Seattle; picked fruit in California; fished for salmon in Alaska; built highways and factories across America.

They fought for America in our wars, they gave birth to her children. They worked.

They were exiles and aliens. They were immigrants. They made the best of it.

In the latest issue of Orion Rebecca Solnit points out:

Seldom mentioned in all the furor over undocumented immigrants in this country is the fact that most of these indigenous and mestizo people would be quite happy not to emigrate if they could earn a decent living at home; many of them are just working until they earn enough to lay the foundations for a decent life in their place of origin, or to support the rest of a family that remains behind.

Derecho de no migrar means the right not to migrate. It’s the call of a protest movement in Mexico that calls attention to the necessity of migration to North America to survive the economic strains of life in Central and South America. The movement of the Indigenous Front of Binational Organizations (FIOB) insists that the right to stay home, and make a living in the place of one’s birth, is a human right. One that is violated by government policies that inflict economic harm on a whole countries.

I point this out because of the disturbing news of a Jersey youth who, with his friends, regularly engaged in “beaner jumping” in which they drove around the streets of their home town until they found an individual of Latin descent who they would then collectively pummel.

On November 8th they targeted Marcelo Lucero, a legal immigrant from Ecuador. Seven boys attacked Mr. Lucero without provocation, and Mr. Lucero died.

Let us remember that most of us are immigrants. Let us remember what it’s like to be far from home; to miss the family and place that defines us. And let us wonder at the courage it takes to travel far from that place in an effort to make it better for the ones we love.

Let's remember a place called Plymouth Rock.

black stones

Had hoped to write something compelling and endlessly fascinating about Piedras Negras, because the Mayan site on the Usamacinta River was, after all, the whole reason I soaked myself in deet and took cloroquin only to be bitten ANYWAY by disease bearing mosquitoes (although bearing something else probably, because the malaria smear turned up negative. west nile’s the head runner, followed by dengue fever. still waiting for results on those.)

But because my brain is taking odd holidays at random moments I’ll stick to the basics and simply upload a handful of shots and prattle on a bit.



Piedras Negras doesn’t see a lot of visitors -- it’s not like the well-groomed sites of Tikal and Palenque or even the mildly groomed jungle site of Yaxchilan (pics from there to follow soon) -- Piedras Negras today is only a few narrow trails cut into a series of steep slopes.



Very few of the ruins are revealed to what little light makes it through the thick rainforest canopy: much has never been excavated and the little that has has been overtaken again by the jungle in the time it lay fallow between excavations and when it was home to guerillas and drug runners.

The real treasures (and they’re astonishing, the estella and thrones and other bas-relief of Piedras) have been spirited away to the National Gallery in Guatemala City (Piedras lies on the Guatemalan side of the river). What’s left on the site has mostly been overtaken by moss.



Piedras Negras matters because Tatiana Proskouriakoff did some of her most important work here -- as an artist developing reconstructive drawings of what the site looked like in its prime she puzzled out the obvious: that the estella -- stone monuments erected in front of the temples and structures of the site -- recorded histories. Not mythologies, as previously believed. Actual chronicles of the kings.

Her insight led to the subsequent rapid tumble decipherment of Mayan hieroglyphics. Well, maybe not that rapid, but something of a tumble, and still underway today.



The approach to Piedras Negras isn’t easy. For us it was an hour and half in the bed of a pick up truck, a slick descent down a muddy bank (well traveled by pollo -- the Usumacinta is a main thoroughfare on the underground highway into the U.S.) into metal skiffs that would ferry us for the next 45 minutes along the river, and then a sandy ascent up another steep bank to the site.



All of which contributed to the wholly giddy feeling that I had on the approach, and the scramble through the bush, through the green soaked sunlight and the thick under story and the muddled mossy edifices. Yeah. Could hardly see a thing. And it was heaven.

Even the indignity of squatting in the woods (there are no port-a-potties at Piedras) couldn’t shake off the feeling that comes from finally touching down at a place where so much history happened.



Tatiana’s ashes are interred on the acropolis -- a steep ascent up yet another mound that’s part hillside part structure part city beneath your feet. She’s surrounded by the whirring sounds of the jungle -- howler monkeys and tiny cicadas that sound like weed whackers and add a surreal edge that makes being in the middle of nowhere sound a little like being in the middle of the suburbs.

xela

Shot last December. It's been a while since I've been out with my camera and I was moping around today (for that and other reasons) so I dug through some old files for a little medicine.

still small voice

see it on black
Shot in the central church of Santiago Atitlan, Guatemala

the old man and the sea

Here's to swimmin' with bowlegged women.

The crazy old shark guy in Jaws as he raises his glass. (Watching a re-run tonight.)

That line is second among crazy old men of the sea quotes only to, in my estimation, Anthony Quinn as Zorba the Greek when he wants to know: What kind of a man are you? Don't you even like dolphins?

And now, perhaps, you know too much about me.


btw: I've been on this beach, where they filmed Zorba the Greek. It's a little slip of nothing outside of Chania on the island of Crete. When I was there there weren't a lot of folks around -- although I'm willing to guess that most days there are, since they promote its cinematic virtues to anyone who will listen.

But does anyone really know about Zorba the Greek anymore? Does anybody care? (What kind of a man are you...)

There's a small cave on the hillside overlooking this cove, and if you take the time to hike the hill you're surrounded by the fragrance of rosemary, thyme, and oregano growing wild and baking in the sun. The cave itself is a treat, if you can overlook the goat droppings that carpet the floor. There's a small shrine to a saint -- as there are in so many caves around the hillsides of Greece -- that was previously dedicated to a pagan god or goddess.

The same holds true in Guatemala, where holy caves are frequently dedicated to John the Baptist -- although folks who know will tell you that John and Don Juan, the Earth Lord, are one in the same.

I imagine the cave thing holds true wherever you find pockets of populations who have been around for ages, and who all felt, for some reason, the compulsion to whisper their petitions to the deep crevices of the earth.

green growing thing

Somewhere in Antigua, Guatemala

blue skies

Antigua, Guatemala

guatemalan solidarity network

Patrick over at the Guatemalan Solidarity Network said some very kind things about my Guatemala posts and pix -- which of course left me quite pleased and blushing -- but even better than the ego boost was finding his blog which is loaded with relevant info about the current situation in Guatemala.

This from a recent post entitled Accompanying in Guatemala: Life in the Time of Sadness:

A few weeks ago, a boy who lived near us in Ilom suddenly passed away one morning. His mother and neighbors calmly explained that he had died of sadness. His father had left the day before to the United States out of economic desperation, and his departure had been absolutely devastating for the boy – to the extent that he never woke up.

Death by emotion is not uncommon here. In listening to friends` recounting of the genocide, "susto" - fright - is often given as an explanation of loved ones' deaths following the actual army-led massacres: when they either lived enslaved on a nearby plantation or in their village under violent military occupation (as in the case of those from Ilom), and when they fled into the wilderness for the next 14 years, foraging for food, struggling to elude army search squads and taking cover from aerial bombardments (as in the case of those from Xix).

From their blurb:

The Guatemala Solidarity Network (GSN), based in the United Kingdom supports the people of Guatemala who continue to struggle for change after centuries of oppression, violence, racism and exploitation.

The Guatemalan Solidarity Network -- check it out »

navel gazing

This carved chest contains one of the most sacred objects in Guatemala.

It’s suspended from the ceiling of a small room in a non-descript home – the Confraternity house of San Juan -- off a steep narrow alley in the town of Santiago Atitlan in Guatemala.

The box was carved by the artist Diego Chavéz, who also carved the altarpiece of Santiago Atitlan with his brother Nicholas. The other side of the box – the side I couldn’t see from where I was shyly standing and trying to take pictures without firing my flash -- contains an image of a woman giving birth. Inside is the sacred bundle of Yaxper: “patroness of the moon, weaving, childbirth and midwives, who participated in the creation of the world”.[1]

So perfectly appropriate that one of the creators of the world would be a crafty girl.

The Mayans have a long tradition of revering bundles – they appear in hieroglyphic inscriptions going back thousands of years. I don’t entirely understand what it is thought that they contain, but I know that this one matters more than most.



I’ll let Allen Christenson tell the story, because he understands what I saw in that room, under the sweet attentions that the confradia paid to Yaxper, better than I did:

The Yaxper bundle is called ruk’u’x alaniem (“heart of the placenta”) and consists of a small woven cloth with pendant ribbons and tassels which the head of the confraternity said represent umbilical cords and tendrils of plants.

The cloth itself symbolizes the inside of a woman, including the placenta. Three small angel faces are sewn onto the cloth which represent the “corn girls”. The cloth is used by midwives and shamans to aid in childbirth as well as in healing ceremonies for sick infants.

Following delivery, midwives often bring the placenta to the confraternity to be blessed. It is then wrapped in a cloth and buried, either at the edge of the mother’s hearth, or sent to be thrown into the lake.

Under the ribbons at the base of the cloth are two small, round, very hard cloth bags, which I was told contain dried lumps of maize dough. These are called the yuxa (“divine twins”), which [are associated] with the original placentas, or “seeds” of the human race; all things that have an umbilicus are linked to this womb-root.

The association of the placentas with the sacred bundle of the grandmotherly midwife deity Yaxper, which contains the original “seeds” of the human race, likely ties the Confraternity of San Juan with the house of Xmucane, grandmother of the Hero Twins in their aspect as maize deities.[2]

The ceiling of the room is decorated with the curling tendrils of plants – also thought to represent umbilical cords. As are the cords that the carved chest is suspended from.

All things that have an umbilicus are linked to this womb-root – the seeds of the human race.

Belly buttons, baby: they’re what bring us all together. A constant reminder of our common humanity.

I love that.



[1] Weaving the Fabric of the Cosmos by Allen J. Christenson

[2] Art and Society in a Highland Maya Community by Allen J. Christenson

self-portrait

I got nothing but grief from my sweetie about the mannish shoes I packed for our Guatemala trip -- they're squat and wide and made for men, but they're one of the happiest things that I've ever worn on my feet.

Santiago Atitlan, Guatemala

the backstrap loom

Before beginning her first weaving, a girl prays to a saint for assistance, lighting a candle and saying:

Look upon my poverty
Look upon my nakedness
Please
Give me three graces
Three battens
Three needles
So I may weave my blouse
So I may weave my skirt
So I may weave my shawl

As told in With their Hands and their Eyes: Mayan Textiles Mirrors of a Worldview

This woman was weaving with a backstrap loom in the back courtyard of her home -- I bought a beautiful traditional hand loomed skirt from her mother -- that was just about the length of the cloth that she's preparing here.

I realize the exposure is all goofy in this shot, but I wanted to give a sense of the scale of the piece she was working on.

triptych in red

Three stills from Santiago Atitlan, Guatemala

red door on blue

Colotenango, Guatemala

ceiba space

I love this unremarkable image for a couple of reasons: The central figure is a ceiba tree, the world tree or axis mundi in Mayan cosmology, which stands in the center of the Four Directions and is believed to lift up the sky. Its celestial correlate is the Milky Way, the Mayan highway to the heavens.

The power pole next to it is pure happenstance, of course, but it’s in the shape of the cross – a symbol that the Maya long used to represent the world tree (decorating it, as they still do in Chamula, with the flowering blossoms of the ceiba and the needles of the pine) – long before the Spanish arrived and introduced their cross, carrying the crucified Christ. They use it still today, in Catholic churches, where ancient Mayan belief and colonial religion come together in a fascinating amalgam.



While we were traveling in Guatemala we had the good fortune to see the ceiba flowering in Mixco Viejo, a remarkable highland site about two hours outside Guatemala City. I didn’t realize how remarkable the event was until I went digging for some background material on the ceiba as World Tree, and found this afterword by Linda Schele in Maya Cosmos, the book she co-authored with David Friedel and Joy Parker:

“It’s a ceiba,” I chirped and began looking for a branch low enough to see one of the blossoms up close.
…
What I saw stunned me, for in her hand [where she held a ceiba blossom] lay a perfect replica of the earflares worn by the Classic Maya kings. Suddenly I understood the full symbolism of so many of the things I had been studying for years. The kings dressed themselves as the Wakah-Chan Tree, although at the time I didn’t know it was also the Milky Way. The tzuk head on the trunk of the tree covered their loins, the branches with their white flowers bent down along their thighs, the double-headed elliptic snake rested in their arms, and the great bird Itzam-Yeh stood on their head.

I already knew as I stood under that young tree in Tikal that the kings were the human embodiment of the ceiba as the central axis of the world. As I stood there gazing at the flowers in Joyce’s hand, I also learned that the kings embodied the ceiba at the moment it flowers to yield the sak-nik-nal, the “white flowers,” that are the soul of human beings. As the tree flowers to reproduce itself, so the kings flowered to reproduce their world.

When I returned to Austin, I went to the Plant Resources Center of the University of Texas Herbarium and spoke to Dr. Carol Todzia about what I had seen. She helped me find out about the life cycle and natural history of the ceiba and exactly how unusual the little encounter was. Not only are ceibas so high that you usually can’t see the blossoms, I learned that they do not necessarily bloom every year. In fact, it can be as much as ten years between such flowerings. … The ceiba flowers in January through the first week or so of February. … The tree blossoms in the month just before Creation day on February 5, so that it was in flower when First Father raised it into the sky.

From Maya Cosmos: Three Thousand Years on the Shaman's Path



One more reason I love this image: the faint impression of the volcano Atitlan in the far distance. Shortly after I took this shot we hiked up a hill to the pilgrimage site of Dios Mundo, where new year offerings from the night before still lay smoldering, and the ancient stone head to which they were presented stood in alignment with the mountain and the ceiba in the distance.

All that, and plus I've just got a thing for trees.

room in the back

Somewhere in Guatemala

una via

baby on board

Market Day in San Francisco el Alto in the Guatemalan Highlands

fondling the calabash

In the Popol Vuh, The Mayan Book of the Dawn of Life and the Glories of Gods and Kings, the severed head of One Hunahpuh, one of the Hero Twins, winds up in a calabash tree (long story) -- a position which he uses to full advantage when the lovely maiden Blood Moon stops by. He spits in her hand, subsequently impregnating her with twins -- and so our story begins again.

(Being one with a point to make, Hunahpu explains as his spit finds its mark that now the father's face will survive his son, even after his own face has rotted away and left nothing but bone.)

It's a great read. Honest.

formerly known as

Colotenango, Guatemala

smoke gets in my eyes

Little mother when I die
Bury me beneath your hearth
And when you're making tortillas
Cry for me

And if they ask you, little mother
Why are you crying
Tell them my firewood is green
And the smoke gets in my eyes

~ Traditional Nahuatl (Aztec) poem as told by Nick Hopkins

In the ancient Mayan and Aztec traditions, as in many places in the ancient Middle East, the family buried their dead beneath the floor of their home, so that the ancestors would remain close where they could be cared for and from where they might influence future proceedings.