Starting the surveys - San Miguel and Silver Creek

These pictures are views of San Miguel from one of the homes we surveyed. It was raining and were hanging out under the eaves for a few minutes.

Last week we started doing surveys in a couple of the communities to see what people knew about the old Maya (as they are called around here), what they would like to know, and if they would be interested in seeing a movie if we brought one to show in their village. Let me tell you, nothing is more awkward than walking into someone’s house and asking if you can talk to them about a random subject. It was an interesting task, unlike anything I’d had to do before. Shoshi decided to hang back and let Morvin and I do most of the talking, since we’d be responsible for the project in the coming weeks.

I’m not sure if I’ve written about Morvin before. He’s the person who was in charge of the MACHI program here originally. He attended Tricia’s field school last year and received lectures and other training for getting the workshops started during the last school year. He is very quiet and reserved, not just at first, but pretty much all the time. Honestly, after meeting him I was not at all surprised that the MACHI classes were not engaging people. I actually really like him a lot it’s just that his personality is not best suited for the kind of work we were asking of him. One of my main jobs is going to be providing him with further training about archaeology and conservation, as well as getting him to loosen up around the kids.

Anyways, so our plan of attack for this fall is to target nine villages instead of the twenty two they were working with before. This way the workshops can happen intensively for several weeks before we move to the next place. The villages were chosen based on their proximity to the major archaeological sites in the district, Uxbenka, Lubaantun, and Nim Li Punit. We want to get down to the villages around Pusilha eventually, but they are much further away. I expect they’ll be the first to be involved when the project expands. In any case, we’re now working on surveying 10-12 houses in these nine villages. This was supposed to happen over the last two weeks of June, but now it’s more like the last week of June. I guess that’s just how it goes sometimes.

So we approach the first house in a town called San Miguel, it’s just your typical cement block house with hammocks hanging, a separate kitchen structure, pigs and chickens running around everywhere. The guy gets out of his hammock and eyed us extremely suspiciously, like what the hell do you people want. I was totally nervous, and since I was pretty sure Morvin wasn’t going to say anything I just jumped in. I don’t remember what I said, but it wasn’t eloquent! I was kicking myself for not preparing a schpiel (how do you spell that??) ahead of time. This guy was not into it. It was interesting actually, because he said that there are always people (gringos, I’m assuming) coming around asking his opinion about programs and initiatives, and then he never sees any results from his answers. It was a good dose of the reality of the most marginalized district in Belize, and one of the poorest in Central America. I can imagine that there are plenty of people with the best of intentions who promise a lot and for whatever reason are incapable of delivering. There was nothing to do but agree with the man and thank him for his time.

So that was awkward, but things went uphill from there. We went further into town, and talked to the school principal who had good feedback. As we continued, sometimes I would start in English, but the more we did the more Morvin started speaking in Q’eqchi’, especially to some of the older women we met. Eventually, I would just shut up until he started talking; it seemed better coming from someone from the area who can communicate in the indigenous language. I felt really out of place and useless but I think we got better reception when Morvin did the talking. Especially in the second village, Silver Creek, which is Morvin’s hometown. He knows everyone and is on the PTA at the school, so that made things a bit easier. I think from here on out when we need to start something we’ll go there first because Morvin can facilitate things so easily. It was also great because it became clear that this was an environment in which he thrived – small groups, speaking in Q’eqchi’. His English is perfect, don’t get me wrong, but I think that it hits home for everyone involved if he is speaking about conservation and educational programs in the native language. Today we go back to Silver Creek to finish up the surveys there and next week we’ll have some long days in the other seven towns.

Village Visits (this is a long one)

We were in PG for one night, and then we headed northwest to Big Falls, which is a good jumping off point for exploring the more remote villages and visiting the main archaeological sites in Toledo. So that’s just what we did – last Thursday we went to Nim Li Punit and Lubaantun, two reconsolidated Late Classic sites. They are very interesting places with on-site museums, but the signage was terrible so it was hard to really get a feel for what was going on there. This is really unfortunate because as archaeologists Shoshi and I know what we were looking at, but without adequate explanations most of the meaning is unclear, even to us; this must be especially true for tourists or local people. Two pieces of information I thought were interesting: Nim Li Punit seems to have been located at a convenient place for controlling trade routes and apparently had contact with Copan (it didn’t say how or why), and Lubaantun was a center for manufacturing ocarinas (whistles) and figurines. The sites have been excavated but not much has been published.

Nim Li Punit:

That night we met Shoshi’s old friends from the Uxbenka project at our guest house in Big Falls. They live at a camp nearby and kindly shared their evening meal with us for a couple days. We were staying right next to a local grocery and bar/pool hall so of course there was lots of beer drinking and pool playing. The next day we drove out to the village of Santa Cruz, which is right next to Uxbenka. Shoshi’s dissertation deals with the relationship between the village, the site, and the archaeological project. She’s spent a lot of time there over the last few years, so we went to visit a few of the families she got to know. This was also a good chance for me to see how people live and to generally meet people with whom I will undoubtedly be working in the future. Visiting was really fun – on the first day we went to Elena’s house, whose extended family Shoshi knows. I should preface this by saying that while nuclear families seem to live in the same house, extended families all live nearby, not necessarily in “compounds”, but in the same vicinity. Consequently, we were at Elena’s house, but her mother, several of her sisters, and tons of children were also there. This also means that I don’t remember everyone’s names! Elena’s mother doesn’t speak English, but the younger people do so that was wonderful. The men were out finishing the planting, and since that is a special day they were making caldo for lunch, which is a traditional Maya stew made with meat (we had chicken) and some vegetables or potatoes, and flavored with chili, achiote, other spices, and of course, lard (this is not an exact recipe, it varies widely, it’s just a description of what we had the other day). You eat it with as many fresh corn tortillas as you can handle. Shoshi and I helped them bake the tortillas, which was very amusing to the women there. Making tortillas into perfectly round, thin circles is really hard! You need a lot of practice. Mine were never perfect, but I’ll be here for awhile so hopefully my baking skills will improve.

The women were wonderful to talk to and very polite, but I couldn’t help but wonder what they were saying about us in Mopan. The cultural differences between us, as American women, and them as Maya women are really extreme. Maya women get married when they are around 15 and the men are about 20. Elena, for example, is nineteen and has three children. She looks like she’s in her mid-twenties though. Her sister who is twenty seven (my age) has six kids, all girls. We must seem like spinsters who will never find husbands because we don’t know how to bake! I’m just kidding, I don’t think they’re judging us or anything, it’s just such a different life. And they understand that it’s different too; we were telling them that it’s different where we come from, that people don’t get married until later and they accept that. I guess I just can’t fathom having six children.

We were having a site tour of Uxbenka later that day, but to kill a couple hours Shoshi drove me out to Rio Blanco, a nature preserve outside of Santa Cruz. It has trails and a swimming hole. We didn’t bring our suits, but we waded in with one of Elena’s sisters, Angelina. She is fourteen and has left school because she should be getting engaged soon. They were teasing her about it all afternoon while we made tortillas, and she says she doesn’t want to be engaged just yet.

Shoshi and Angelina at Rio Bravo:

The tour of Uxbenka was pretty extraordinary. It’s a really impressive site, set up on three different karst hills, overlooking the surrounding hills and valleys. There is an earlier ceremonial stela plaza, which was excavated some last year, and this year they are up at the regal/ritual center, a series of successively smaller ceremonial plazas. The interesting thing about Uxbenka is that it potentially has an Early Classic component, which is absent in other parts of southern Belize. There is also a stela that references someone from Tikal, so the theory is that the Late Classic phase was initiated by this person. I was impressed; it’s a very dramatic and interesting site.

Plaza B, cleared by fire and under excavation:

The next day we had a working breakfast at a beautiful but overpriced lodge at Big Falls. Shoshi and I hadn’t really had a chance to sit down and talk about what directions we wanted to go in with this new phase of the project. I won’t bore you with the details yet, but basically we’re trying to come up with more creative ways to educate people – so games, activities, movies…also when the best time would be to be in the villages, etc. It was productive and fun to talk about possible plans.

Then we went visiting at Angela’s house, back in Santa Cruz. I should mention that these villages are located only about 12 miles from the highway, but down one of the worst maintained roads imaginable. It seems there have been attempts to put down cobbles and other gravels, which is necessary because it rains so much. But the rain inevitably erodes the dirt around the cobble and gravel leaving ruts and large exposed rocks as well as potholes and mud puddles. Apparently the government does fix it eventually, but not until it’s barely passable. So the 12 mile trip takes about 45 minutes. Anyways, we made it back out to Santa Cruz on Saturday to meet Angela and her eight daughters. Only four are married, which leaves a lot of women hanging around the house – again, the names eventually blurred together. It was a similar visit, but with eggs and tea instead of caldo to eat. The eggs were also made with lard, and spiced with roasted chilis from their garden. I know what you’re thinking, but lard tastes amazing. So does deep friend pig skin, no joke.

After meeting Angela, we met Benecio, who is a very active member of the community. He sits on the board of the Julian Cho Society, so he’s involved in land disputes, and he is also the chairman of Santa Cruz at the moment. He’s also on the executive board of the local organization that has been formed to decided how to develop tourism infrastructure and education programs with/at Uxbenka. A professor from USF is working on that project actually. I don't know much about it yet, but I'm sure I'll learn more when she gets here. Anyways, I really liked Benecio a lot. His kids are super smart, his daughter is receiving a scholarship from JCS to attend high school in PG which is a big deal. His son was reading his workbook from school the whole time we were there. He’ll be a good person to know during my time here I think.

When work was over at the site we picked up Andy and Chuck, two of Shoshi’s good friends and drove to Placencia! Placencia is a beach town on the coast. We weren’t there for very long, but I loved it. Our hotel was right on the beach, there was a live reggae band, and I read an entire book in one day; the perfect vacation if you ask me. :) Unfortunately, Shoshi got really sick once we were in Placencia, probably from the lunch in the village. I was completely fine though, which is weird since our food came from exactly the same place. She's better now though.

I’m back in PG and starting to meet with JCS more and talking about how to get things started. Today we developed a brief survey of five questions that we’re going to administer tomorrow in a few villages around Nim Li Punit and Lubaantun to see what people want to know about the old Maya. This will hopefully give us some guidelines as to how to structure future workshops and programs.

Arthur Rained on My Parade

Well, I got to Belize last Thursday. It was raining when my plane landed and didn’t stop for days after. I was so exhausted from the last few weeks of school, packing up my place, and then helping Rachel with the wedding stuff that I decided to spend the night in Belize City before heading to the islands. I guess I’m glad I did this, because I was pretty tired. Anna kept looking at me funny and telling me that I should just go to the islands immediately, because Belize City was a hole. She was not wrong. Calling it a “city” is very optimistic; it’s sprawling, ramshackle town that I can’t believe has survived any sort of storm. Actually, it used to be the capital of Belize until it was destroyed in the ‘60s by a hurricane, and they moved the capital inland to Belmopan. So anyways, Belize City is sketchy. I didn’t walk around much. I caught a water taxi in the rain and headed to Ambergris Caye the next morning. I was going to island hop, but with the weather I didn’t want to be re-packing and carrying seven months of crap around with me through the rain. (For the record, I packed incredibly lightly – only one medium sized backpack and a suitcase, plus my computer bag. It’s still a lot to lug around though).

I got to Ambergris, had a lovely lunch, a long nap, and finished my book. Then it started to rain harder. I forgot to mention that Rachel and Sam were taking their honeymoon in Belize. They happened to be on Ambergris at the same time as me. This was sort of on purpose – they had originally invited me to go to Tikal with them, but the schedules didn’t match up. I wanted to see the Cayes anyways so we decided to hang out a bit. Though I didn’t exactly crash their honeymoon, it ended up being a really good thing that we were all on the same island.

We hung out at their fancy resort on Saturday, even though it was pouring rain and windy. The water taxi ride was nauseating. But they had a hot tub so we bought some beer and made the best of it. After a really nice dinner, we went out in town. They were getting more and more fed up with their resort – turns out they like traveling more than vacationing. It’s a long story, but my 20 bucks a night budget hotel looked better to them than their pricey resort! Certainly safer than their glorified palapa on the beach once the storm really got started.

Sunday was dead in town, no one was around, the rain was coming down in sheets, so I was surprised to see Sam and Rachel show up at my door around dinner time. Even terrifying water taxi rides were preferable to being forced to eat overpriced food at the resort. So we had dinner, though Rachel could barely stomach it because she was so nervous for their ride back. I told them they could stay in my hotel probably, but they went back. That night the storm woke me up around 2:30 am. It’s sort of hard to describe how loud it was; it was like standing under a waterfall with constant lightning flashes and deafening thunder. That really doesn’t do it justice though. The scariest part was that the power kept going off and on, which I could tell by the flashing light on the patio outside my room. Well, the powerline was right outside my window – I couldn’t tell exactly what was going on at the time (I decided to stop trying to look out my window) but every 10 minutes or so the power would fade and then there would be this horrible crack and flash of bright green light from the powerline. Though there is no pole there, there is a place where two lines seem to have been attached together with some sort of plastic fastener (sorry, I have no idea how else to describe it). As far as I know this is where the flash was coming from.

Then my roof started to leak, so I packed my bags as well as I could and decided if my room started to flood I could put everything on my bed. I kept my computer next to me the whole night, as well as my swiss army knife, since I couldn’t see anything and was kind of freaked out. Needless to say I didn’t sleep the rest of the night. I was seriously wishing that Sam and Rachel had stayed with me! That’s how freaked I was – wanting my sister and her new husband to come stay with me on their honeymoon! As it turns out, they were thinking the same thing up at the fancy resort as their palm frond roof shook and almost blew off – so that made me feel better. J

Anyways, the next day the weather was blustery but better. I hung out with Rachel and Sam at their new, air conditioned hotel for most of the day, had a nice dinner and went to bed early. The next day they left, the first sunny day since they’d arrived in Belize. They deserve a second honeymoon, I think. I got some sun on the beach, which was nice but really I wish I’d been able to leave yesterday. I didn’t really have anywhere to go though, so I stuck it out. The island just seems very small to me now.

Today I go to meet Shoshi (my field director) at the International airport in Belize City. We’re flying to PG this afternoon, and were supposed to visit some of the villages. Some of the old ex-pat locals who have coffee at my hotel every morning told me that the southern highway is flooded, and the villages are only accessible by canoe. We’re flying so that’s fine, but I bet PG is sort of a mess right now. I doubt we’ll be going to the villages today. I don’t much care what we do, I just seriously need a change of scene. Hope you’re all well!

What Am I Doing in Belize?

I am an intern with the Maya Area Cultural Heritage Initiative (MACHI). The goal of MACHI is to work with indigenous Maya groups in Yucatan, Guatemala, Honduras, and Belize to promote heritage awareness and archaeological conservation. Programs have already been successful in the other countries, but the Belize part of the project had a slow start. I’ll be living in Punta Gorda (PG), a town in southern Belize, until Christmas, in order to kickstart a program among the 30-40 Mopan and Q’eqchi’ Maya villages there. That’s the project in a nutshell. How I’m going to accomplish this remains to be seen! I’ll be working with the Julian Cho Society, a local PG NGO that works primarily with Maya land rights in southern Belize. They recently sued the Belizean government for granting foreign corporations logging and oil drilling rights on what is supposed to be their reservation lands. With the help of the University of Arizona indigenous rights lawyers, they were successful. So the Toledo District is going to be an interesting place to explore these next few months. I’m not sure yet what the legal ramifications of the lawsuit are, or if they’ve been put into place. Regardless, there seems to be a distinct importance placed on political activism and organization among the Maya villages, which is exciting.

I think that archaeology can and should play a role in the political and social lives of these people. Currently there is very little acknowledgement of an ancestral Maya past, thanks to generations of colonialism. Archaeology is currently a major draw for tourism in Belize, on which the economy relies heavily. While the Toledo District has historically been difficult to access, there has been increased interest in ecotourism and home stays with Maya families in Toledo. Currently, there are plans in the works to connect the Toledo District to a pan-mesoamerican (not the right term, but I can’t remember what it’s called!) highway connecting Mexico, Guatemala, Belize, Honduras, and probably El Salvador and Panama. All of this is to say that Toledo is ripe for development, and there seems to be a unique opportunity to engage a politically motivated indigenous group with their past before the government gains more control over reconsolidated archaeological sites, most likely disregarding local concerns. Having control of the past is a powerful tool, and MACHI is trying to foster that awareness for local Maya.

A couple examples of how the organization has succeeded elsewhere: In Mexico they have filmed puppet shows (a popular form of entertainment in the villages) about Maya archaeology and conservation to be distributed throughout Yucatan. In the Peten of Guatemala they’ve started radionovelas about archaeology that have been very well-received. These are in the process of being translated into Belizean Maya dialects and will hopefully be broadcasted in Toledo in the fall. I’ll get to meet the people who put this together (from a foundation called ProPeten) in a couple weeks when they visit Belize. In Honduras a foundation called ArteAccion has trained two young Maya guys to visit Chorti villages teaching and leading students in art projects. They had a cultural heritage festival in December about Maya prehistory complete with puppets and stilt walkers! I think we’re visiting them in July, which I’m really looking forward to. These are the kinds of things that I’m going to try to come up with – creative, entertaining ways to get people educated about archaeology and conservation.