2013 Dia de La Raza– Temple V – Tikal National Park

For me visiting the Tikal National Park (a UNESCO World Heritage site) is a ritual experience.  I am always awed by the beauty of the rainforest and the site of the Temples rising out of the jungle.  Having visited the ruins since 1998, I find that as I walk through the park I look for the special trees where the jungle bees live, where the silver fox likes to cross the path offering the lucky tourist an opportune photo, and all the while I imagine the way that the Ancient Maya ceremonially processed to and from various religious activities.

October 12^th for the modern indigenous Maya is a nationwide day of ceremony and Tikal is one of the most popular locations for the different linguistic groups to meet and perform a fire ceremony.  At the different temple complexes you will find Itza Maya, Mopan, Quiche, and Kikchi village groups gathering with their marimbas, drums, flutes, and other instruments making music, dancing, and feeding the ceremonial fire to feed the Gods and their ancestors the best and most beautiful they have to offer (copal, sugar, rum, scented waters, tobacco, and more).  The smoke carries their prayers and is used to cleanse their spiritual selves.

I offer you this video that condenses a day into minutes.  When we arrived at Temple V the ceremony had already been in progress for several hours and we stayed for another four hours.  The plaza was packed and then as each group had its turn around the fire and then processed out the plaza until it was empty and once again the domain of the Howler Monkeys.

Dia de La Raza - Tikal Temple V - video

First Harvest – Local (The Expanded Version)

I have been returning to El Remate almost every year since 1998.  I have watched the village grow, people come and go, and tourists.  The village is reliant on tourism for hard currency and job opportunities.  In 2009 I attended the American Anthropology Associations annual conference in Philadelphia.  One anthropologist presented a paper titled: “Without tourists this village does not eat.”  His premise, that an over reliance on wage labor had eroded knowledge of traditional food gardens and farming resonated with me.  I have been observing the positive and negative effects of “eco-tourism” and tourism in general on the individuals, families, and the community as a whole.

In 1998 it had been two years since the end of “La Violencia,” the 36 year civil conflict between the Guatemalan military and the People’s Army, known as the guerrilla that ended with peace accords in 1996.  My husband and I had spent over ten years studying the Ancient Maya and their urban centers that supported large populations through innovative and intense agriculture.  Guatemala is known as the center of the Ancient Mayan culture, as the tourism promotions say, “The Heart of Mundo Maya.”  The end of La Violencia meant that the country was safe and ready for tourism.  A spirit of hope for a better future was everywhere. 

Our first trip in 1998 was suppose to be for only 5-days, 3-days longer than the vast majority of tourists who travel to Petén to visit the ruins of Tikal National Park, a UNESCO World Heritage site.  Our hosts at our small hotel happen to be the most experienced guides in all of the area, having started the first hotel in Tikal, the Hotel Tikal Inn in 1968.  They had moved to El Remate a number of years earlier to their “retirement” hotel leaving the Tikal Inn to be run by their children.  We arrived back to the hotel one day after a trip to the ruins of Ceibal to learn of a tragic auto accident that took the life of their infant grandson and sent their daughter-in-law to hospital in Guatemala City via Life Flight.  They were expecting a large American tour group the next day and they could not face hosting tourists.  They asked us if we would sit in for them as hosts with the tour group considering our knowledge of the Ancient Maya (no pressure!).  In short, 5-days turned into two weeks.  By the time we left we had bonded with them, their entire family, their staff, and many other people in the village.  On our second trip in 1998 to El Remate, they joked with us saying that they had “put lake water” (water from Lago Petén Itza) in our food to magically make us a part of the village and to return.   It seems to have worked – as I miss El Remate the moment I leave.

In 1999 the milagro de luz (miracle of electricity) arrived and was quickly followed by cable TV.  By 2000 cell phones arrived and are now so common that it is not unusual to see traditional Maya women carrying water and talking on a Smartphone at the same time. Gameboys, X-boxes, and iPads are now equally common.  During this same period of time a lack of land in the fertile highlands for subsistence agriculture caused a migration of other Mayan language groups, in particular the Kekchi from the Alta Vera Paz, to find land and homes in the Petén and this has placed an environmental strain on the rainforest.  They are not native to Petén and they do not know the traditional rainforest methods of jungle gardening and milpa (maize and beans) agriculture of the native Itza Maya.  Consequently, large swaths of rainforest have been deforested leaving the fragile soil unprotected and removing precious habitat for nutritious forest plants and many endangered jungle animals.

The village grew with many small hostels, motels, and hotels along the lake with an equal number of tourist shops selling handcrafted wood objects, replica Mayan ceramics, and colorful Mayan textiles.  Many locals abandoned subsistence farming and sold their milpas as they took jobs in tourism. The village appeared to be prospering and then the world stood still when 9/11 occurred.  Few tourists traveled to Petén.  A tourism boom and bust cycle has occurred several times now with the latest being December 2012, the end of the 5,000 year Mayan calendar cycle.  When the global (and in particular US and European) economies flourish so does tourism, when there is recession tourism is almost nonexistent.  This has resulted in many closures, sales, and re-sales of small hotels as the owners must leave Petén to hopefully find work in Guatemala City.  The promise of tourism to boost the economic standard of living has not occurred. Tourists want everything at the lowest price possible, so low that making a living is difficult, especially when the village is reliant on tourism.

In 2004 we met and became friends with Danny Diaz when he found his way back to Guatemala after having fled during La Violencia.  He came to Petén and feel in love, as we had years before, with El Remate.  He purchased a 65 acre piece of land to save it from being completely logged and turned into cattle pasture.  He named it Harmony Station and he has made it his mission to be relearning and passing on traditional knowledge of jungle gardening, milpa agriculture, and rainforest conservation from a few of the remaining elders of the Itza Maya.

Over the years, Danny has fostered positive relationships with the people of the village explaining that he is responsible for the land and he needs their help in exchange for allowing them to access his land to get to their favorite fishing hole to fish from the lake.  Slowly they have gained respect for Danny and they no longer hunt for animals or cut trees for firewood on his land.  He also employs four people from the village to assist him with the jungle gardening, to gather Ramon nuts (from a highly nutritious native tree), tilapia aquaculture (to replace hunting), and reforestation planting.

On a Sunday in October of 2013, we began our day, a community universal day of rest, enjoying our surroundings.  We were due out to Harmony Station for lunch to enjoy Harmony Station’s first harvest of organically grown maize and an afternoon of rest.  We enjoyed a leisurely walk over to Laguna Sal Petén and Harmony Station.  We were greeted by one of the local women in the village who we have known for some time with an embracing hug.  Danny had her arrive that morning to make tortillas and empanadas for our ceremonial first feast.  

Danny created a vegetarian India/Mayan fusion rice dish with the highly nutritious native jungle plants of Chaya and Chipilín that are high in protein and native jungle spices.  We harvested coconuts for their cool and refreshing water to drink and then enjoyed their sweet milky white meat.  Devouring our meal with empanadas and fresh tortillas, we thanked the forest and Itza Maya elders as we enjoyed listening to the wondrous sounds of reclaimed rainforest – no tourists required today.

First Maize Harvest Harmony Station Video