We recently traveled to Tulum for a wedding. While we were there, we visited the ruins, as they are called. It was our second trip to the Tulum ruins, but a little more meaningful this time around. It was meaningful for several reasons, some of which may be easily described, while others not so easily.
I'll start with the more obvious reasons. When we first visited the Tulum ruins more than seven years ago, our son was just shy of his second birthday and it was December. We toted him along the rocky paths in an umbrella stroller and beheld the beautiful, blue water below us from a safe distance. When we let him loose, we chased him around and tried to prevent him from tumbling down the steep cliff into the pounding surf below. This time around, between the April weather and the boy's enthusiasm, we were ready for a different experience. The boy, now nine and a half, had been "prepared" with a cursory review of Mesoamerican history, courtesy of an old Time-Life book called Ancient Americas. He was wearing his swimsuit beneath his shorts and, therefore, ready to descend the steep steps from the ruins to the unbelievably, crystal clear ocean below. We splashed and played in the water for a couple of hours after our pricey English language tour of the ruins. (If only I understood Spanish well enough for the Spanish language tour!)
Tulum etched itself into my consciousness more deeply for other reasons during this trip. Even a cursory review of that Time-Life volume had rekindled my awareness of history and the profound impact the "New" World experienced when the "Old" World encountered it. It went so horribly, terribly awful for the Aztecs, the Mayans, the Incas and everyone else with dark skin who had inhabited the Americas. The impacts of that encounter still reverberate today.
I read an essay in the aforementioned volume about how Cortez first encountered Moctezuma and later caused him to be killed at the same time thousands upon thousands Aztecs also perished in violent conflict with the Spaniards. A truly tragic, outrageous outcome to a brilliant civilization that, in many ways, was far more advanced than those of the so-called civilized world. I was nonplussed by how Cortez had taken advantage of every "chink in the armor," so to speak, of Moctezuma and the Aztec people, and, virtually effortlessly, stamped so many out. The chinks included Moctuzuma's naivete and indecisiveness - he had been haunted by visions of a white god showing up in a floating house and was uncertain as to what it meant, until it was too late. The people of other cultures who detested the Aztecs made up the other chinks. Motivated by vengeance, they joined the Spanish conquistadors (only to be betrayed later themselves). The piece related that the circumstances of Moctezuma's own death were ambiguous. Cortez caused it by instigating the demise of the Aztec civilization, certainly, but Moctezuma may have died at the hands of his own people who could see the writing on the wall and were undoubtedly pissed off.
The story was related factually, without commentary, which gave me the opportunity to think, and feel, for myself. A strange image entered my thoughts. I imagined Cortez and his soldiers wielding cell phones in their hands as they proceeded to slaughter these people with their more "sophisticated" weaponry and their "noble" cause. (That image did not include their taking selfies, by the way). This strange vision made sense to me somehow and I understood its symbolism.
Cortez's ride through Tenochtitlan was in the name of capitalism. His laying waste to a people, a culture, a way of life energized waves of New World conquerors who repeated the raping, killing and plundering throughout North, Meso and South America. In the name of gold, Jesus and capitalism, the Old World conquered the new one, paving the way for the spoils of laissez faire economics which we "enjoy" today, some of us much more than others. While in Tulum, I inhabited the ruins of a once-great civilization, as a tourist, as a capitalist, so to speak, paying admission and for a native Mayan to describe the function and purpose of what was left standing in my "native" language. (Incidentally, I refrained from taking selfies with my own phone.)
There was something magnificent in these temple ruins where sacred offerings and rituals to the Mayan gods were once made. There was something profoundly sad in reading the didactic panels that indicated Mayans had rebelled against the Mexican state - and capitalism - occupying the site off and on until as late as the 1930s. The panels made it clear that the Mexican state had put down the rebellion. Hence, history repeats itself.
