Last Maya Campesino
The end of the Maya campesino Text and photography: Teake Zuidema Ancient Maya religion teaches that the gods made humans out of corn. ... Many young peasants of Saban, a maya community on the Yucatan peninsula, see the cornfield as a waste of time. They can, temporarily, escape from poverty building hotels and apartments in tourist resorts along the Riviera Maya. ... “When you make an offering, you will always have to offer corn, that is the most important thing,” she says, as she continues to lecture me about Maya customs. This rezo is really a centuries old Maya ritual wrapped in Catholic prayers and songs. ... He has seen all the bad things that can happen to a Maya farmer: draughts, hurricanes, soil depletion, plagues and ‘hot’ rains that destroy the crops. ... The way in which the campesinos of the Yucatan peninsula grow corn has changed remarkably little since the heydays of the great Maya cities of Uxmal and Chitzen Itza. ... “We never know what to expect,” says Don Mario, “Last year was good, this year is bad. ... Indeed, the unpredictable harvest was an important reason for the instability of the ancient Maya city-states. In his recently published book “The Fall of the Ancient Maya”, the archeologist David Webster describes how in ancient times Maya peasants would look for better places to work when the soil around their cities was depleted. ... For the young Maya campesinos of Saban, and hundreds of other pueblos like it on the Yucatan Peninsula, these cities stand for hard work, a little money and a glimpse of a different and maybe better life. Just as their ancestors once built the mighty cities of Uxmal, Tulum and Chitzen Itza, the Mayas of today are building the no less impressive hotels and beach condos of the so called Riviera Maya. ... Last week Fernando called and told us that he is in California and that he has a job. ... Family ties are very strong among the Maya. ... Today a campesino has to use fertilizers, herbicides and pesticides to harvest, in a good year, some 400 kilograms of corn from one acre.