tysontrips

26 January, 2006

Hippies with cell phones

Copán Ruinas, Honduras – Maybe I live in the wrong day and age or on the wrong planet but I have never really understood hippies. Especially them neo-hippies; you know, the ones you see nowadays walking around in retro sixties clothing purchased first hand at expensive boutiques. The ones halfheartedly attempting to revive the sixties and radiate the vibe of peace and love and freedom – until their cell phone rings. Often times you will find them calling out the ‘elite’ and/or working class for their ‘slavery to the system,’ though the only reason they themselves are able to remain unemployed and whiney is because their hippie-turned yuppie parents set up a trust fund for them with the money they made in the stock market during the tech boom of the late ‘90s. The hippy ideals our hemp-smoking, patchouli oil-loving, revolutionary forebrothers refused to fight and die for have long since fallen by the wayside in today’s ever increasingly consumer-based society. I don’t fault some of today’s younger generation for endeavoring to revitalize the original counter-culture dogma but these kids are still subject to the way they have been brought up in contemporary society. No matter how many love-ins their parents may have attended in the ‘60s, buying their kids that expensive, new breed Volkswagen beetle while they are in high school is showing them much more about capitalism than about ‘how things were back then.’

Traveling in Central America on the ‘Gringo Trail,’ I have also had the dubious pleasure of coming across loads of another breed of traveler, the Gringus contradictus. This normally rare and but outstandingly especially idealistic species thrives down here in Central America, especially in the touristy areas of Guatemala. Many times the G. contradictus manifests as a recent college graduate from a distinguished private university somewhere in the United States, and with some undisclosed but seemingly endless source of wealth (read: The Bank of Mom and Dad). Often these G. contradictus are on some sort of multi-faceted mission in which they will rediscover themselves as sensitive human beings, learn Spanish fluently, develop into better, more compassionate citizens of the world, become part of an indigenous culture, and return all they have taken from society (with a secret side plan of changing the world) – all during the next two months before their flight back the US for their job interview with a top-level marketing firm. It’s cute. This emboldened species are generally found wearing heaps of locally made jewelry, regionally inspired tattoos or ‘native-style’ braids, and commonly sport the traditional clothing of the local Mayan tribe – whose designs’ and patterns’ significance are completely unknown to the Gringus who wears them. Ironically, the traditional meaning of the clothes has been all but lost in the face of the tourist dollar.

Above: Alarmingly, one of these two people does not live on less than two dollars a day!

Now I don’t mean to come off sounding condescending. Well, yeah, I pretty much do. But, on the bright side, I can also be patronizing. I believe that many of these folks – some of whom are 20- and 30- somethings, are just now releasing themselves from the shackles of corporate oppression and are traveling to find themselves, but are often times finding only that the third world sucks because ‘they can’t even make a good frappuchino’ – are extremely idealistic, which is good, idealistically speaking. It is commendable that these young men and women have at least ventured outside the US for self-discovery even if they are living in a fantasy world of idealism. At least it is a step in the right direction. Soon enough they might even discover reality.

After more than eight months on the road, though, I am trained to find the positive, the negative, and hopefully the ‘yeah, that shit happens’ from almost any situation I come across. One hippy with a cell phone I met in Brazil a few months back really helped give me a new outlook on life. Her late father started some sort of successful food company and sold it off before his passing. Her dad’s endowment to her was enough to forever put aside all thoughts of employment, to purchase the trendiest of neo-hippy clothing and to travel the globe espousing endless banter of independence, freedom and love. Closer to the truth is that she lives in a blissful world of financial independence, economic freedom and love of daddy’s money. But she did have one special viewpoint on life which I believe I am partial to. We were chatting one Sunday night in an expensive club in Recife, Brazil where I couldn’t afford the drinks. Conversation was a bit slow because I really could not relate to this chick on any level without doing so facetiously; she was just too far out in left field. Way too much of a hippy with way too much of a cell phone. In order to break the vow of silence she seemed to be taking as the band blasted out another reggae cover song written by her favorite man on the planet – a Jamaican man she quizzically referred to only as ‘Bob’ – I leaned across the table and made the most inane comment possible.

“Isn’t it sweet that it’s Sunday night and that both you and I don’t have to work on Monday, unlike just about everybody else in here?”

“Tomorrow is not Monday, it’s Power Dragon,” she dutifully informed me, shooting me down.

Oh no, here we go again. I shouldn’t have started this. “Uhhhhhh, what?”

“I operate on the Mayan calendar,” she began, “which tracks the positions of the sun and the moon across the skies. Tomorrow’s sun position is Power and the moon position is Dragon. Therefore, tomorrow is Power Dragon. It will be a very intense day but you will be extremely strong and able to accomplish your tasks.”

“That sure doesn’t sound like a Monday,” I joked. But she kept a straight face and stared down my jovial grin.

The conversation never recovered because I couldn’t feign enough interest or find the energy to mockingly quip enough comments of “That’s fascinating!” to learn about her astrological beliefs. But I did like her concept of not having days of the week. My gain from this experience took place when I realized that her calendar inadvertently helps me fulfill my goal of liberating myself from the western idea of the 40 hour work week, where Friday afternoon always feels like you are on your way to heaven and Sunday night feels like you will be soon confined to hell. So it is Power Dragon, tomorrow, not Monday. Well, I was definitely not going to work the next day then. I accepted her views. Likely intrinsic to the acceptance of this calendar, however, is some spiritual significance or prediction of the temperament of the Mayan gods. But, like all people do with their chosen belief system, I decided to extract only the part I found meaningful and beneficial to me, and ignore all other implication inherent in its acceptance. For instance, if I saw Venus in the sky that night I would not have taken to the streets and murdered members of the local native tribes, as the ancient Maya used to do.

calendar
Above: Pretty full. How does your April look?

As time has passed since then I have had a chance to learn a little more about the Maya, though I am not yet consenting to the astrological predictions of their highly accurate calendar to forecast my love life, as is my neo-hippy friend. Currently, my path north is taking me along la Ruta Maya – the region formerly inhabited by the Ancient Maya – running from Western Honduras through Southern Guatemala and reaching its fascinating and impressive end in the central Yucatán Peninsula. I started at the ruins of Copán, Honduras, where some of the more detailed ruins of the Mayan empire lie. Intricate carvings and well-preserved hieroglyphs have aided archaeologists in elucidating some of the minute details of life in this powerful empire which reached its height over 1000 years ago. Besides being able to reconstruct the massive temple complexes, archaeologists have transcribed a portion of the longest ancient hieroglyphic text in the Americas, which boasts of mighty, godlike kings and legendary empires. The glyphs also make various predictions, including a date for the abandonment of Copán itself, which became a self-fulfilling prophecy: When the residents of Copán witnessed some of their predictions coming true they burned, rebuilt and deserted the site on route to an unknown location.

stelae
Above: One of Copan’s detailed and stellar stalae

For me the most interesting piece of Mayan lore (besides Power Dragon Monday – which sounds like some sort of state lottery game and forces me to remain unemployed) is the evidence archaeologists have literally unearthed concerning the well-developed recreational lives of the Maya. The Maya celebrated and even ritualized sport. On Copan’s ball court, two teams would battle head to head for the privilege of being sacrificed to the gods. In this game the contestants would bounce a heavy rubber ball off their hips, knees and shoulders, attempting to hit one of the stone animal (in this case macaw) heads.

ball court
Above: Imagine a league where the MVP gets whacked at the end of every game.

The winners were ‘honored’ by being ritualistically sacrificed. Again, folks, cultural relativism dictates that there can be no question in our minds about whether human sacrifice is honorable. Obviously it is.

The Gods Must Be Crazy (Geographic Relief Spawns Theistic Belief)

The Maya had good reason to believe that the gods required carnal sacrifice, whether it be to appease the god of Venus, the god of our moon, the Power Dragon gods, or especially the gods of Earth; because in Central America, the Earth gods can be construed only as some angry bastards. Geologically, Central America is really just a series of young mountain ranges rising from the sea. This land bridge between North and South America wasn’t even completely connected until about three million years ago. But as the mountains continue to protrude due to the buckling of the Caribbean tectonic plate, fiery volcanoes and powerful and destructive earthquakes are commonplace. The kind of natural disasters which frequently occur in this region would make even the most unbelieving soul fall to his knees and beg for mercy.

There are at least 250 volcanoes in tiny Central America. Many of them have completely wiped out entire civilizations. Bussing anywhere between Panama and Guatemala, there is constantly a steaming, perfectly conical volcano looming formidably in the distance.

volcano
Above: Hey, it’s supposed to be puff, puff, pass, man!

Guatemala City and San Salvador, two important Central American capital cities, have active volcanoes towering over their ever-expanding territories, threatening to erupt at any time. I visited an archaeological site in El Salvador which is commonly referred to as ‘The Pompeii of the Americas’ because about 25 feet of ash fell on the former indigenous village during a nearby volcano eruption over a thousand years ago. Unlike at Pompeii, though, the residents had time to flee before the ashes sprinkled over their civilization. But everything from their jewelry to their tools to their pots and pans to even their cornfields were covered and preserved by the falling ash.

volcano ash
Above: An a-maize-ingly well preserved field of ancient corn stalks

The Maya had thousands of years to learn well that the Earth gods were not happy for whatever reason. Therefore, tossing a human into a volcano’s cauldron every now and again was the least they could do to appease the natural and supernatural. Unfortunately, Central America is also predisposed to other natural disasters; ones which don’t preserve things as nicely as a snowdrift of ashes. Earthquakes have been devastating to this region since humans first migrated here. Powerful tremors, which have been so destructive they didn’t leave much for archeologists to piece back together, have continuously ravaged the area. And with the ever-increasing population and building construction always of questionable caliber, modern cities have felt the brunt of these quakes the most. Managua, Nicaragua continues to appear as if it was H-bombed due to an earthquake which hit the city in 1972. There are still hardly any multi-story buildings. Many structures are just skeletons of the originals, as newer, hastily-built construction sprawls out of the valley relentlessly.

Areas in Central America which haven’t felt the wrath of a mighty earthquake sent by the Mayan gods have by no means been spared. Instead, large swathes of the Caribbean Lowlands of Central America have often been destroyed by ferocious hurricanes. Nowadays, the inhabitants of Central America are resigned to worship a supposedly more benevolent Roman Catholic god, but that hasn’t stopped him from unleashing his fury (or are they ‘tests of faith’?) upon the region by wiping out massive areas of land with wind and rain storms, leading to flooding and landslides. In 1998, Hurricane Mitch took out 5000 believers in the country of Honduras alone. That is some test. For this and other myriad other reasons (especially economic ones) it is not surprising that there is currently a massive movement toward fundamentalist Protestantism in Latin America. Many of the factions promise all sorts of answers to all sorts of Central American problems, from life to afterlife and from finances to natural disasters. In this time of uncertainty in Central America, and with the constant threat of a natural disaster looming on the horizon, anyone who is smart probably hedges their bets and believes in something, anything to improve their chances in this world, whether it be Jesus Christ or the Power Dragon or even Jim Jones, or any combination of them. But maybe higher powers aren’t really the answer. Maybe they are just bringing us down like big brother is bringing us down. Maybe we need to get back to our hippy roots…man. Maybe everyone just needs to mellow out, increase the peace, find their freedom, make love not war and…Wait, can you hold on a minute for me to finish that profound thought? My cell phone is ringing.