THE NEW WORLD
83 year old Cenorio Colli gazes lovingly at his wife's long brown hair and remembers how carefully she combed it when she was still alive.
He then returns to cleaning her skull and every bone that she left behind.
There are still a few places in Mexico where the Maya painstakingly clean the bones of their loved ones each year in an annual reunion with their dead, even as they struggle to hold back the flood of painful memories and the loss of life companions.
"I was talking to her," Colli, a widower of nine years, recalled as he lifted his dead wife Concepcion's brittle pelvis from a large pile of bones and dusted it off with a cloth. "She lowered her head and that was it."
Old women in beautifully embroidered huipiles chatter in the Mayan language as they fuss over the bones of long lost mothers and the skulls of babies who barely lived a day. Between songs and stories the families watch over the bones of the dead for a few hours "to give them some sun and fresh air."
THE OLD WORLD
As the Spanish Pope Alexander VI issues his Papal Bull, "Inter Caetera" directing that all lands in the New World not occupied by christians are available to be discovered, claimed, and exploited exclusively by Spain and its people colonized and converted, Hernán Cortés, with 11 ships, 500 men, and 16 horses, lands in the New World on the shores just below Quiahuiztlán on Good Friday, 1519, founding Villa Rica de la Vera Cruz, The Rich Town of The True Cross.
THE NEW WORLD
Cerro de los Metates, rises dramatically above the coastal plain of the Gulf of Mexico dominating the surrounding landscape.
A steep ascent on a winding and rutted dirt road leads to an ancient necropolis known as Quiahuiztlán; a citadel, a fortress, a place of stone steps and terraced plazas, ball courts, and ancient pyramids. One thousand years ago this was a city of 16,000 people.
And just as the living need places to inhabit, so do the dead. 78 stone tombs are clustered across the landscape. From a distance they look like villages, a community of homes with stone steps leading up to an entrance. But as you move closer you realize that the enormity of the landscape distorts their scale and that these structures are only about four feet high with an entry that can be measured in inches. These are temples, memorials to the dead, mausoleums of sorts but there are no bodies here, these temples once held only the cleaned and anointed bones of the dead.
Four temples stand apart from the rest, prominently lined up like sentinels on a high bluff with spectacular views of the turquoise waters far below where 11 ships from another world first arrived in this one.
INTER CAETERA
The papal bull, Inter Caetera, which Hernán Cortés carried with him as validation of his invasion of the New World, drew on the concept of terra nullius, Latin for “empty land", or "land that belongs to no one”. Any place not already occupied by Christians was considered empty land, free for the taking regardless of how many people already lived there. With Inter Caetera, the papacy gave the Spanish crown the explicit authority to expand their national sovereignty to the New World for the purpose of converting Indigenous people to Christianity and directing that “the Catholic faith and the Christian religion be exalted and be everywhere increased and spread, and that barbarous nations be overthrown and brought to the faith itself.”
Issued under the umbrella of an innocuous-sounding Latin title, which translates as “Among Other Things”, Inter Caetera is one of the most consequential pronouncements of human history. The concepts established by terra nullius and Inter Caetera have come to be known as "The Doctrine of Discovery".
THE NEW WORLD
Quiahuiztlán is a sacred space, a place where the veil between the living and the dead is nearly transparent. According to Maya tradition, life is not separate from death, indeed the Maya people live together with their dead. There is a ritual known as Choo Ba'ak based on the Maya worldview that the dead have more than one life, and there is a passage from the underworld that returns to the world of the living. In communities along the gulf coast the Maya would bury their dead by digging a hole in the earthen floor of their home and laying the dead to rest where they coexist with the daily lives of loved ones. After three years when the flesh had returned to dust, the bodies would be exhumed, the bones carefully cleaned, placed in an open box lined with a white cloth embroidered with the name and the personal stories of the dead, and placed in a prominent place of honor in the home.
The 78 stone temples at Quiahuiztlán are shaped like the traditional thatched roof homes of the Maya people, but the temples here are more than reliquaries for the bones of the dead. The bones interred here are a communal memorial to honor the lives, the deeds, and the sacrifices of their most prominent ancestors: kings or nobility, warriors or peacemakers, shamans or storytellers, poets or musicians. In Maya culture there is a belief in a life beyond death that binds us all. The dead are known to have the power to intervene before the gods on personal matters, to bring rain, and ensure a successful harvest. These temples are an acknowledgement that the past defines the present, and is essential to the future.
It has been said that we erect monuments so that we shall always remember, and build memorials so that we shall never forget. Monuments commemorate the myths of beginnings. Memorials ritualize remembrance and mark the reality of ends. Quiahuiztlán is both a monument and memorial, it marks both a beginning and an end. It is only at the end that beginnings become important.
CHOO BA' AK
Pomuch, a small town in Campeche is one of the few places in the country that still clean the bones of the dead. Today Don Pichu is cleaning the bones of a friend, Juan Cauich Evan. “I have known him for years, says Don Pichu. “He passed away 16 years ago but he is happy because for 16 years we have not abandoned him."
“First we clean the feet,” says Juan Pichu as one by one he carefully places the cleaned bones of his friend Juan Cauich Evan back in the small box, “then the arms, then the ribs and the hips. The skull always goes on top. After that we grab a little rock or a piece of stone so that the top of the box doesn’t weigh on his skull, so that he can smell the wind.”
THE OLD WORLD
In the mid 1500’s ancient Roman catacombs were discovered along Rome’s Via Salaria. The subterranean chamber was full of countless skeletal remains that many believed to be martyrs, presumably dating back to the first three centuries following Christianity’s emergence, when thousands were persecuted for practicing the still-outlawed religion.
The bones of martyrs were believed to provide evidence of God’s power at work in the world, producing miracles and spectacles of the effectiveness of faith. The remains of their holy bodies were thought to be points of contact between earth and heaven, the martyrs and saints were the intermediaries between the faithful and the Almighty in the quest for small miracles or eternal salvation.
The bones of the martyrs became wildly sought-after treasures. Every Catholic church wanted a holy relic. The skeletons allowed the churches to become an indisputable connection to the Absolute, a holy site attracting pilgrims and miracle seekers, the frail and the ill, parishioners and benefactors. Wealthy families sought them for their private chapels, and guilds and fraternities would adopt a martyr or a saint who would become the patron of masons, or bread makers, or shipwrights, highlighting the sacralization of labour and linking their craft and their work, to the divine. Shipwrights and carpenters after all had built the Ark, vintners provided the wine for the Marriage at Cana, bakers the bread for the Last Supper.
The Vatican sent out thousands of relics but the process of ascertaining which of the thousands of skeletons belonged to a martyr was a nebulous one. If it could be vaguely argued that the remains must be of a martyr, documentation to that affect was made available. The Church also believed that the bones of martyrs cast off a golden glow and a faintly sweet smell, and teams of psychics would journey through the corporeal tunnels, slip into a trance and point out skeletons from which they perceived a telling aura. After identifying a skeleton as holy, the Vatican then decided who was who and issued the certification with the title of martyr or saint.
While there were doubters about the validity of the vetting process within the Vatican, those on the receiving end of these relics never wavered in their faith. After all, the index finger-bone of "Doubting" Thomas who touched Christ's wound had been venerated in the Basilica of Santa Croce in Rome since the third century. There was no reason to doubt. These skeletons came in a package from the Vatican with proper seals signed by the pope or the cardinal vicar stating these remains belong to so-and-so. No one would question the Vatican. That same unwavering faith applied to the Papal Bull, Inter Caetera.
THE NEW WORLD
Burying the dead beneath the floor of a home was not only a way to remain close to loved ones and safeguard their bones, it was also to safeguard their souls. It was believed that the souls of the dead would eventually enter the bodies of children subsequently born in that house. In Maya cosmology there is a mystical link between body, soul, and place that reverberates for generations, a concept of an eternal and indestructible soul or vital force that animates and outlasts the body that houses it. After death the soul may go on a journey to somewhere else or stay near the grave for a period of time, but eventually it will be placed into a newborn to give life to another individual.
The Maya believe that all things have a soul, the animals and plants, water and fire, the forests and the streams, even the homes and monuments they built. But despite the absolute power of the Maya gods, the number of souls is not limitless. Only a finite number of souls exist, hence the concept of reincarnation, the endless cycle of death and rebirth, a concept the Maya called K ‘ex.
K 'ex is the transfer of a soul - and its name - from one body to another, manifest in the common practice of "replacing" or "substituting" an older or deceased person, especially a grandparent, by giving a child born in his or her family the same name. Nu c'axel, "my replacement," is the term used by a grandfather referring to his grandson. K 'ex is the exchange of one body for another. The Maya have achieved a form of immortality even as their mortal components, the flesh and blood, constantly wear out and must be replaced.
Headstones, in the Spanish world, were originally intended to keep the dead in the ground, to keep them from returning to the world of the living. The Maya view of death is very different. The Maya invite the dead back to the world of the living. But in 1519 with the arrival of Hernán Cortés on the shores below Quiahuiztlán all that changed. The Spanish accomplished what headstones could not. In the New World, through the declaration of Inter Caetera, the land of the living had now been claimed by someone else, and the dead were no longer welcome.
INTER CAETERA
In Maya cosmology one soul crosses over and another soul is reborn but no soul ever leaves a family or a place forever. Under the mandate of Inter Caetera, the Spanish claimed the land once deemed sacred by generations of Maya, the Church stripped the indigenous people of the ability to worship their own gods, imposed European customs of death and burial, and erased the ability of the Maya to share their homes with the bones of their ancestors.
The world that the dead left behind was now gone and the dead had nowhere to return to. They could no longer go home. The living were denied a connection to the past, and the dead deprived of a connection to the future. Reincarnation, the endless cycle of life and death, was interrupted. Under Spanish rule the dead and their bones were no longer welcome in the land of the living, and with the arrival of the Franciscans, the church also claimed the land of the dead.
THE NEW WORLD
Cerro de los Metates, the peak that towers over Quiahuiztlán receives it's name from the enormous number of metates found there and continue to be revealed after heavy rains. A metate is the flat volcanic stone used to grind corn into masa, and to make mucibpollo, the sacred food prepared for the dead in an annual celebration. "Mucib" means "that which must be buried" and its origins lie in Maya mythology and ancient sacrificial rituals that have evolved to a celebration known as hanal pixán or "meal of the souls". Captured warriors and sacrificial victims are no longer part of the celebration, mucibpollo is now made from cornmeal or masa filled with tomatoes, peppers, chili, and chicken or pork wrapped in a banana leaf, and cooked in an underground earthen oven. Mucibpollo in Maya belief is representative of digging up a body from a tomb.
In the Popul Vuh, the creation story of the Maya, people were made from corn and earth and it is where they will return when they leave this world. Recovering the bones of the dead is a ceremonial harvesting of the souls. The Maya bury their dead and harvest their bones in the same way that they plant corn and harvest new life as well as the seeds of future generations.
CHOO BA' AK
All the objects around us help keep in our memory all the moments that we have ever lived. In our own time, objects in attics, museums, and cemeteries tell us much about the processes of remembering. If, as in our own world, the dead here were remembered by more perishable items; well-worn garments, objects of affection, images, letters, the haunting memory of a few drops of perfume, they are now gone. Memories of personal and communal loss provide the deceased with a powerful presence within the here and now, they are a way of keeping the past a part of the present. Without memories we slip into an existence that has no past.
In his novel, “One Hundred Years of Solitude”, Gabriel García Márquez depicts the plight of Macondo, a town struck by the dreaded insomnia plague. The most devastating symptom of the plague is not the impossibility of sleep, but rather the loss of "the name and notion of things". In an effort to combat this insidious loss of knowledge, the protagonist, José Arcadio Buendía, “marked everything with its name: table, chair, clock, door, wall, bed, pan”. “Studying the infinite possibilities of a loss of memory, he realized that the day might come when things would be recognized by their inscriptions but that no one would remember their use.”
The temples at Quiahuiztlán have lost "the name and notion of things". The temples have no inscriptions, no labels. The history of this place, the use of this place, along with the bones that once were honored here now reside only in the lost memory of those who once lived here. Gone are the narratives, the songs and dances, the prayers and incense, the rituals and masks that connected these temples to communal memory and the history of these people. Gone are the orators and the chorus, the priests and shamans, the guilds, the patrons and benefactors, the community of souls who provided the means by which we remember. Gone are the bones, the tangible keepers of community memory that informed the Maya how to live, how to honor their gods, which days are holy, how to give comfort, how to ask forgiveness, and to how to always remember. This place was the anchor of community memory, the citadel, the gathering place that formed the bulwark against forgetting and the connection to the sublime and it is now abandoned, visited only as a curiosity.
CHOO BA' AK
Rosa Maria Yam Poot who specializes in making the embroidered cloths in which the bones are laid to rest says that the souls come to visit each year at the end of October and the families want to ensure that their remains are ready. That means, among other things, bringing a new embroidered blanket or burial shroud to replace the old one. “It’s like changing the dead’s clothes,” says Rosa, who has been doing this for 60 years. “If it’s decorated they like it better because they feel like they are elegantly dressed.” She sees her work as an offering for the souls in exchange for their protection. “I haven’t gotten sick in years because I pray. You must do all this with love, so they do too, when they give you their grace, you receive it".
THE OLD WORLD
Before it could be presented to its congregation, each martyrs skeleton had to be outfitted in finery befitting a relic of its status. Each martyr’s skeleton represented the splendors that awaited the faithful in the afterlife, and its bones were enshrouding in gold, gems and fine fabrics. Fine mesh gauze, delicately wrapped each bone preventing dust from settling on the fragile remains and created a medium for attaching jewels and gold. Local nobles often donated personal garments, which were lovingly slipped onto the corpse and then peepholes were cut out so people could see the bones beneath. Some of the skeletons were outfitted with full wax faces, shaped into gaping grins or wise gazes.
The decorated bodies served as town patrons and became a tangible bridge to the supernatural. Communities believed that their patron skeleton protected them from harm, and credited it for any seeming miracle or positive event that occurred after it was installed. Churches kept “miracle books,” which acted as ledgers for archiving the good deeds of the dead.
THE NEW WORLD
If there were memory books at Quiahuiztlán 500 years before the arrival of Hernán Cortés, they are now lost to time along with the bones and the names of their honored dead. If there were gold and jewels they have long since been plundered. But there are still memories, however faulty, however vague, perhaps clouded by the mists of time, but not erased. Time does not make loss forgettable, only bearable.
Marta Helena Chipool, 35, lovingly cleans the remains of the mother-in-law she never met and the twin girls who died with her 40 years ago in childbirth. "She is not dead to me, she lives in my heart," her husband says as he carefully arranges his mother's bones on their home altar and wonders if his children will do the same for him. "I can't make them do it. Life is different now", he says, "but if they don't, I don't know where I'll end up."
The worst part of holding memories is not the pain. It's the loneliness of it. Memories need to be shared. Memory is an intricate tapestry of our lives woven across many generations. When memory is lost we become untethered from this world. We are reduced, as Gabriel Garcia Marquez reminds us, to living in solitude. When we lose the past, we disrupt our ability to live in the present, and we lose our ability to confront the future.
THE NEW WORLD
The home of Hernán Cortéz still stands here… sort of. Seashells and blocks of coral used in its construction are now laid bare like the bones of the dead protruding from the crumbling stucco-covered walls, and it’s difficult to tell if the twisted ceiba tree roots are swallowing the complex or holding it upright.
There is no monument or memorial to Hernán Cortés in Mexico, only his everlasting legacy. His bones rest without sorrow or glory nearly forgotten in a small corner of the Church of the Immaculate Conception in Mexico City marked only with his name.
INTER CAETERA
In 1823 a ruling by Chief Justice of the United States Supreme Court, John Marshall, moved the Doctrine of Discovery from a religious decree to a prominent place in U.S. federal law. The court ruled that legitimate ownership of land was established by "discovery and possession" as per the Doctrine of Discovery and so "the Natives had no rights of ownership of land, only rights of occupancy", and even that was conditional and could be abolished.
In 2005, Ruth Bader Ginsberg wrote the majority opinion in a land dispute involving the right of indigenous people to purchase and reclaim the land upon which their ancestors lived for untold generations. In her reasoned opinion she cited the nearly 200 year old ruling by Chief Justice John Marshall affirming the validity of the Doctrine of Discovery.
"Given the longstanding non-Indian character of the area and its inhabitants", Ginsberg wrote, "the regulatory authority constantly exercised by New York State and its counties and towns, and the [Indigenous People's} long delay in seeking judicial relief... we hold that the tribe cannot unilaterally revive its ancient sovereignty, in whole or in part, over the parcels at issue.”
Too much time had passed since the original wrong, Ginsburg wrote. Any remedy now, after the passage of time, would be too disruptive. It would not be fair to the non-Indian land owners in the region who bought their land, she suggested, "in good faith". Thus the Court must prevent “the Tribe from rekindling the embers of sovereignty that long ago grew cold.”
The chronicles tells us that the waters below Quiahuiztlán is where Cortés scuttled his ships after landing in the New World to ensure that his crew fully understood the stark reality of the task before them. There would be no turning back. His actions have had prophetic consequences far beyond what he and his conquistadors, the Pope, or the Crown of Spain could have imagined. There is indeed, no turning back.
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Bill Sheehan
Veracruz, Mexico - January, 2024