Wednesday, May 02, 2018
Mayan Roots and Guidance into the Future
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| Aurora and guest |
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| Ernesto heals |
Ernesto is a remarkable man, a
naturalist-teacher, entrepreneur, and Mayan elder. He was director
of the Cockscomb Jaguar Preserve for fifteen years, and still
provides expert guidance in the preserve. After retiring from that
position, he was head of the Maya Center council, representing his
group in regional Mayan political gatherings. He told me that he had
tired of all the political conflicts, and was now focusing his
energy on being an elder, sharing the tradition with serious
students, and attending gatherings of Mayan elders/shamans from
Belize, Guatemala, and southern Mexico. The day we moved on to
Cockscomb, he hosted a Mayan Ceremony for a Danish television crew
who helicoptered in from their ship anchored offshore. It would be
featured in a tv series on indigenous cultural renewal and teachings.
I asked him the day after the ceremony whether he was able to enter
the spirity realm, or was he just performing for the camera. He said
he had dond this so often, that he was able to enter that place of
quiet readiness. “Some of them were crying,” he said.
The regional gatherings of shamans and
elders happen once or twice a year, and are the highlight of
Ernesto’s life. He explained that each time they met, the elders
set a problem that needed healing, and they went into deep
exploration prior to the ceremonies, bringing new material from the
spirit realm to add to the tradtional ceremonies. Ernesto initmated
that most of these problems were ecological. I was struck by two
things. One was that they did not simply perform the millenia-old
Mayan ceremonies by rote, but that this was a living tradition into
which they integrated new visions from the spirit world. Second, I
was reminded of the Pachamama workshop (Awakening the Dreamer) which Equadoran shamans have
created to teach all over the world to save the biosphere. I
participated in one of them several years back, and felt the power of
their teaching. We are not healed, but the immune system, as Paul
Hawken puts it in Blessed Unrest, is being activated.
From Cockscomb we taxied with Ernesto’s
brother to Hopkins. Emerging from Cockscomb Basin Reserve, we
entered a European orange company’s plantation. Upon inquiring,
we leatrned they had ruined the communal water for Maya Center.
Ernesto’s brother told us that the health department nhad come and
tested the water, confirming that it was highly contaminated with
run-ff from pesticides and fertilizers. But they took no action.
Geeta encouraged him to contact European enviro groups to put
pressure on the company. This strategy worked in the case of la
Milpa, where a Coca-Cola distributor from Belize City was shamed into
donating the major portion of the 250,000 acres in the reserve,
rather than growing more Tropicana orange juice. Massachusetts
Audobon was also involved – and of course Judy Lumb.
Coming from a country still plagued by
racism, Geeta and I were struck by its absence in Belize. Folks get
along in Belize. I didn't get the slightest whiff of discrimination
by class, culture or race. The model of ecological preserves,
embedded with ecotourist sites, seems to be working well. The big
remaining ecological challenge is to find a way through major
highways intersecting in central Belize to create a wildlife
corridor, crucial especially for the threatened jaguar.
The model is similar to Costa Rica, and
like Costa Rica, there is virtually no army. The biggest military
presence I noted was a small constabulary outside Belize City. But
there is no air force, nor navy, nor heavy weaponry. I did not see
a gun the whole time. The night watchman at our hotel in Dangriba
(the Garifuna capital, where we ended our journey) was relatively
tall, with beautiful greying dreadlocks. Noticing that he held his
hands behind his back, Geeta peeked and saw his peacekeeper – a
machete.
The country’s prospects are
reasonably good, though there is a potential threat from Guatemala,
whose president ran on a platform of exercising their traditional
claim to much of Belize. Both countries have scheduled referendums
to have these claims adjudicated by the World Court. Unsurprisingly,
Guatemala has voted no. After the election rolls are cleaned up,
Belize plans to hold theirs.
In my conversation with Ernesto, I told
him that I foresaw in the not-too-distant future a chastened
humanity re-grounding after the collapse of global civilization on
the foundation of indigenous religion (and culture). This religious
culture is reviving in many places, especially in Central and South
America (note the Pachamama Alliance, for example).
Though this revival is less strong in the US, the recent longstanding
protest camp in South Dakota over the natural gas pipeline was led
by a deeply grounded core of Sioux elders. Living in western
Minnesota for eleven years, I was struck by the dignity and
confidence of the Plains Indians. I met. Similarly, the Mayans were
not broken by their conquerors, unlike the Cherokee in my own area of
Southern Appalachia. Even the Eastern Band, who were spared the Trail of Tears, seem uncertain, poignantly reaching for something
that continues to elude them.
The Mayan elders are seeding a rooted,
resilient future for a remnant humanity emerging from the severe
bottleneck which awaits us. For this I am thankful, and I feel
blessed to have met a man who embodies its possibilities.
Mayan Ruins and a Jaguar Preserve
Judy took us to Cockscomb, home of the
world’s first Jaguar Reserve. We spent one night at the preserve,
in a clearing of the forest with rustic shacks and eery models of the
early Jaguar cages.
An old Ford truck used by Alan Rabinowitz, the
original creator of the jaguar reserve, hovered in the background, mowed up to
the frame and wheels, thick with high weeds. I noted that it was not
quite as old a model as the one with which I built my house, then
retired to the forest at a junkman’s place, where nobody cleared
the vines and forest debris. (Yes, I too am fading into history.)
Judy had herself been part of the team which re-introduced howler
monkeys to the area after it was rescued from orange plantations. We
learned that there were now four howler families persisting in the
area.
We were less able to see birds here than in la Milpa or Crooked Tree, both because the vegetation was so dense, and because Roni had left us. But the wildness was invigorating. We tubed down the Stann Creek River, during which I endured numerous chigger bites. A treat was going a little further upstream to
see a Boatbilled heron which Dorothy had
spotted on a hike that morning. All day long the melodious black
birds sang at the primitive site, their varied, liquid songs
reminding me of the woodthrush which arrives here at my Southern
mountain place every April (local Audabon folks tell me it likely winters
in Belize.) A bus full of high school kids from Oakland roared in
around 10 pm. As thirty souls set up camp in the dark, the
electricity from solar panels failed. But I’m now a country boy,
and peeing in the dark is normal.
We were less able to see birds here than in la Milpa or Crooked Tree, both because the vegetation was so dense, and because Roni had left us. But the wildness was invigorating. We tubed down the Stann Creek River, during which I endured numerous chigger bites. A treat was going a little further upstream to
see a Boatbilled heron which Dorothy had
spotted on a hike that morning. All day long the melodious black
birds sang at the primitive site, their varied, liquid songs
reminding me of the woodthrush which arrives here at my Southern
mountain place every April (local Audabon folks tell me it likely winters
in Belize.) A bus full of high school kids from Oakland roared in
around 10 pm. As thirty souls set up camp in the dark, the
electricity from solar panels failed. But I’m now a country boy,
and peeing in the dark is normal.
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