Finding your way around the block

The next time you’re in Mexico City’s Centro Histórico look up to the top of the 17th and 18th century buildings. Most have a niche on the corner with a sculpture of a saint or other religious figure. These signs of religiosity by the original owners are also clever navigational aids.

I was reminded of this by the monthly magazine “Kilómetro Cero” (“Kilometer Zero”), published by the Historical District Trust Fund. The magazine’s name can be considered an address. It refers to the Zócalo, where roads to all parts of the country originated.

In last month’s cover story, historian Guadalupe Toscano traced the origin of these niches to the Holy Cross Hospital in Toledo, Spain, where an arched niche contains a sculpture of St. Helen discovering the Cross. In her book ‘Witnesses in Stone,’ Toscano said Mexico City adopted this as a style in architecture. “While the image in the niche was an expression of the owner of the building’s devotion for a particular saint or virgin, the niches soon became landmarks for those who needed to locate an address. Numbers were not used.”

This prompted me to remember Mérida, Yucatan’s similar practice. Stone plaques — many still in place — with an outlined picture were affixed to the walls of corner buildings giving a name to each corner. Mermaids, elephants, saints — over 250 of them. Addresses were given with the name of a street and the name of the closest corner.

Eventually this gave way to Merida’s contemporary, easy to understand street numbering system. Odd numbered streets (Calles) run east to west. Even numbered streets run north to south. The Zócalo is at the intersection of streets 60 and 61. Addresses include the street number and the number of the building followed by the closest cross street.

Puebla introduced a similar system in 1917. Street names were replaced with numbers, with avenues (avenidas) running north to south and streets running east to west. Numbering radiated out from the Zócalo and was divided into four quadrants. Puebla historian Sally Ochoa said with a smile, “It’s totally logical — once you figure it out.”

In the northeast quadrant the streets and avenues are all even-numbered. In the southwest they are all odd-numbered. In the northwest avenues are even and streets are odd-numbered. In the southeast quadrant it’s the reverse. I’ve never been in Puebla long enough to find an address without a map in hand.

Outside Puebla’s historical center the street naming reverts to Mexico City’s style. Each neighborhood has a certain category of names — such as rivers, or species of flowers, or mountains. My favorite in Mexico City is Colonia Telefonistas with streets such as Dial Tone, Handset, Operator, Direct Dial. That’s what happens in a city as large as Mexico — you run out of names.

In my book, Colombia takes the prize for the easiest to understand street system. In Bogotá, what are called carreras, run north to south and streets run east to west. When I was in high school we lived at Calle 69A #10-23. Calle 69A is between 69 and 70. Our house was 23 meters west of the corner of 69A and Carrera 10.

Being an odd-numbered house, you would know it was on the south side of the street. This is so, logical a blind person can find an address in Bogota by pacing the distance from a corner.

Pacing is used in Costa Rica where directions are given in meters. But there meters can expand or contract. A city block is considered 100 meters — even extra long blocks are ‘100 meters.’

In neighboring Nicaragua, blocks are ‘cuadras’ and many streets have no names. My parents’ official address at the Valdivieso Eccumenical Center was the bust of José Martí, 2 cuadras east, 1 cuadra north, Managua, Nicaragua.

In Caracas, Venezuela streets are named, as are buildings and houses. No numbers. You need to know the location of a building to find an address. The British Embassy’s address in Caracas is Castellana Tower, 11th Floor, Eugenio Mendoza Avenue.

As vague as addresses can be, they seem to go hand-in-hand with our identity. To open a bank account in Mexico you must provide proof of your domicile with a utility bill.

A telephone company receipt is the preferred ‘comprobante de domicilio.’ The address also needs to match the address on an acceptable government-issued document. A driver’s license is not acceptable, however a voter’s registration card is. Foreigners can use their immigration document.

But you residents know that’s still not enough. “¿Entre que calles?” (between which streets) the banker wants to know. What color are the walls/ gates of the house or building? If you’ve gone in search of an address you understand why. House or building numbers aren’t necessarily in orderly succession. The name of a street often changes when crossing an important artery.

How improved is this from Viceregal Mexico City’s address system?As we search for an address might it help to have a nearby saint in a niche ready to intercede on our behalf?

Straight roads to Cobá

In the mid-1970s the resort destination of Cancun on the Yucatan peninsula was still in its planning stages.  I had seen the diorama set up on the side of the highway at what was to become the intersection with Kukulcan Boulevard.  Its portrayal of a futuristic complex of high-rise hotels seemed a pipe-dream on a grand scale.

Planners knew that vacationers attracted by beautiful beaches and the crystal-clear Caribbean water could be enticed to stay a few more days if there were interesting day-trips to take. Chichen Itzá and Tulum were already well-established archeological destinations, each reachable within a two-hour drive from Cancun.  Yet Cobá, within that radius, featuring the highest Maya building on the Yucatan Penninsula, was virtually inaccessible to modern vehicles.

Mexico’s Secretariat of Communications and Transportation was entrusted with building a road connecting Cobá to Tulum.  Archeologist Victor Segovia was entrusted with opening Cobá to visiting day-trippers.

In its heyday Cobá was the best-connected Maya city and the seat of one of the three powerful kingdoms in the Yucatan Peninsula – the others being the Puuc cities surrounding Uxmal and the Itzá kingdom headquartered in Chichen Itzá.  Cobá is located near two depressions in the limestone shelf -- allowing the underground water table to surface, creating two lagoons with an abundant supply of fresh water.

Instead of clear-cutting the site, Archeologist Segovia chose to only clear the area around selected clusters of Maya buildings and courtyards, leaving the rainforest between clusters untouched.

His first challenge was to map the ancient city.  For this he purchased surveying equipment that was state of the art at the time –- tripod-mounted theodolites, plumb-rules, and metal tape measures.  His plan was to cut paths through the rain forest at 100-meter intervals going both north-south and east-west.  This was a concept similar to the archeologist’s traditional trenches following strings laid out at one-meter intervals, though on a much grander scale.

At the end of the first day of Segovia’s on-site surveying training, Domingo Falcón, the supervisor of the local crew of contemporary-Maya workers, spoke with admiration about the fancy equipment. But he asked Segovia if he would allow the crew to use their own technique for a day.  If it didn’t work, Falcón said they would follow the archeologist’s instructions using the equipment purchased in Mexico City.

Segovia agreed and told Falcón where he wanted the first path.  The following morning a Maya workman stood at the beginning of the path and another stood where it was to end. They started yelling at each other.  Using machetes they both cut through the vegetation towards the sound of the other’s shouts.  Once the perfectly straight path had been cut, Mr. Falcón asked Mr. Segovia how wide he wanted the path to be!

Needless to say the traditional technique won out and who knows how much time was saved in clearing the paths. Segovia mapped every building he found along the paths.  The technique his workers used led him to theorize that ancient Maya road-builders had worked in a similar way.
Mayan roads were characteristically straight. A road was called a sacbé, with the plural being sacbeob. “Sac” means white, “be” means road.  Indeed they were white roads since they were made of limestone.

The longest sacbé in the Yucatan Peninsula runs about 100 kilometers (62 miles) in a straight line from Cobá to Yaxuná, twenty kilometers south of Chichen Itzá. This is where the territory controlled by the three kingdoms converged.

While mapping Cobá, Segovia found a building shaped like a cone.  It had no temple on its top and no stairway to climb.  He theorized its function was to hold a bonfire at night to serve as sighting point during construction of roads and later as a beacon for travelers on the several sacbeob that converge at that point.
      
Still today, as you travel the roads of the northern Yucatan and Quintana Roo, it’s interesting to see how often the road seems to go straight to a church ahead in the distance.  In your rear view mirror you’ll see the church in the town behind you.  The churches are on top of ancient Maya buildings and the paved road is running on top of an ancient sacbé.

Though hard to detect on the ground, sacbeob radiating out of Cobá are visible from the top of its highest building.  The trees growing on the old roads do not grow as well or as tall as those on soil.  A straight line through the forest is visible from above.

Next time you’re in Cancun, take that day trip to Cobá. Once you’re within five kilometers of Cobá notice the number of places where the highway goes up and over a slight rise.  Each time you do that you’re crossing a sacbé.

Rent a bike and explore Cobá’s extensive network of shady paths.  You’ll see the highest Maya building of the Yucatan peninsula and be at the starting point of the longest Maya road as well as where the largest number of sacbeob converge.

Finding Bermeja

Take a cruise around the western Caribbean and chances are you will stop at the port in Progreso, just north of Mérida in the Yucatan. Getting off a cruise ship can take a while, but getting off the Progreso pier can take even longer. It’s a 6.5 kilometer (four mile) trip to shore.

Progreso’s pier was a mile long when it was inaugurated in 1942, and then extended to be the world’s longest pier in the 1980s. Now it can accommodate container ships and cruise ships.

Why so long? Or, better question, why is the water so shallow? The Yucatan Peninsula is the above-water part of a large limestone shelf that extends out into the Gulf of Mexico. It extends more than 100 miles undersea, mainly to the north and west.

At the very edge of that shelf sits the tiny Bermeja Island.

Over the years I’ve followed the island’s rise and fall. Bermeja appears from time to time in Mexican newspapers and has been discussed numerous times on the floor of the Chamber of Deputies, but the island has gone missing and no one seems to know where it is or if it was ever there.

Bermeja Island made its literary appearance in 1539 with the publication of “The Yucatan and Nearby Islands,” written by Spain’s Alonso de Santa Cruz. A year later, Alonzo de Chaves described the island as “reddish-gold” and placed it at approximately 22.3 degrees north latitude and 91.22 degrees west longitude – pretty much straight east of Tampico and north of the Laguna de Terminos. The island is shown on ancient maps as Bermeja or Vermejo, both derived from the Spanish for “having a reddish appearance.”

Over the next centuries most maps of the Gulf of Mexico show Bermeja. No one had reason to doubt its existence. On the other hand, no one went looking for it.

Now with billions of dollars of oil money at stake, the search is on.

The Gulf of Mexico has enormous unexplored oil fields. In the United States, oil rigs are ubiquitous in the waters off of Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama. While more than 38 percent of the gulf is shallow intertidal water where drilling is relatively easy, much of the Gulf is part of a deep canyon that reaches a maximum depth of 2.6 miles (4.4 kilometers). Until the technology of deep sea drilling advanced the potential to drill for oil in very deep water, the area outside intertidal boundaries was of little more than theoretical interest.

For many years, the United States, Mexico and Cuba all claimed portions of those reserves that fell outside the customary territorial waters – considered to be approximately 12 miles offshore.
In 1970, the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea formally awarded each country “the right to natural resources within a 200-mile (322 km) Exclusive Economic Zone.” That means that each country controls a 200-mile band surrounding its territory.

Where claims overlap, the Law of the Sea requires competing countries to negotiate separate bilateral or multilateral agreements.

The 1970 ruling left two areas in the Gulf of Mexico disputed. They became known as the Eastern and Western Hoyos de Dona, better known as “the donut holes.” The Western donut hole is 6,744 square miles (17,467 square kilometers) and disputed by Mexico and the United States. The Eastern donut hole is 7,720 square miles (20,000 square kilometers) and disputed by Mexico, the United States and Cuba.

Bermeja Island is in the international waters of the Western donut hole. If Bermeja Island could be located, it would significantly extend Mexico’s portion of the donut hole and its bargaining power with the United States.

As all the debate, exploration, and gnashing of teeth continued, geopolitics changed. Cuba and China entered into an agreement allowing China to begin exploration in Cuba’s area of interest in its territorial waters and the Eastern donut. Meanwhile, the United States began drilling deeper and deeper in the Gulf of Mexico, pushing the limits. The ecological disaster of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill occurred at the deepest deep-water well.

Mexico frantically searched for the missing island but could find nothing. In 2009, the Chamber of Deputies ordered three investigations. Though the most advanced technology available was used, there were no results. Not only did investigators not find the island, they were unable to find evidence of an island ever having existed at, or near, the location specified on early maps.

Did the ocean rise? Did the island sink? Did a tectonic shift destroy Bermeja? Conspiracy theorists suggest the United States blew up the island to improve their economic interests, but early satellite photos – even from the 1960s – provide no evidence of Bermeja’s existence.

Could it be time to consider the possibility that Bermeja never existed? Could it have been invented by early mapmakers to mislead their rivals?

Regardless, 22.3 degrees north latitude and 91.22 degrees west longitude is located close to the northwestern tip of the limestone shelf that holds up the Yucatan Peninsula – where the gulf is still shallow and a small, perhaps unstable, island could perch.

The need for a calendar

April and May are the hottest months of the year in central Mexico. On its apparent trip north to the Tropic of Cancer, the sun is climbing higher and higher in the sky. On May 16th it will be directly over Teotihuacan, in the very center of the dome of the sky, and it will set exactly in front of the Pyramid of the Sun. It will continue traveling north until reaching the Tropic of Cancer on June 20th – longest day in the northern hemisphere – when it will turn around, start its trip south, and be directly over Teotihuacan on July 28 when the weather, during the rainy season, will be delightful.

That transition in weather from almost unbearably hot and dry to the wonderful rainy season may be the origin of Mesoamerica’s need for a calendar.

There are two principal schools of thought in Mesoamerican anthropology – the diffusionists, and that of the advocates of the autochthonous development of Mesoamerican cultures.

Diffusionists maintain that unlike in ancient Egypt there was no need for a precise and accurate calendar in ancient Mesoamerica. Egyptians living in the Sahara needed to know when the Nile was going to flood. If they didn’t have their seeds in the ground just before the flooding they wouldn’t have a harvest to get them through the next year. The calendar they developed spread across Mesopotamia, India, Southeast Asia and somehow jumped across the Pacific to be adapted by the Mesoamericans.

Strangely the most noted diffusionist was the same person who coined the word Mesoamerica and listed its cultural characteristics--German anthropologist Paul Kirchhoff.

Kirchhoff pointed out that Mesoamerica has a dependable rainy season beginning in late May or early June, lasting until corn’s harvest in September. No need for a calendar. Farmers could see and feel the change in weather and have their seeds in the ground in time for the first rains.

Mexican archeologist Alberto Ruz became a spokesperson for the defense of the autochthonous development of Mesoamerican cultural characteristics. Ruz pointed out that the combination of poor soil in the rain forest, slash and burn agriculture, and a short rainy season made it essential for Mesoamerican farmers – especially Maya farmers in the lowlands – to know exactly when the rains were going to begin.

Corn, the staple of the Mesoamerican diet, takes about 120 days to grow from planting until harvesting. With a four month rainy season there is no leeway – the seeds must be in the ground before the rains begin. Yet, if in the ground too early they will rot.

On first glance the rainforest seems amazingly lush and fertile. However the buttress-type roots on the large trees give away the fact that the soil’s nutrients are concentrated at the surface. Roots spread horizontally from the base of trees in search of nutrients. Dense foliage keeps most of the sunlight from ever reaching the ground and drying out the soil. Rain forests cycle their nutrients as if in a greenhouse. When the cycle is broken by farmers clearing fields, land in the Mayan central lowlands (northern Guatemala and on south into Honduras) can only be used efficiently for two years before being left fallow for seven to ten years.

The Yucatan Peninsula’s soil is even poorer. After using it for two years traditional farmers leave it fallow for fifteen to twenty years.

Every two years Maya slash-and-burn farmers cleared a new field. They would do so in October. The longer the cuttings were allowed to dry before being set on fire, the more land there would be on which to plant. However waiting until the rains began meant the fire would not burn well, leaving nowhere to plant.

Ruz suggests early Mayas watched the sun. When it was directly overhead at noon, it was time to burn the fields and plant the seeds. They went on from there to perfect their calendar, reaching the astonishing precision of it being one ten-thousandth of a day more exact than the Gregorian calendar we use – only two ten-thousandths of a day from modern astronomers’ calculation of the true length of a year.

Central Mexico lies at the same latitude as the great deserts of the world. If it were not such a narrow country it would also be a great desert. Its rainy season is the hurricane season. Mexico benefits from the Caribbean and Pacific summer storms. Although we read about the tremendous devastation hurricanes leave in their path as they enter Mexico, if it weren’t for those storms Mexico’s natural aquifers would not be replenished. The storms allow for central Mexico’s wonderful summer weather of clear mornings, cloudy afternoons, and a tropical downpour lasting forty-five minutes to an hour in the late afternoon.

I’ve often thought what a break-through it would be if the Tourism Secretariat would let it be known to our northern neighbors that summers are cool and delightful in central and southern Mexico.

HOLY THURSDAY PROCESSION

On another matter, Taxco’s Holy Thursday procession is a marvelous example of well-rehearsed theater. It was the topic of last year’s Charlie’s Digs an April 19th and is just as timely this year. I hope to see you there.