I have felt ready to leave Merida for a while honestly, but now that the time has come I feel myself grasping for more time. I was reflecting yesterday in the car with Dorian, while watching lightning bolts ripple through the sky of how many magical moments I’ve experienced here and how lucky I feel – specifically in relation to water. The cenotes, the beaches, the rain. Being able to connect to nature in the way we have despite being in such a sweltering city, that at points feels so separate from the rest of the natural world, has been so important to me, and not just because of its beauty or the solace it provided from the heat. Ty spoke a lot during this trip about how much land is connected to culture and vice-versa. I didn’t fully grasp her point at first but it grew on me throughout. I at first thought of how culture moves locations with its practitioners today but the reality is that usually requires a certain amount of adaptation and access to already existing effects of globalization. Obviously culture adapts and changes and in a place like the Yucatan where it is so tethered to the space, I’m curious how the increasing heat influences that. With how fast-changing Merida is and how, in my opinion, over-restored the archeological sites have become, in places like Sisal, Progresso, and Yokdzonot, I found it easier to imagine what it might have been like in the past or to comprehend how old the place was.
Mexico, and specifically the Yucatan is unique to any place I’ve been before by how tied it still is to its Indigenous culture and roots. Outside of the US, I’ve mainly been to European cities where the discussions of colonialism are more about the countries’ influence on it rather than how it was affected by it beyond discussions of wealth and power. And within the US, the colonial past is mainly discussed in terms of our independence from the British and architecture, and if Indigenous people and societies are mentioned it is discussed in such a historical sense that erases any acknowledgment of a present. Language and imagery is used by outsiders as a commodity but in the Yucatan that exists within a entirely different context, one I still am very interested in exploring. How does the connotation of naming places “Mayan ___” or using Mayan imagery differ from the United States, does the identity of the creator/profiter change that? Reminds me of our conversation about the souvenirs sold at Chicken Itza and the crafts made by the villagers in Cannibal Tours.
On the way back from Progresso earlier this week with Deyana and ty we had a didi driver who was of Aztec descent. He told us about how the history of the Mayans and Aztecs has been misconstrued and we discussed how its all been viewed, and taught through a Western lens that provides false interpretations. How representations of knowledge being passed (snakes emerging from someone’s head) has been seen as a sign they killed the person. And how rather than being a polytheistic society, the deities referenced now as the sun god etc. were more so personifications and representations of the spirit of nature. The conversation reminded me of the land agreement made back at home in Lenapehoking, how the completely opposing views on land and ideas of ownership were manipulated by the Europeans, something I had no idea about until I took “Art and Environment in American culture” back in Fall 2022 with Erin Pauwels.
I’ve never experienced such a sense of community when traveling before, and while I have been fortunate to have been to many places because of my mom’s job I’ve never stayed in one spot for this long. To have locals I’ve built small relationships with has been such an enhancing experience and one I realize I don’t quite have to this extent in Philly either. Makes me realize I want to put more effort into cultivating that back at home. I’m not sure who I’ll be when I’m back home, if it’ll feel like I was never gone, or if I’ll suddenly see the city in a new light. I guess it feels different every time I come back to Philly, whether I’m gone for a weekend or a month. But I hope to pay more attention to the ways history is performed and presented in the city, and what my position is in that as someone who grew up here but is untethered to the land in any historical sense.
