The Lesson in the Stones

President Bush, visiting Chichen Itza said he thought it would be a good idea to learn a little about other cultures. Forgive my skepticism, but is staying at a Cancún resort the best way to learn about México? And why did it take our president almost 60 years to decide that other cultures also had something to teach him?

On the other hand, taking his good intentions at face value, the president might take time to contemplate the missing stones and defaced stairs on the other side of Kukulcán; stones that were stolen by the Spanish invaders to build a church; defacing one cultural icon to make way for another. Those stones do hold a message for President Bush as he brings American culture to the Iraqis, (as Rubén Darío would have said) by means of the bullet. The Nicaraguan poet, Darío, was amazingly prescient when he wrote the poem, "A Roosevelt" in 1904, a year after Roosevelt sent gun boats off the shores of Panamá, preventing the Colombians from entering, thus “freeing” Panamá to become a protectorate of the U.S. 1904 is also the year Roosevelt wrote a corollary to the Monroe Doctrine, pronouncing Latin America a U.S. sphere of influence. To quote some of Darío’s visionary words:

“Crees que la vida es incendio
que el progreso es erupción,
que en donde pones la bala el porvenir pones.
No!

You think that life is fire
that progress is eruption,
that where you send the bullet,
progress will follow.
No!

Los Estados Unidos son potentes y grandes.
Cuando ellos se estremecen hay un hondo temblor
que pasa por las vertebras enormes de los Andes.
...
...Sois ricos.
Juntáis al culto de Hércules el culto de Mammón;
y alumbrando el camino de la fácil conquista,
la Libertad levanta su antorcha en Nueva York.

The United States is powerful and mighty.
When it trembles, it sends a profound shudder
Through the enormous backbone of the Andes.
...
You are rich.
You combine the cult of Hercules with the cult of Mammon;
And Lady Liberty lifts her torch in New York,
Lighting the way to easy conquest.

How ironic it is that many now propose building a Berlin style wall along the border to protect land that we, to paraphrase former Senator Hayakawa, “stole fair and square” from Mexico during the U.S. “intervention” and subsequent Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo?

For almost two centuries, the United States has considered Latin América its playground. We have stolen its resources, taken its land, and sent the worst of our “cult of Mammon” in WalMarts and NAFTA and CAFTA and all other products of U.S. economic hegemony. With equal missionary zeal, President Bush started a war of conquest in Iraq, to bring “democracy and the American way of life” by the force of the bullet. And now both the Iraqis and American soldiers are suffering the consequences. And the cost of the war has become an excuse to gut social programs in the U.S., thus widening the gap between the rich and the rest of us, both here and abroad.

Those stones at Chichén Itza do indeed have a story to tell us all. Darío’s warning about U.S. imperialism is every bit as contemporary today as it was one hundred years ago. But in his poem, Darío also praises the cultural synthesis that is Latin America: the product of indigenous poets and heroes as well as of the Spanish cultural heritage. That cultural mix, that mestizaje, was also the product of conquest and invasion. But it doesn’t stop there. The great Aztecs and Mayans also founded their civilizations on conquest and killing. And their moment in the sun came and went. As will ours. Conquest and killing do not guarantee longevity.

But the stones remain. And they tell the story of a synthesis of cultures. Toltec pillars stand in harmony with Mayan pyramids. While the Mayans honored Kukulcán, the Aztecs honored the same god, calling him Quetzalcoatl. The remaining stones share space with the verdant jungle and the eclipse still casts its shadow over Kukulcán at the same time and place as it did when Mayan scientists first designed the monument.

Let us read the stones and learn to stand in harmony with each other and with our planet.