Regarding Cenotes

            In retrospect of last week’s trip to the cenotes of Cuzama, and this week’s trek to Dzibilchaltun, I feel as if it’s necessary to give some sort of preface to (1) what cenotes are, (2) why they’re so darn special, and (3) what we can do to help preserve them.

            I guess I’ll have to start with #3, but I also suppose that it’s not really about conserving the cenotes—as giant caverns of rock filled with millions of tons of water, they’re going nowhere fast.  However, the villages around them use them as their main source of income, charging tourists a reasonable price for transport back through the low-lying scrub. I’m not complaining in the least—it only cost us $5 apiece to experience something we’ll never forget for the rest of our lives—and these villages certainly need all the help they can get.  Driving through Cuzama, I saw poverty like I’d never seen before in my life—stuccoed shacks cracking and crumbling around the intricate wrought-iron gate, one-room shacks made of sticks, mud, clay, and sometimes even corrugated metal, with open doorways showing a hammock and a chair or two obscured by the shadows from the hot Yucatan sun. 

            Dogs lazed in the dust—along the sidewalk, in the town’s square, in the shadows as people sat in doorways and stood silently on corners.  In spite of the apparent poverty, there is a statue of Mary or a saint on nearly every house (I even saw a sign on the way out of Mérida in the poorer south section that read ‘Se reparan santas [Saints repaired here]).  The people here are very devout to their religion…even if there was a bar on every other corner with a church in between…but I almost feel like they rely only upon faith (and not action) for any sort of progress in their lives.  I felt as if everyone in towns like these were simply waiting—for what I don’t know, maybe to soon have a richer life, to resume moving ahead in the future at some point.  I almost feel as if time has stopped in these towns—which is obviously not so, as evidenced by painted signs for Coca-Cola and Ivonne, a woman running for governor—and the people are living in suspended animation, waiting for their cue to resume their lives.  Not saying that all this waiting is bad—patience is a virtue—but sometimes progress takes a leap of faith.

            Some of the poverty so evident in the outlying towns of these areas can be explained by the agricultural exploits of the past century.  Around 1900 or so, several plantations popped up all over the place, specifically made for growing henequen, a plant that can be used in about a billion different ways—for handicrafts, medicine, rope, &c—and these few lucky landowners hired out local men to work their fields, which were demarcated by miles and miles of low stone walls all surrounding an enormous hacienda where the patrón lived.  After its time of glory, henequen went the way of all other agricultural phenomenons and went bust.  Today, the haciendas and stonewalls are overgrown with the creeping scrub of the peninsula, the money gone, the patrones’ names forgotten.  The only constant thing is that the poor are still poor, and do what they can to stay afloat—even use of the bathroom cost $3 pesos.  We each paid $50 pesos apiece to ride 4-to-a-donkey-drawn-cart down the old cart tracks, which paralleled the crumbling stone walls and once served as an artery system to bring all the collected henequen back to the town’s center for processing and such.  To imagine a life for these people today of driving foreign people around to swim for an hour or so in a thing my ancestors considered sacred is difficult for me, and it really almost seems as if they’ve had to sacrifice a piece of their own cultural history to stay alive in the face of modernization and economic revolution. 

            That sad story being said, cenotes, which you probably have never even heard of, are things that I thought I’d only ever see in movies and still be boggled by their incredible beauty.  In fact, I had never even heard of a cenote before the Mexico study abroad presentation last October, and though I can’t remember specifically if they showed us any pictures of them, I can only say that photographs cannot do these places any sort of justice. 

And now for something completely different

*Warning: Educational Content*

The entire Yucatan is a broad, flat plain made up of limestone, a fairly durable rock that can, however, be easily worn away (over time) by running water.  So after many years of the underground freshwater river system rising and rushing through fissures in the rock, enormous caverns of varying spectacular forms, shapes, and sizes were created.  Since the Yucatan has no natural rivers, and people obviously need fresh water to survive, the Mayans (or other early people before them, like the Olmecs) found these incredible places early on and used them—and still do—as a source of drinking water, and for this we still can’t use bug spray or sunblock before going in one…but a few bug bites and a minor third-degree sunburn are part of a small price to pay just to witness these incredible sites. 

            The Mayans thought they were pretty neat, too, and in a few they have found human skeletons, jewelry, pots, &c in a few of them—implying some human sacrifices in the distant past (but only in a few cenotes).  And while Dana can threaten me all she wants about making me the trip sacrifice, we all know that it was an honor to be chosen as a sacrifice (apparently) to appease the god of whatever—seriously, they had a lot, and revered them deeply.  For example, Chac, the god of rain, was sacrificed to in times of drought (every March or so, at the end of the dry season), and these sacrifices would continue in fervency and ferocity until Chac was appeased enough to send rain.  Fun story, huh?  I thought so too. 

            I feel as if words are definitely not enough to describe cenotes, as each one is so incredibly different and spectacular (even though we’ve only seen three).  The limitations of language, of little black lines and curves contrasted on the white background of Microsoft word document cannot do justice to the height of the uneven and stalactite-dripping ceiling above.  Nor can it describe the bat caves and natural crevasses hewn into the slippery rock walls by the rushing blue water, so clear and blue that you can see straight to the bottom far below.  Pictures, even, cannot capture the magnificence of the sun as it beams down from the tiny entrance above, lighting the entire darkened cavern in a surreal ambience before finally hitting the water, some reflecting off and some piercing below to provide a spectacular picture opportunity, as you can see.   Lulu, my grammar teacher, described them to us the first Friday or so, before we had ever even been to one, and I remember her using the word “profundo” to describe their great depths.  Though the translation pertains to the distance to the bottom, I can’t help but pretend it’s a cognate, so I’ll sum up cenotes with a few words: profound.  Bottomless.  Unfathomable.

            It’s no wonder the Mayans thought them entrances to the underworld, and it seems to this traveler, at least, that some of the human remains found at the bottom were of people attempting to enter the afterlife.  How unappealing can it be when the entrance to the underworld is found in the clear cerulean depths of a cenote?