Palacio del Gobernador, Uxmal, Yucatan, Mexico

The idea was to stay in a small town, off the beaten track, in central Yucatan. From there, I would explore the many minor, less-visited Mayan ruins in the area. Uxmal is not one of those. Neither is Chichenitza, which I also visited. I visited the two of them, as well as Palenque, in Chiapas, because I had time.

The thing is, I really didn’t have time. I drove for hours every day, cramming as many sites in as possible, breezing through them taking photos. The sites themselves were wonderful, each spectacular in its own way, even Acanceh, a lone pyramid set in the middle of a town, which, I’m sure, was built on the ruins of many other buildings and temples.

Acanceh

The Mayan architects seem to love rounded corners. I’m not sure if there is a structural reason for this. I only hired a guide once on the trip, but I piggybacked on someone else’s guide once as well. That was at the three sites I visited on my first full day in the Yucatan. I visited Sacbe, Xlapak, and Sayil. I ended up trailing behind a British man and his guide. I wish I could remember their names. I didn’t learn a whole lot, but the conversation was interesting.

Sacbe

Xlapak

Sayil

My ex-wife used to accuse me of “mediating my experience through the lens of my camera.” My response was “yeah, so? I’m a photographer.”

At the time, I actually was. I was a freelancer for McGraw-Hill Education, wth a fancy camera and everything. These days I photograph through the tiny lens of a midrange Android phone. The world has come to a point where everyone lives through their phone, whether it be using it as a translator, a knowledge base, a camera, or an archaic communications device to make phone calls, we are on the damned things all day long, and yes, we do “mediate our experiences through the lens.”

In 2005 I went to Angkor Wat, in Cambodia, where I would smoke my last cigarette after climbing in and out of dozens of spectacular temples. I had my first DSLR, an 8 megapixel Olympus, and took a few decent photos, but largely that wasn’t what the experience was about. It was about being there, exploring, touching, imagining.

My friend Franz and I spent four days in the ruins. We had a tuk tuk driver take us from ruin to ruin, walked the long path to each, past the ubiquitous musical group made up of land mine survivors, and the booths selling chotchkes. We were essentially alone in the ruins, something you can’t experience now, except for the occasional busload of Korean tourists that would drive up and disgorge 50 passengers. They would swarm into the ruin, take each other’s photos sitting, standing, and posing on it, and swarm out. Franz and I would look on, bemused, and then go back to being there, exploring, touching, and imagining.

Angkor Wat

Back then, it was a curiosity, a quirk of Asian culture, the penchant for taking photos of oneself and one’s friends at landmarks, as if to prove one had been there. Nowadays, the selfie is ubiquitous, and “influencers” hire photographers (my friend calls them Instagram boyfriends) to take pictures of them in famous places in the same poses as all of the other influencers. Ordinary folks will line up to be in the right spot to pretend to prop up the Leaning Tower of Pisa, for example.

I remember being in Machu Picchu in 2010. I hiked up to the very top in the fog to watch it rise up. I have a wonderful series of photos from that morning. Then I descended to what is called The Gardener’s Cabin, where most of the iconic Machu Picchu photos are taken, and I sat and watched a procession of tourists stand in front of that spectacular view and strike ridiculous, derivative poses. The era of cheap, digital photography had arrived.

Now I will be sitting on a rooftop terrace in Oaxaca, eating mole with a friend, when we hear a buzzing sound. Looking up, we see a drone hovering 20 feet away, recording the couple at the table next to us. Or, I will be walking through Palenque and encounter a man with his cellphone on an 8 foot stick, filming his passage, and everyone else’s, through the ruins.

I got some good images on this trip. I’m fairly good at knowing when the light is right, framing images, finding unusual angles, etc. I do enjoy photography, even with a thumbnail-sized lens on a smartphone.

Xcambo

I could make a comment about religion here, but I’ll let you figure it out.

Two days into the trip, I ingested a bacterium, and came down with Montezuma’s Revenge, thus named, I suppose, because White people occasionally getting diarrhea is supposed to make up for our obliteration of mulitple cultures and the deaths of millions who lived here when Columbus “discovered” the Americas. I drove in to Merida, which I had also not planned, to buy Ciprofloxin. You need a prescription to buy it, but every pharmacy has a doctor next door. I took it twice a day for six days and Montezuma was conquered yet again. I did not build a church on his temple.

I have been wanting to make this trip for some time, and was excited when I left, but now it feels rushed, spiritually empty, and as shallow as a selfie in front of Machu Picchu. I’ve lived in Oaxaca for three years now, and never tire of visiting the Zapotec sites around the state. I always find something new, I feel the culture, still alive in the countryside. The Yucatan didn’t have that feel for me. I did too much too fast, maybe.

Soon, everyone will be able to do too much, too fast, in the Yucatan, Campeche, and beyond. The Tren Maya, AMLO’s controversial project, is already partly open, and will soon connect most of the sites in the region by rail.

Tren Maya station under construction in Campeche

The project is controversial because it has been run through miles of virgin forest. Detractors cite environmental concerns. I’m not sure about this. Right now, dozens of roads criss-cross the area, taking cars and buses to these same sites. Arguably the train will be better. It will definitely bring more tourists. That will benefit the economy, but also put a strain on INAH, who are responsible for the care and upkeep of the sites. Regardless, the train is here. It will be finished, especially as AMLO’s chosen successor is almost guaranteed to be Mexico’s first presidenta after elections in June.

I drove home through Chiapas, with a stop at Palenque, which I last visited in 2009, on an epic road trip from Tucson to Lago Atitlan in Guatemala and back. It is still spectacular, but I was disappointed that I could no longer climb all of the temples. Increase in tourism has shut down access to many areas of all the Mayan sites (as well as places like Angkor Wat and Machu Picchu). This is good, of course, from the point of view of preservation. It’s not so good for the experience we should all be having instead of taking selfies.

Temple Of The Foliated Cross, Palenque, Chiapas, Mexico

I stayed overnight in San Cristobal De Las Casas and then drove across the isthmus, past the region’s largest wind farm, and through the mountains to Oaxaca.

It was the last stretch, through the mountains, which may be more responsible for my ambivalence about this trip than the rushed manner in which I visited the ruins.

Along both sides of the winding mountain road was group after group of migrants, walking towards Oaxaca. They were groups of young men, women, families with young children being carried. It was brutally hot, over 90. The desperation was palpable. Every quarter mile or so was another group. They were who knows how far from their origin, still days from Oaxaca, where they would be another 1600 miles from the US border where most will be turned away. It was and still is heartbreaking. These are the descendants of the people whose civilization I have just been visiting and celebrating, that civilization that we “conquered” with disease from our unwashed European bodies and then demolished to build our churches. I wanted to stop for every group and offer a ride, but it is illegal to do so, thanks to agreements between Mexico and the US. I suppose they think that making it harder will make people stop coming. If I had picked up that young man who leaned so far out into the road that he almost fell and I had to swerve, I would have been stopped at the next checkpoint, lost my car and my residency, and been expelled from the country.

I wish those gun toting yahoos playing patriot at the Texas border could live for one day, even one hour, inside the mind of a parent who feels so desperate that their only option is to walk thousands of miles with their children to reach the US.

Migration isn’t going to stop. Climate change, the consequences of American drug laws, and our generations of meddling in the politics of Central America make it inexorable. Somehow, we need to stop playing politics with these people’s lives, welcome those we can, and make it very clear whom we cannot, streamlining the process for vetting, both at the border and at consulates in their home countries. It could be done, if we only had the will. We must also try to help repair the damage we have done beginning with United Fruit and ending with the War on Drugs, to all the home countries of these people. Nobody wants to walk halfway across the world. People prefer to live and thrive at home. It should be possible for them to do that.

I don’t know what more to say. I am going back towards the mountains to visit a pueblo out there in the coming weeks. I will load my car with bottled water and pass it out on the road. It seems the least I can do.