Mayan priests purify ruin after Bush visit

Rushlimbo

Nice !!!

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20070315/ts_nm/bush_latinamerica_dc_1

By Mica Rosenberg
Thu Mar 15, 5:38 PM ET

Mayan priests spiritually "cleansed" a Guatemalan religious site with incense and candles on Thursday after a visit earlier this week by President Bush.

Two priests lit colored candles on the four corners of the ruins to represent natural elements, burning incense and beating a ceremonial drum on top of a pyramid visited by Bush and Guatemalan President Oscar Berger on Monday.

The priests said they wanted to purify the site before a visit by Bolivia's indigenous President Evo Morales later this month.

"During President Bush's visit here snipers occupied this entire area," said Mayan youth leader Jorge Morales Toj. "It's a violent way of showing how disrespectful the U.S. empire is toward indigenous people."

The head of security at the U.S. embassy in Guatemala said it was standard practice for two sniper teams to protect President Bush while he was traveling.

The official, who asked not to be named, said he did not know if snipers had been positioned at the ruins for the visit.

Bush was dogged by protests throughout last week's five-country tour of Latin America, where he is widely unpopular.

His visit sparked violent scuffles with police and protesters in all the countries he visited.

At the Iximche ruins on Monday, Bush watched a reenactment of an ancient Mayan ball game played by young men in costumes using a soccer ball painted gold. Some Mayans said the show-game was an offensive portrayal of their culture as a tourist attraction.

The United States supported military governments in Guatemala during the country's 1960-96 civil war, which had its roots in the overthrow of a left-leaning government by a CIA-supported coup in 1954.

Entire Mayan villages were destroyed during the military's scorched earth counter-insurgency campaign that left nearly a quarter million people dead or missing.

At Thursday's ceremony, two spiritual guides said prayers in Spanish and the Kaqchikel Mayan language, handing corn that had been used as decoration during Bush's visit to kneeling women. Corn is sacred in Mayan culture and is the origin of man in the Mayan holy book the Popul Vuh.

The ceremony was meant to clear out residual "bad energy" at the ruins, the capital of the Kaqchikel Mayan people before the 1524 Spanish conquest, in preparation for the arrival of Morales, who will attend an international convention of native leaders here at the end of the month.

Morales is Latin America's first indigenous head-of-state and a close ally of Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez, the United States' principal antagonist in the region.

Chavez shadowed Bush's tour with fiery, anti-U.S. speeches in neighboring countries and has called Bush "the devil," saying the U.S. leader left a smell of sulfur lingering in the room behind him at a United Nations debate last year.

gue_barium

Don't ask me how, but this story reminds me of when Jim Morrison broke into the studio at night and set it on fire after recording The End there earlier in the day.

Ahnimus

Let him do it. Let Bush and Co. destroy the world in a mock armageddon so we can see not heaven in the wake, but hell on earth. Then we can put all these ludicrous beliefs behind us.

lucylespian

This is both intresting and amusing at the same time. These days the mayan priests burn incense, in the old days they slaughtered teh sacrifice. Another example of selective cultural memory.
And I betcha the local prez will have his own security team armed to the teeth, but probably no purification ceremnoy after that.

INteresting though, that they hate the US President, but unless my memory is failing, wasn't it teh jolly old Spanish Christian conquistadores that wiped out teh MAyans in the first place ??

RolandTD20Kdrummer

Ahnimus wrote:

so we can see not heaven in the wake, but hell on earth.

That should be Bush's campaign slogan. Oh wait...actually it is.

caifan82

lucylespian wrote:

INteresting though, that they hate the US President, but unless my memory is failing, wasn't it teh jolly old Spanish Christian conquistadores that wiped out teh MAyans in the first place ??

Nope, they didn't... 99% of the Mayans were long gone before any Spanish conquistadores arrived to America (by the way, Apocalypto is so full of crap it's not even funny). It's still a mystery what happened to them, but I've heard lots of versions.

Actually, the Spanish didn't wipe any civilization, at least not at the same scale of the british to the north... but they did steal all their treasures, destroy ancient symbols, kill many men, enslave the survivors and "friendly" convert them to christianity.

lucylespian

caifan82 wrote:

Nope, they didn't... 99% of the Mayans were long gone before any Spanish conquistadores arrived to America (by the way, Apocalypto is so full of crap it's not even funny). It's still a mystery what happened to them, but I've heard lots of versions.

Actually, the Spanish didn't wipe any civilization, at least not at the same scale of the british to the north... but they did steal all their treasures, destroy ancient symbols, kill many men, enslave the survivors and "friendly" convert them to christianity.

There you go, it's a long time since I read anything on this, and it's easy to get teh different South American cultures mixed up. I am a bit confused about teh distinction bewtwee, "wipe out civilization" and "steal treasure, kill people, enslave the survivors" though. They sound a lot thet same to me.

caifan82

lucylespian wrote:

There you go, it's a long time since I read anything on this, and it's easy to get teh different South American cultures mixed up.

Sorry if it sounds picky, but the Mayas weren't a South American culture. They were half in North America, half in Central America.

lucylespian wrote:

I am a bit confused about teh distinction bewtwee, "wipe out civilization" and "steal treasure, kill people, enslave the survivors" though. They sound a lot thet same to me.

Yeah, maybe it came out wrong, but what I meant is that the Spanish didn't exterminate almost every native when they arrived, like the British. There was a lot of mixing and slavery, but not genocide like further to the north.

IndianSummer

caifan82 wrote:

Yeah, maybe it came out wrong, but what I meant is that the Spanish didn't exterminate almost every native when they arrived, like the British. There was a lot of mixing and slavery, but not genocide like further to the north.

take your load of crap elsewhere.
the spanish put paid to the incas, mayans and the aztec.

mexico city if full of churches built on aztec/maya temples.

to the spanish, (and also the british up north) the only good native was a dead native.

caifan82

IndianSummer wrote:

take your load of crap elsewhere.
the spanish put paid to the incas, mayans and the aztec.

mexico city if full of churches built on aztec/maya temples.

to the spanish, (and also the british up north) the only good native was a dead native.

Wow, kinda aggressive, aren’t we? Didn't sleep well, did we?

Ok, I'm going to go out of a limb here and guess you've never been to Mexico.
Or else you'd have seen that a huge part of the population is of obvious Aztec/Maya/Toltec/etc... heritage. If you go to the US or Canada it is extremely hard to find someone of native american heritage. There was a lot of breeding between natives and Spanish here, much much more than in the north.
That's what I meant. The genocide wasn't on the same scale north and south of the Rio Grande.
I'm not trying to defend the Spanish, they did kill, steal, destroy, pillage and torture... But it's a fact that they didn't kill as many natives as the British.

BTW, there are no Mayan temples in Mexico city, so you might want to "take your load of crap elsewhere"

audome25

disease killed more than any bullets or swords ever did. and not the "disease on a blanket" crap, natural disease progression.

RolandTD20Kdrummer

IndianSummer wrote:

take your load of crap elsewhere.
the spanish put paid to the incas, mayans and the aztec.

mexico city if full of churches built on aztec/maya temples.

to the spanish, (and also the british up north) the only good native was a dead native.

Yeah, I often wonder about this. All these "lost" civilizations that just disappeared. I think in some cases or many cases they were massacred. If it was disease some people would start to catch on and migrate elsewhere. In order for a place to be lost and forgotten, no one made it out alive. Not just that, but adjacent villages and regions as well were "cleansed".

audome25

RolandTD20Kdrummer wrote:

Yeah, I often wonder about this. All these "lost" civilizations that just disappeared. I think in some cases or many cases they were massacred. If it was disease some people would start to catch on and migrate elsewhere. In order for a place to be lost and forgotten, no one made it out alive. Not just that, but adjacent villages and regions as well were "cleansed".

actually read about disease spreading. "guns, germs and steel." would be a good place to start.