San Mateo Ixtatán wraps itself around temple #18, down the divide between two large creeks, and above and around numerous springs that flow from the mountain. In interviewing I have seen the loveliest little water falls flowing down roads, streams flowing under peoples homes in concreted sluices, under main roads through culverts, and through local pilars, for washing clothes. The loveliness is marred by an amazing amount of trash. I guess if you compare this place to the American West 200 years ago, we probably had animals defecating all over the place, muddy streets and trash thrown everywhere too. At some point in time cities would organize themselves to have someone to pick up the trash, but not yet here. A huge problem is that the civil war only ended 10 years ago, so frontier towns like this are struggling to develop infrastructure. There is a trash dump and pick-up, but in our history towns like this didn't have plastic trash that doesn't biodegrade or go away.
The temple is amazing. Grown over with grass, the rocky structure exposed here and there, looking over the ball court which is now used for gatherings, parades, and soccer for the local schools. I sat on top of the temple with some of the teachers in the school, listening to two bands practice, with drums, horns, marimbas and children swaying and stomping to the drumline beat. Magical. Michelle was invited yesterday to go to the temple with four or five girls, three of whom were called Catalina...
They linked arms with her and took off. I lagged behind and let them get out of site, and she had a blast... On top of the temple you can see the town and below (the temple is below the town already). Mothers sit with basket of goods they sell, pigs roam around the ball court, puppies play and a flock of someone's turkeys wanders about. There trash everywhere except the top of the temple. The incentive to clean up the trash you create, or even to pocket it and not throw it down where you make it, is not there. A National Geographic Photographer was here the year I came in 2004, and he complained about being so limited in his ability to take photos because he couldn't get away from the trash.
Yet this morning Brendan and I walked down, and sat on the temple to talk. He was cheery, and full of the video games coming out this fall, how advanced their technology was and which one/s he might want to buy. He looked over the flat top of the temple at the two students at the edge, studying diligently in the peace, and commented that it would be a really great place to study. I got a shot of the girl, laying on her tummy at the edge of the pyramid, with the mountains opening out for miles behind her to the Xela volcanic valley below. It is breathtaking, and everyone here asks me how I like it. It is, breathtaking, heartbreaking, astonishingly lovely and confusingly paradoxical.
As we walked down the temple, back to the school to join the surveyors for the day, we saw boys draped over ancient stellae, reading and writing their homework. Same culture, different time. A pig with ears cocked like Babe, was sitting on the side of another ancient structure, watching us go by, clouds drift through the town offering moments of what seems like fog, and on another ancient grassy building, laundry is set out to dry in the moments of sun the morning brings. These buildings are very different than Tikal, just as old, or older, smaller, unrestored, but still very much in use by the same people who built them.
The kids now are famous, Brendan is the Giganto (giant) and Michelle has a fan club (and the same girls coo and swoon over Brendan). Brendan has learned to greet people and now everyone just lights up when we walk by and he speaks to them... with his Texas/Virginia accent...
Such a mix of cultures and periods of time...
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