Tulum: Disneyland Style

This morning our site visit was to Tulum, which is one of the last Maya sites to be inhabited. Evidence suggests that Tulum was abandoned in the late 16th century, after the Spanish had invaded the region. Indeed, one Spanish chronicler claimed, when he saw it in 1518, that it was as big as the city of Seville.
 
What makes Tulum of interest, besides its late inhabitation, is the location. Perched on top of a hill overlooking the Caribbean Sea, it is a rare and well preserved coastal city.

Sadly, Tulum and the modern Maya of this region have been introduced to global forces that have placed extraordinary pressures on them and their sacred sites. Since the 1970s, the Mexican government has been working hard to develop the eastern Yucatan into one of the top tourist destinations in the country. Tulum, because it is a short bus ride from Cancun, has become one of the most frequented sacred sites in all of Mexico. Of course the financial benefits for this development have not flowed directly to the Maya. Rather, the Maya are exploited and marginalized even as their heritage is commodified and commercialized.

Thus our academic site visit to Tulum was overwhelmed by crass free market capitalism. First the tourists are herded through a corridor of cheap trinkets and psuedo-Maya made-in-China tapestries before reaching the site. Lots of the images are not even related to the Maya. At one point, a hawker tried to sell me a table cloth by proudly pointing out that the design on it was an Aztec calendar. Aztec, as in central Mexico.

It's very sad really. But that's not all. The grounds of Tulum are manicured like a golf course in California and workers were weed whacking as though their lives depended on it. In short it was a far cry from the sacred site that the Maya intended when they built and inhabited it.

Importantly, research at Tulum is beginning to crystallize around the awareness that the leadership structure here was significantly different than leadership structure in the rest of the Mundo Maya. At all the other Maya sites, whether in Guatemala at Tikal or at Palenque in Chiapas, Mexico or Carocal in Belize the leadership structure was focused on one ahau (ruler) who claimed power in the fashion of the divine right kings of Europe. Think Louis XIV of  France in the 17th century and the absolute power he held by claiming himself Apollo the Sun God. That's the same kind of political rulership the ahaus of the Maya world established. It was an inherited position, and contesting it required warfare and bloodshed. Interestingly, not only does the ahau glyph represent a king, but it also represents a date in one of the Maya calendar systems. Thus kingship is equated with time and is justified through religious power in the ancient Maya mind.  

An ahau glyph variation

Therefore as research at Tulum has progressed, scholars have been surprised to realize that power was not quite as centralized in this kingdom as it was in most of the rest of the Maya world. Rather, power at Tulum seems to have been shared among brothers (possibly) or some kind of council. Some academics have suggested it was a multepal form of government whereby power was held by an oligarchy. Although this theory to explain political power at Tulum is not entirely established, it is the most current explanation for the political structure.

If Tulum was ruled by a multepal, then the architecture would be correspondingly different, too, in order to accomodate more than one ruler simultaneously. There is evidence for this in the archaeological work that has been done at the site but much more needs to be done.

What's unlikely is that the masses of tourists who trundle through Tulum for a brief afternoon respite from the beaches of Cancun realize the unique political constructions which were embodied in the architecture and art at the site.