Journey to Xibalba: A Life in Archaeology

Opening Letter to Jessica

OPENING LETTER TO JESSICA You cannot create experience. You must undergo it. —Alberto Camus Dear Jessica, One day my tocayo (same name), Don Knoles, a painter and freelance reporter in San Miguel, encouraged me to write something about Mesoamerican archaeology for the public. He only requested that I not write about archaeological field methods and techniques, which he finds boring, and hinted that I might try to be a little philosophical. So I began to reflect upon the possibilities. In the process, I asked myself if the sum or even portions of my life’s journey would be interesting for others. This book began to take shape in my head, and you, Jessica, gave the book purpose. You asked my advice about your education and professional life. You were at a crossroads and tormented by indecision. I understood this, having faced the same situation many times in my life. Indeed, I am tormented with indecision even as I write, because the fear of making a bad decision in my professional life is surpassed by my fear of giving you bad advice. v฀฀ 1฀฀ v Although our lives have taken different paths, we have experienced some similar patterns. I have watched you traveling down the road of your life for twenty-seven years. You have migrated north to New York. This is the same age I was when I crossed the border south and came to Mexico. It was the beginning of something new and strange for me. While I did not end up doing what I thought I had prepared for, everything I had previously studied, when correctly applied, turned out to be useful. Like the person in Robert Frost’s poem who stands in an autumn wood before a fork in the trail, you seem to have reached diverging paths in your life just as I did, as many of us do, at your age. You recently expressed a desire to change your life, your dilemma being that you really like your boss but feel your job activities utilize neither your studies nor your potential. In all fairness, you do admit that you have learned something of human relationships and diplomacy as the Trade Representative to the U.S. Mexican Chamber of Commerce in New York. I guarantee that you will be able to use these experiences in the future so that your time at the chamber has not been wasted. Just make sure that you utilize those social qualities and graces that you picked up there with your boss and fellow employees when you decide to leave. Unfortunately, I didn’t always do this. You have to make your own decision about what path you will take, but I have written the following tale so that you can examine a portion of the journey I took, the people and institutions that made it possible, and the decisions both good and bad that I made. So it is, each time I have sat in front of the computer to write, you have been present. You are the reason for the form and content that the text takes. If there are any lessons to be learned from my life, it is important that I be truthful. Dr. Paul Kirchoff said, “If history is to be written, what really count are the events to which date and locality can be assigned—the rest are mere mythology.” Hence, the people, places, institutions, and conversations in this journey are real, as my memory recorded them. If, on the other hand, I ascribe motives to any of the people in the tale, and I am correct, it is merely coincidental. Your 2฀฀ v฀฀ OpeningLettertoJessica mother says that I am not a good judge of character of anything that is Mexican. There you have it. The Mesoamerican experience and my journey on the road to the world of Xibalba began in a book, the Popol Vuh. Early on my adventure, I came across a reference in Coe’s The Maya to an ancient sixteenth-century manuscript called the Popol Vuh. Miraculously, I found a copy of the first English translation of the manuscript a week later at a book sale at the public library in San Miguel. I paid eighty cents for the hardback copy of what the author of the edition referred to as the “Sacred Book of the Quiche Maya.” It was difficult reading because of my complete lack of knowledge...