Cancun

National Review, May 31, 1985 by F. Reid Buckley.

She then regaled us with the wisdom and foresight of Mexico's glorious leaders in creating Cancun out of that jungle of gum, mahogany, and bay. One sensed instantly that not the least, slightest jocularity about Mexico or its government (not to speak of a clumsy and ungracious Carter-type crack) would be countenanced by her: That is a rule for foreigners, just as it is a rule that no revelatory truth may be spoken about their country by well-indoctrinated Mexicans, at least not in their public capacities. Alan Riding recounts in his comprehensive book on the Mexicans, Distant Neighbors (Knopf, 1985), how in 1983 a play called The Martyrdom of Morelos revealed that, "while being tortured prior to execution by a Spanish firing squad in 1815, [Jose Maria] Morelos betrayed the names, strategies, and troop strengths of other key rebel commanders." All hell broke loose. "Assorted civic associations then mobilized to defend 'the honor and glory' of Morelos, a leading politician devoted an entire speech [to] praising the 'founder of the nation' and excoriating his critics, [the] actor playing the part of Morelos was replaced," and so forth.

The extent of this practice of self-deception is hard to believe. When will Mexicans outgrow their inferiority complex, and when will they liberate themselves from the ideological myths of the Partido Revolucionario Institutional--the PRI--which has run Mexico for fifty years, feigning democracy? It is excused as national pride, and one understands the lure of revisionism. But it's sad, for the indoctrinators who know their history, as for the indoctrinated-manques.

What's to be writ about Tulum that hasn't been said ten times over about all the Toltec-Mayan ruins? That it is impressive, if not so grand as Chicken Pizza? But you have read this. That the Mayans--those consummate astronomers and mathematicians, who owned no beasts of burden other than human slaves--knew not the pulley and tackle, yet somehow piled blocks of stone one on top of the other to erect monumental edifices of wonderful proportions, on the very tipmost top of one of which, in Uxmal, nine years before, I forgot my cigarettes; such being my addiction, I puffed emphysematously all the way back up those 160 tiny steep steps to retrieve my drug . . . Nothing new there. Or that on the vertiginous tops of the pyramids, prisoners of war and other unfortunates regularly were held down so that the living hearts could be torn out of their chests, which--our dear guide earnestly assured us--was so signal an honor that they scarcely minded? I read once that at the great pyramid of Mexico City as many as three thousand lucky Aztec folk would be so honored on a single day, the frothing scarlet blood slipping down from stone step to stone step until it coagulated in a blackening pool at the bottom. It was such quaint folk customs that were brutally abolished by the barbarous Hernan Cortes when he smashed the Aztecs' idols, along with their empire.

The fortress-temple of Tulum is established on a majestic bluff that fronts the Caribbean. There is a great barrier reef, second only to that of Australia, over which we could see the sapphire blue swells breaking into glistening foam. It was near here, on that very reef, that two Spaniards, one the priest Geronimo de Aguilar, survived shipwreck. They were nursed to health by compassionate Mayan Indians--bringing on the doom of pre-Columbian civilization, as it turned out. Because Padre Aguilar learned their language, and proved to be of immeasurable help to Cortes in his conquest.