Guatemala City, Guat.: Mayans to "purify" selves after Bush visit; Bush to bathe in hydrochloric acid.

This is a hoot.

Mayan priests will purify a sacred archaeological site to eliminate "bad spirits" after President Bush visits next week, an official with close ties to the group said Thursday.

A spokesman with no official ties whatsoever to the Mayans said that "'spirit guides of the Mayan community' decided it would be necessary to cleanse the sacred site of "bad spirits" after Bush's visit so that their ancestors could rest in peace."

These would be, I would suppose, those self same "spirit guides" who guided the Maya, spiritually speaking, to rip the hearts out of living, screaming victims, then lop off their heads and kick them around in football games.

Bush is going to visit Iximche, which is about 30 miles west of Guatemala City. Iximche (pronounced "kalamazoo" in the Mayan dialect) was the capitol of the Kaqchiqueles kingdom. The Kaqchiqueles (pronounced "Kokomo" in Mayan) were a mighty people whose reign lasted for a whole, uh, 50 years.

And since these morons masquerading as a poor, downtrodden lot whose happy, in tune with nature lifestyle was wrecked by the white man (who couldn't speak English, I might add) have now set themselves up as targets, here come the potshots.

The Maya

They developed a common culture by absorbing and developing elements borrowed from their neighbours.

Hence, the "Mayan culture" is really somebody elses. Kind of like the Chinese.

The aim of this rather limited warfare was to take prisoners. Low status captives generally wound up as slaves to their captor, but high-status captives were scheduled for ritual sacrifice. The deliberate taking of a human life was deemed necessary to sanctify certain ritual occasions, such as the ascendancy to the throne by a new ruler or the dedication of a new building. Naturally the capture of a rival ruler was highly prized, as the sacrifice of the unfortunate individual lent extra importance to the occasion. The usual method of such a sacrifice was decapitation in a public ceremony. Aside from decapitation, the favored method in Postclassic times was a trick acquired from the Mexican cultures to the north, the removal of the heart. Women and children were sacrificed just as often as men The intended victim was stripped and painted blue before being led to a courtyard or temple where the victim would be placed face-up over a convex altar-like stone also painted blue. The arms and legs of the victim were held by specially designated priests while a fourth, called the nacom, would penetrate the victim's chest with a flint knife just below the left breast. Reaching inside the chest cavity, the nacom would pull out the still beating heart and hand it to another priest, who would then smear the blood on that idol to which the sacrifice had been made. If the sacrifice had taken place on the top of a pyramid, the corpse would be thrown to the courtyard below where priests of lower rank would skin the victim except for the hands and feet. The skin would then be worn by the officiating priest who would solemnly dance among the spectators. If the victim had been an especially brave warrior his body might be butchered and eaten by the nobles and other spectators.

A bow and arrow was also used in human sacrifice. The victim was stripped, painted blue and bound to a stake. According to a sixteenth century account, " The foul priest in vestments went up and wounded the victims in parts of shame (the genitals), whether it was a man or woman, and drew blood and came down and anointed the face of the idol with it."

Dancers, all armed with bows and arrows " began one after another to shoot at his heart ... in this manner they made his whole chest ... like a hedgehog of arrows"

A recently discovered painting at Tikal shows a man who has been bound to a stake and disemboweled.

The famous Sacred Cenote (a natural well) located at Chichen-Itza was found to contain numerous skeletons of men, women and children who were sacrificial victims. Bishop de Landa, in the sixteenth century reported: "Into this well they have the custom of throwing Men alive as a sacrifice to the gods in times of drought, and they believed they did not die though they never saw them."

I'm confused. Do they plan to decapitate Bush, rip out his still beating heart and smear the blood on statues of Hugo Chavez or Che Guevara, skin him and march around solemnly whilst wearing his hide, butcher him and eat him, fill his chest with arrows like a pin cushion, toss him into a pond and hope he can't swim, or all of the aforementioned?

Victims had their hearts cut out or were decapitated, shot full of arrows, clawed, sliced to death, stoned, crushed, skinned, buried alive or tossed from the tops of temples.

Children were said to be frequent victims, in part because they were considered pure and unspoiled.

Oh, yeah. Eliminate them nasty Bushco bad spirits.

Human sacrifice was perpetrated on prisoners, slaves, and particularly children, with orphans and illegitimate children specially purchased for the occasion.

But in carvings and mural paintings, he said, "we have now found more and greater similarities between the Aztecs and Mayas,'' including a Maya ceremony in which a grotesquely costumed priest is shown pulling the entrails from a bound and apparently living sacrificial victim.

They prized a long, backward sloping forehead; in order to attain this look, infants would have their skulls bound with boards. Crossed-eyes were an important item of physical beauty; infants would have objects dangled in front of their eyes in order to permanently cross their eyes (this is still practiced today).

Bush should be safe. They'll all be running around in circles trying to catch the guy on the right. "No, your other right!"

This self annointed protector of the "Mayan community", one Juan Tiney, says that the cleansing ceremony must take place because, "That a person like (Bush), with the persecution of our migrant brothers in the United States, with the wars he has provoked, is going to walk in our sacred lands, is an offense for the Mayan people and their culture." Uh-huh.

Uncontrolled warfare was probably one of the main causes for the Maya's eventual downfall. In the centuries after 250--the start of what is called the Classic period of Maya civilization--the skirmishes that were common among competing city-states escalated into full-fledged, vicious wars that turned the proud cities into ghost towns.

As far as pseudo-Maya Juan Tiney's comment about "ancestors rest in peace:

Much like the Upperworld, the Underworld was divided into nine layers. Each of the layers were ruled by a deity, Lords of the Night. The Underworld was cold, damp, and dark, and was believed to be the destination of most Maya after death.

So Tiney is concerned that his ancestors will rest peacefully in . . . hell?

I love all this "noble savage" crap. When one begins to actually research the histories of all these many "proud civilizations", one realizes that the differences between the European whites and the conquered blacks and browns was merely one of who won and who lost.


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