Revisiting the ruins

Ai and I also went to both Mitla and Mt. Alban (both places I've taken the last two visitors to, and where I've vowed not to accompany more this visit), which gave me an opportunity to try to look at the places from a different angle so as not to be bored and anti-social. I am always so struck by the scale and history of these sites (as I joking comment made "while my people were living in mud huts and destroying the intellectual work of the pagan past"). I've also been reading an interesting non-fiction book about the Americas pre-Columbus that does some good meta-analyses of the process of writing histories of the Americas and have been mulling on the indelible traces of such findings that pre-Columbus/pre-pre-contact infectious decimation the Americas were the most densely populated areas on the earth of the time.

When Ai and I headed out to Mitla our blue skies turned grey and we arrived in the midst of a raging thunder storm (La and Ai definitely brought us East Coast rainy weather on top of the existing rainy season.... or it was the diluted impact of the devasting hurricanes). After imitating the kids on their way home from school and standing under overhanging eaves for a bit waiting futilely for a passing mototaxi, we rolled up our pant legs (literally and metaphorically) and headed up the hill to the ruins site. Luckily one passed by before we had progressed too far (me with an umbrella and she with a more shelthering raincoat), as we noticed making our way up that the road and sidewalk were under about 6 inches of moving water in many places (Mexico's drainage system has consistently under-impressed me... though so has New York's in comparable rainstorms) and the mototaxi driver had to both cautiously ford the new rivers but also navigate the topes (speed bumps) in their midst. Luckily the small engine held. It was clearing up as we reached the site and we had the place virtually to ourselves.



It's really interesting to me the ongoing work that these sites require. They are alive sites in their own ways.
At the church built on/ next to the ruins site (short of Cholula in Puebla, Mitla is one of the largest stark reminders of the Spaniard's practices of spiritual conquest by building their churches on indigenous religious sites/ using their very stones to construct new religious spaces), there are tons of veladoras stacked up next to an outside shrine-- I'm not sure if they reuse them or simply keep them as memorials of devote offerings. I also haven't heard of people using Mitla (or Mt. Alban) as spiritual spaces apart from their Catholic syncretic practices (although Mitla is home to a ton of American evangelicals who use it as a base for church planting throughout the mountains).


Due to other scheduling issues we were only able to go to Mt. Alban on Sunday, the day it's free for all Mexican nationals... oy! We took the one bus that goes up and I think the route has changed since I last took it as we powered through the top of San Martin along a twisty road the width of a single lane (although not used as such). It was a mad house at the top, although really nice to see ways in which it could become a space of normalcy which you could incorporate into a an easy family excursion. Unfortunately it was a heavy travel weekend as well for independence day so there was a heavy proportion of tourists as well. However the space is also big enough that in the central plaza you did not have the sensation of overcrowding.... and I've never seen it so green! To see it with probably a thousand people and to have it still not feel full really brings the scale of the site in its hay day into perspective (I seem to be currently obsessed with geographical demography at the moment).