Teotihuacan

We left Mexico City with some relief, but more than a little reluctance. While we were way behind schedule, we felt there was so much more to do and see in el D.F. After only a few wrong turns, we stumbled onto the road out of the city.

Although we had a long drive ahead of us before our next stop in Xalapa (or Jalapa, depending on who you ask), we had resolved to stop and see the pyramids of Teotihuacan on our way (more or less on our way). It was nice for a change to have a native Spanish-speaker with us...though we lost our way just as often, Juan could ask and understand directions in half the time it would have taken us.

The pyramids at Teotihuacan are an experience that is hard to describe, but easy to remember - both overwhelming and underwhelming at the same time. The majestic structures vie for your attentionwith the hundreds of vendors selling gaudy memoribilia for prices so low, one cannot imagine they turn a profit. The pyramids themselves are incredible - so large that they appear even larger than the mountains which surround them.

Several thoughts raced through my mind on the long climb up the pyramids. How could a society capable of such an elaborate engineering project collapse and disintegrate only a few centuries later? The pyramids were built by a pre-Aztec society, which disappeared hundreds of years before the Spaniards invaded, slaughtering and enslaving the Aztecs and all the other indigenous societies of the area. Why would anyone abandon such a site?

One theory is that the Teotihuacans were destroyed by their own success. As their population grew, they overworked the soils surrounding the city, eroding the base of their own prosperity, eventually rendering the area uninhabitable.

The pyramids themselves are double-edged icons - where Juan saw the majesty and power of a pre-Columbian society, I saw only their exploitation and cruelty. The Teotihuacans had a rigid heirarchical society, ruled over by a parasitic priestly class and a king who claimed to be the very son of God himself. These freeloaders ruled over a vast underclass kept in a perpetual state of fear and poverty, enforced by a warrior caste (kind of reminds me of Plato's Republic). But how does one keep an entire society convinced that one is the living representative of God on earth? Well, clearly it helped to build awe-inspiring structures (using slave-labour, of course) and then sacrifice any trouble-makers on the tops of them. Call me a cynic, but I couldn't help seeing the pyramids as a living reminder of everything that's wrong with human civilization.