IMAGINE an Olympic hockey player trying to get the 1st goal in a world game if his success meant not a gold gong but the forfeiture of his head
IMAGINE an Olympic hockey player trying to get the 1st goal in a world game if his success meant not a gold gong but the forfeiture of his head. It sounds weird, but in the culture of the Totonacs in the Veracruz area of Mexico, that is precisely what occurred at the end of their ball games played centuries gone. Bearing a name that implies Place of Thunder, El Tajin is a Mayan ruin found in the state of Veracruz, thirteen kilometres from the little northwards city of Papantla de Contla near to the Gulf of Mexico.
Construction started on this architectural treasure in the 1st century and continued thru to the 13th century when Chichimec soldiers attacked and ruined the town. El Tajin was at last deserted, the town swallowed by the jungle. For centuries El Tajin’s pyramids, churches, ball courts and piazzas spread evenly over two hundred hectares, lay quiescent underneath the jungle cover.
Rediscovered in 1785, and partly exposed in the early 20 th century by archeologist Jose Garcia Payon, this ancient town now lives again. Recognizing its signification, UNESCO has announced it a World Heritage Site. Among El Tajin’s pyramids is the superbly revived Pyramid of the Niches. The 365 alcoves hollowed out from the face of this stepped structure are thought to represent the 365 days of our own solar calendar. 6 patios lead up to its peak, on which a temple once stood.
In centuries past, El Tajin’s ceremonial centre, a clearing of approximately one kilometre square, was a trading place for the Totonac people. In those times, as there was no currency as such, vanilla, xocolat ( chocolate ), corn and beans were used for bartering.
Up till 1427, when the Aztecs moved into the area, vanilla’s most critical use to the leftover Totonacs was its fragrance and medical qualities. Vanilla’s acclaim reached new levels when the Aztecs created a culinary use for the black bean, mixing vanilla with chocolate and using it as a celebratory drink. Emperor Montezuma, it is said, honoured the coming of the Spanish in 1519 by inviting Hernando Cortez and his Spanish conquistadores to partake of this special drink.
It is a highly valued tribute reserved for critical personages alone. On his return to Spain, Cortez’s discovery was introduced to the select in Europe, where it was employed as a flavouring for tobacco — another Mexican import — and later offered as an aphrodisiac. While rambling among the pyramids on a steamy afternoon in Nov , I was drawn by the stone carvings on walls that have stood for close to eight hundred years. These carvings and many others are still tangible, but there’s a totally real worry that acid rain is playing chaos on the walls of El Tajin. It has been related that if an answer to the difficulty is not found shortly, in 10 years the carvings may not exist.
Those showing the ball courts are of specific interest, since they are thought to have been the coaching ground for young warriors. In games that looked like our present-day basketball, the goal was to be first to place the ball, weighing up to 4 kilograms, thru a ring at the end of the court. Passing this weighty object backwards and forwards was done with the thrust of shoulder, hip, chest, elbows or knees — no hands permitted. “It is most important,” announced our guide “that the gods receive only the best.”. A ramble thru the market alongside El Tajin is a shopper’s dream. Upon entering the cultural centre, Totonac ladies perform a rite of cleaning by “beating” visitors across the shoulders, on arms and back, with smoothly scented abaca plants.