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BY BEN WHITE |
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Yucatan Diary Day 15by Ben White posted 01/24/05
Note: Every fifth day of this diary actually includes Friday, Saturday and Sunday and material is gathered for it over those three days. As the Ewing blasts the northern Yucatan coast, I am blasted in Merida by a battle of the bands on every corner. Just outside where I write a stage is set up and some guy is going on and on very loudly. The only difference between it being pleasant and, as now, almost unbearable, is simply volume. Course the volume outside is probably no more than about 115 db instead of 255db. With the Ewing experiment begun, forget going to Mexico (Day Effie) City. Too late to talk to officials to convince them to change their mind. Like water stopped, I now flow along the coast looking for a way out to that damn boat. West to Celestun I am told there are no tourist boats. Progreso tells me maybe but not now. Finally a good lead in Holbox. I drive about two hundred miles there on Saturday, get close but no cigar, and then drive back to Merida today, Sunday. I feel like I have been tied to the ground with government red tape and made to watch the rape and murder of my mother ocean in front of me. As I have wondered for years, what is the response of a reasonable person watching the rape of their mother, as all of us are at the moment? I really donīt know, because being a lunatic, I do not boast of being reasonable. Anger, denial, resignation? Stuck in the anger phase, I want to fight back but in a way that actually works, not a harmless flailing away. The only cure goes to the root. We have to change how we think about this world. Just out there beyond the horizon of Progreso is the Maurice Ewing, paid for by myself and my neighbors, waging war against the creature of the water and the fishing families of the coast. And, for the moment, there is not a damn thing I can do about it but object. Sheer objection is less than I want at the moment, it doesnīt satisfy. Rosario and I held our second press conference on Friday morning, just after the Ewing fired up the old airgun array (at 6:30 am). We vigorously presented all of the couple of dozen studies that show harm from airguns to fish, fisheries, snow crabs, squid, turtles, giant squid, and sperm whales. Even though it was well attended, I think the general response was a weary 'So What?' And I felt that in our seriousness, and in the irrelevance of our objection and information to the fact that the Ewing was going right ahead, we reduced ourselves to just more activists trying to get attention about something. I hate being just part of a conversation society. I want to act. Do you know that smaltzy song Walking in Memphis? (I love smaltz- can't get enough). Where he is being wooed by an evangelical beauty who asks 'Son, are you a Christian?' and he answers, 'Maam, I am tonight.' I had a similar moment at the press conference when I was holding up a picture of the Virgin of Guadalupe that I would take with me into the water (if I could ever get out there.) One reporter asked me if I was Catholic and I said, with a smile, 'Soy hoy.' Which means, 'I am today.', to which he responded to with a knowing smile. I am noticing the little statues and pictures of the Virgin of Guadalupe wherever I go, with her being held aloft into the clouds by a peasant child. But isnīt that a black crescent moon she is standing on, with her cloak of stars? Everything I have learned about the power of spirituality (and physics) over my half century tells me that the question of whether the object of reverence is 'real' or not is totally irrelevant. What makes it real is the belief, and the more belief the more real. There is a heck of a lot of belief across this poor white-rocked land in the Virgin of Guadalupe. In front of almost every home there is a little shrine. I am told that she will listen to me if I pray to her and, with a lot to pray for, I have started. And indeed, she is everywhere. I donīt know if the image of this old gringo embracing the power of this image to help protect the sea creatures of the Yucatan is corny, or hackneyed, or what, but I am assured it isnīt disrespectful. But at least it is innocent, I come to her like any other fumbling mortal. Unable to get a boat out to the Ewing, and unable to swim, fly, or walk to it, I pursue leads, all the way to Holbox. Now I have always had this theory about the geographical drift of wackos- that they tend to go as far as they can until they are stopped by a sea somewhere and there they tend to accumulate in little eddies of interesting folks. Such as Key West, Provincetown, Venice Beach, Nome Alaska. Under this system, Holbox should be the wackiest, it is so off the beaten path. But it is outstanding in its pleasant normalness. If you were able to hack through the jungle and mangroves to the west of Cancun, the first little road that you would get to going north would be heading to Solpherino and then Chiquilla. Solpherino is home to three 'millennium trees, at least a thousand years old each. I am told that these trees still harbor the children of the alluxes- the little all male (children?) mud pranksters of the Mayan. Looking up into the massive grey elephants feet trunks into the clusters of bromeliads and dark junctures of branches, I have no doubts. But if you keep going north to Chiquilla and then take a boat (4$) twenty minutes to the north, you will find the most perfect little Mexican Caribbean town that I have ever blundered into. Pure white (crushed shell) soft sand lapped by the most turquoise of waves. Friendly people without the attitude of those long abused by tourists. No cars! Just a few trucks and a bunch of four wheel drive golfcarts. No big hotels, just beautiful thatched palapas at the edge of the endless beach. A working beach, filled with launches with flags out the back of different colors (a code?) Friendly dogs so well cared for I enjoy giving them a good scratch. Standard of living maybe double of the mainland Yucatecan towns. Their secret? Ecotourism and environmental protection. And the whole community is into it. To top it off, in July and August they play host to whale sharks, both babies and adults. I was late getting to Holbox because I was so sick I couldnīt move Friday night and Saturday morning. Felt like one of those butterflies I mounted in a box when I was a little kid with a pin through their thoraxes. (The approved way for kids to study nature at the time, complete with killing jar- yes I am a sinner.) Maybe one can carry this cultivation of empathy too far. The creatures of the waters of the Yucatan get blasted so I feel like I am shot through the stomach. But I eventually recovered enough to make the long ride east and then north to Holbox, just in time to meet with an Italian hotel owner who owns a boat and Juan Carrateca, Araceli Rodriguezīs island contact. I laid out the problem of the Ewing and then the plan. He brought out a nautical chart and scrolled it across the table so we could see where the whole thing was happening. I told him what I knew about the Maurice Ewing and why they were doing this. Like almost everybody else in Mexico that I have talked to about this, he was absolutely certain that it was connected to Pemex and their search for oil. He thumped the chart in places where Pemex has already said they want to drill, one of them right next to Alacranes (Scorpion) Reef. He was upset and angry that the Mexican government would allow such a thing and understood perfectly the threat it presented to his little paradise. But, when it came to using his boat, he just couldnīt. He was a foreigner running a business. The Mexican government has a way of cracking down on those that oppose it in any way. He could lose his boat, his hotel, he said. This was a good looking, strong young man with a very successful hotel on one of the most remote spots in Mexico. And he was intimidated enough by the federal government to demure in helping me even though he clearly wanted to. If it was in Italy, well.... in a heartbeat. I didnīt even blame him. Juan Carateca agreed to meet me in the morning to talk out other ideas. The Italianīs boat was a hefty zodiac with a 200 hp motor, but still, he recommended that we needed a real tourist boat with two motors and at least 9 or 10 meters that could go a long way. And still we need permission from a Port Captain for exactly what we plan to do. I immediately liked Juan. Tall, a long face, kind eyes, Juan works as a guide to take people out to see the whale sharks and other miracles. He bent my ear for awhile about how hard it is to keep drunk idiots from riding the shark like a horse, buzzing them with jet skies and slicing their dorsals, getting in the way of their feeding on the surface. Juan tells me that one way or another, we will find a way out to the Ewing. And I believe him. Tomorrow, after I take care of business here in Merida, I will head back to Holbox. Juan says, this is our campaign. I am a warrior for the animals, they are all I care about. My kind of guy. A little more about sound: The last time I was in Merida was on a trip I took by myself about twenty five years ago. Before marriage or kids, before Sea Shepherd adventures, before my second career protecting critters. I signed up for a cheap flight from Miami to Merida that only left twice a week. Hitching from Virginia to Florida, I hit it wrong and had to wait for three days in Miami, where I secretly camped out along the water in the back of rich peopleīs estates, tying my backpack up in a tree during the days. Living on the streets. When I finally got down to Merida, I headed north to Dzibilchatun to explore my first Mayan ruins. I then spent the next two and a half months exploring the Mayan centers in the Yucatan, Belize and Guatemala. It is ironic that this sound attack is going on along the Mayan coast, a people who had a real and unusual interest in the properties of sound. Following a guide leading people who could pay him through Chichen Itza, I watched him clap his hands in front of pyramids. The echo from each one was different and some very strange. One sounds like a rifle ricochet. One has now been discovered, according to a new paper to the American Acoustical Society, that was designed to sound like the call of the sacred bird of the Mayan- the resplendent Quetzal! How do you figure out how to make the echo from a sequence of steps sound like your favorite bird?! Our present technology seeks other challenges (like how to more efficiently kill Iraqis). And then there was the first night I got to Tikal, the huge Mayan city tucked away in the deepest Guatemalan rainforest of which only a little bit has been uncovered. But part of that little bit is a grand square with the two tallest pyramids in the New World facing each other across the square. Well, the carfull of Israelis I was hitching with didnīt get to Tikal until dusk and it was already closed. But I have never been much for rules, so I squeezed under the chain across the road and walked to the main square, howler monkeys making my entrance anything but stealthy. I climbed the steep steps of the tallest pyramid, sliding my hand up the cable affixed to the crumbling steps. All the way up to the little room at the top, with its stone frontispiece going on up into the sky. At about two hundred feet up, I was above the treetops, just crouching there, listening to a strong wind whishing towards me, rolling across the treetops. Somewhere a jaguar screamed. And then the wind hit the pyramid where I sat, reverberating the frontispiece and using the little room as a sounding board. As clear as a bell, a distinct tone was produced that rang out across the endless Guatemalan swamps, as it has, I guess, for centuries. It seriously spooked me, raising goosebumps on all limbs. As quietly and inconspicuously as I could, I climbed off the pyramid, crept down the road to the campground where I climbed into my old army mummy bag and pulled it close around my face. A strange place to be messing with sound. Here where the Mayans clearly used and understood it in a way we havenīt a clue about. The beach patrol for bodies has begun, with two big fish washing up in Progreso on Friday. If I am totally shut down getting a boat I will be relegated to the deathsearch. But I am going to exhaust every single possibility first. Lets all visualize me getting a good fast cheap boat operated by a gutsy believer. For the moment, I am not succored by the rationale that one can lose by winning, whether the rationale is from me or others. Although, being in the critter saving business, I am used to losing, my intent is still to shut the bastards down. What we have now is what has always happened- they eventually get their test off. But this one was delayed over a year and has now received attention world wide. Yeah, that's good. But not good enough. Thanks for all of the kind words, good wishes and prayers coming to me from all over. I am blessed. This campaign, and my salary, is being paid for by the Animal Welfare Institute. Tax exempt contributions will be happily accepted at Animal Welfare Institute, Box 3650, Washington, DC., 20027. Love and revolution, |
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