Yucatan Diary Day 6
January 8, 2005
Merida, Yucatan
by Ben White
posted 01/11/05
Executive Summary- (for those of you without the time to wade through all the touchy feely stuff):
Seismic Vessel Maurice Ewing en route, expected to round Cancun today or tomorrow. Government says all requirements are fulfilled but fishermen, enviros and local pols fight. We gear up for midweek confrontation.
Last night the kids took over the makeshift stage below my hotel roomīs third- floor dictators window facing the park. Starting slowly, even quietly, with some kind of traditional call-and-response song to call the crowd in, the six drummers and the one guy with the shaker gourd, suddenly broke into a furious polyrhythmic assault too fast to follow. Behind them, up the marble steps and on the platform surrounding the pigeon spattered statue to Seņor Peon, wiry boys competed in breakdancing with impossible arm strength- handstand pushups with feet kicking wide, leaning all the way backwards until feet almost touch the ground behind their head and then being able to pull back into a vertical handstand. Wow.
The drumming intensifies. One by one solo dancers appear in the space between the crowd and the stage, some just with all legs and arms flying at once and some with those swinging fire slings. They danced with total abandon, like they were gathering the world into their bellies and throwing it back out again. One of the lead drummers- shaved head, no shirt, brown and muscled with drum suspended from his neck with a wide sash- courts the dancers, male and female, drumming to their dance. Drum and dancer, sound and fury, they play off each other. Faster and faster the music spirals until the distinction of whether it is the musicians making the music or the other way around- disappears. Drummers, breakdance spinners, dancers in front, they are all riding the snake- Quetzalcoatl lives!- moving to life, to sex, to freedom, to eternal potential, and to everything that isnīt dead and cold and rigid.
I hope that force will be with us over the next few days, because we are coming down to the wire here. The bad ship- the Maurice Ewing seismic research vessel- is slowly chugging around from Panama with a whole slew of very important scientists from five different countries.
Today or tomorrow, we expect a patrol vessel from the Mexican Environmental Agency Profepa to leave Cancun and meet the M.E. when it comes into the waters of Quintana Roo. There they are expected to inspect the shipīs papers to make sure all of the conditions of the Mexican permit have been met. It may be that all of the certification for their observers is not in order. It may be that a paper filed today from a Yucatan state representative asking for a delay might grab hold.
But I am expecting, one way or another, that the Maurice Ewing will be here tomorrow or Wednesday. Interesting timing. About a week ago my friend, animal activist par excellence and Mayan high priestess Araceli Rodriguez, said that we would be helped by a big wind. Tonight a powerful noreaster is predicted to begin and blow for days. Hmmm.
Turns out one of the scientists from Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory (the owners of the ME and part of Columbia University) has been visiting the fishermen of Progreso and telling them not to worry: they will go out first with a camera that looks below the ship and fire their smallest airgun one time. If there is any damage whatsoever, they will pack up their expensive guns and very important briefcases and go home. Sounds reasonable, right? Precautionary? Well, not exactly. There are twenty airguns measuring from 80 to 850 cubic inches. All together, whomping away in a deadly chorus, all twenty amount to over 8500 cubic inches of airgun volume. The little 80 decibel tweeter after one shot would show no damage, everything would be declared ready to go and then the array could go ahead and start smacking the surrounding water with over a hundred times more power and pressure every twenty seconds.
Even though I still expect a miracle (indeed there is little else), the ways that this seismic blasting of the Yucatan coast will be stopped by reasonable and legal and proper channels, are quickly slowing to a trickle. Academics at LDEO have the permission of two countries and the applause of their geophysical colleagues, so they will apparently get the chance to find out exactly how the Chicxulub crater was made, no matter what the normal citizens or fishermen have to say about it. It seems to me they have laser-like tunnel vision to so adamantly seek information to salve their curiosity regardless of its effect on the living world.
Scientists seem to have become our modern equivalent to priests because they have shown they can, thorough medicine and technology, save and extend lives. So we have given them carte blanche to screw with the world however they wish as long as they find us a free pass- a way for us to avoid the consequences of our collective abuse of this place. It's a devil's bargain. In exchange, they are above us, with more latitude and less responsibility for their actions than the rest of us mortals. You and I are not permitted to play with brutal toys the size of this one. Blessings on those scientist friends of ours with the courage to challenge this moral corruption of their profession and stand up for the whales at great professional jeopardy.
The boat is ready to go. We are making the dive flag to fly and the pole mount for the Virgin of Guadalupe. We may have other fishing boats along with us, especially the first day. My daughter Julia is flying in tomorrow to help hold the AWI video camera and drive away homesickness.
I know that this confrontation will come out just fine. But even in the contemplation of jumping in front of this boat, I start to see life as if it were finite, just a temporary gift. The little detail we all successfully forget. That makes ordinary color and movements and nuances stand in relief. Makes me really grateful. Makes me wish I spent more time with my family.
Peace to all. Please send good thoughts or whatever else you have lying around.
Love and Revolution,
Ben
Yucatan Diary Day 7
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