Maya Roads: One Woman's Journey Among the People of the Rainforest

by Mary Jo McConahay

Overview

Northern California Book Award Recipient 

In Maya Roads, McConahay draws upon her three decades of traveling and living in Central America's remote landscapes to create a fascinating chronicle of the people, politics, archaeology, and species of the Central American rainforest, the cradle of Maya civilization. Captivated by the magnificence and mystery of the jungle, the author brings to life the intense beauty, the fantastic locales, the ancient ruins, and the horrific violence. She witnesses archaeological discoveries, the transformation of the Lacandon people, the Zapatista indigenous uprising in Mexico, increased drug trafficking, and assists in the uncovering of a war crime. Over the decades, McConahay has witnessed great changes in the region, and this is a unique tale of a woman's adventure and the adaptation and resolve of a people.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781569765487
Publisher:	Chicago Review Press, Incorporated
Publication date:	08/01/2011
Pages:	272
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 8.90(h) x 0.80(d)

About the Author

Journalist Mary Jo McConahay began covering Central America as a war correspondent in the 1980s and lived in Guatemala for eleven years. Her work has appeared in Vogue, Rolling Stone, the San Francisco Chronicle, and Time and is included in several anthologies.

Table of Contents

Map viii

Maya Time and Place ix

Prologue: Into the Lacandón 3

1 Looking for Itzam K'awil 29

2 Usumacinta, River of Dreams; or, The Man They Killed 59

3 The Skulls of San José Itzá 91

4 Equal Day, Equal Night 107

5 Voices from the Well 133

6 Dead Birds, or, The Return to Naha 165

7 Welcome Aboard 195

8 They Never Came, and They Never Left 211

9 The River, the Stars 233

Epilogue: Clearing the Breath from the Mirror 245

Acknowledgments 249

Index 253

Editorial Reviews

Equal parts travel narrative and meditation on Mayan cultural history, McConahay’s gripping memoir exposes the devastations of war. On a visit to Mexico City in 1973, McConahay saw an exhibit on the Lacandón Maya Indians that sparked an urge to find these last links to ancient Mayan culture. Over nearly four decades, she returned to Mayan sites in the vast rainforest spanning Mexico’s southern state of Chiapas and Guatemala’s northern state of Petén while working as a journalist. She records a personal odyssey along the clay roads running through the rainforest in which she participates in an archeological dig, an exhumation at the site of a massacre by government soldiers, and a Zapatista national convention; interviews Mayan priests, missionaries, and survivors of civil war; visits caves, standing stones, and burial mounds; and illuminates surprising holdouts (indigenous women, adorned with dead birds, who speak the Lacandón language). McConahay expresses her reverence for the rainforest with graceful imagery, describing, for example, the act of creation while listening to the sounds inside a waterfall. As the end of the fourth Maya era, on December 21, 2012, approaches, attention has focused on Mayan prophesies of apocalypse. McConahay’s insightful memoir suggests another story: Mayans’ veneration of nature, respect for human dignity, and expansive view of time are powerful antidotes to the poverty, drug-trafficking, violence, kidnappings, and destruction that has plagued rainforest settlements for decades. (Oct.)

Publishers Weekly

"Every once in a while I stumble upon a book that is so beautifully written and infused with so much intelligence and heart that it leaves an indelible mark on me. Mary Jo McConahay's Maya Roads is such a book. In its hungry passion and wide-eyed wonder, it's an extraordinary literary journey and a moving testament to a region and a life." —Don George, National Geographic Traveler, August 2011 Book of the Month



"A layered examination of a place and a people whose ancient culture is rapidly disappearing." —Kirkus



"From the moment Mary Jo McConahay steps into the deep Mexican jungle, you will follow her anywhere. In this extraordinary travel memoir, McConahay journeys through beauty, history, disappearing cultures, and revolution. . . . Her courage, keen observation, and open heart make her an unparalleled guide to this gorgeous, mysterious, sacred, and sometimes terrifying corner of the planet." 
—Laura Fraser, author, An Italian Affair and All Over the Map

“Powerful, descriptive, spiritual and lush.”  —June Carolyn Erlick, editor in chief, Re:Vista: Harvard Review of Latin America, and author, A Gringa in Bogotá: Living Colombia’s Invisible War


"I can't imagine a better book to help us understand the power of the rainforest and of the Mayan cities, the way violence and majesty permeate both. . . . All that [McConahay has] seen in thirty years of covering death informs the deliciously melancholy view of life that infuses the book. This is a superb book—thoughtful and reflective." —Jim Handy, author, Gift of the Devil: A History of Guatemala and Revolution in the Countryside: Rural Conflict and Agrarian Reform in Guatemala

"What you hold in your hands is a gift of rare courage and insight. McConahay rips off the layers of a little-known world, exposing to us its hypnotic beauty—and violence—through her own experience. The author’s familiarity with the region and its people enables her to do what no one else before has done, setting incidents of the current crisis against centuries-old wisdom." —Jean Molesky-Poz, author of Contemporary Maya Spirituality

"Brilliant. Maya Roads takes the reader on an intense journey deep into tropical forest landscapes, described so eloquently one can feel the sweaty climate, see the birds wrapped in the indigenous women’s braids, and experience the stress as witnesses and survivors recount stories of repression and resistance. [It] combines the prose of a skilled journalist with the in-depth knowledge of a long time observer of the Maya peoples." —Amy Ross, associate professor, Department of Geography, University of Georgia

"Mary Jo McConahay guides the reader of Maya Roads from enchanted jungles at the center of the Americas all the way to military roadblocks and nightmare massacres. Her own progress—from wide-eyed newcomer, wary of spiders and snakes, to world-experienced journalist familiar with the unblinking look of death—makes her the best sort of guide. She is innocence and experience; discoverer and knowing witness. The Maya believe we are nearing an end time; I cannot imagine a better chronicler of this time and place than McConahay.” —Richard Rodriguez, PBS NewsHour, and author, Hunger of Memory: The Education of Richard Rodriguez and Brown: The Last Discovery of America

From the Publisher

A travel memoir of journeys in the jungles of Central America and encounters with the Lacandón people, descendants of the ancient Mayans.

Journalist McConahay has covered the Middle East and Central America for a variety of publications, but her fascination with Mayan culture predates her career. It began in 1973, when she visited the National Museum of Anthropology during a vacation in Mexico City. As an adult, she traveled 700 miles south to San Cristóbal, joining a fellow tourist and a guide to visit a Lacandón village at the border of the jungle. The inhabitants spoke a Mayan language, and while they had some acquaintance with Spanish culture, their way of life was traditional. Fish and beans were a mainstay of their diet, and the men used bows and arrows to hunt. Women pulled their long hair back into knots from which dead birds hung as ornaments. On her return trips, McConahay journeyed further into the jungle, looking at ruins and meeting an archaeo-astronomer who explained the Lacandón's ancient calendar to her. The author ponders the decline of Mayan culture from its height 2,000 years ago, imagining a parallel between their destructive power struggles and wars today. She also chronicles the Guatemalan civil war, the current encroachment on the rain forests by peasant farmers looking for land, large tourist destinations and the $40 billion drug trade through the region. She writes that since her first trip, the tropical forest has changed more than it had "in the entire five hundred years since the European conquest."

A layered examination of a place and a people whose ancient culture is rapidly disappearing.

Kirkus Reviews