EL TAJIN (CITY OF DIVINE LIGHTNING) RUINS

This morning we boarded a nice Mexican touring bus with washroom and comfortable seats. Vicki was our guide. She was a matronly lady that spoke English, Spanish, French and German (her native tongue) quite fluently.

When she discovered that I was born in Cuba and that I speak Spanish fluently, she surprised me by speaking coloquial Spanish with a distinct Cuban (Havana) intonation - she is quite a joker and a little brash. She explained that her father is Cuban! She used the Cuban slang expression "C-YN..ooo!" (something like DANG! ). "YN" is the best approximation of the Spanish sound of the same sound in Italian, for example in the last name ViGNola. That sound is the Spanish n with a tilde on top.

The bus took all 43 of us plus Vicki to the ruins of the ancient Olmec city of El Tajin and its majestic ruins.

For a long time the Totonacs were believed to have built El Tajín (Totonac: "lightning"), because they inhabited the area at the time of the Spanish Conquest. The great city had however already been abandoned for at least 300 years before the Spanish arrived. It may originally have been a late Olmec or proto-Mayan settlement, set up in collaboration with the Huastecs. When founded, around ad 200, its builders were evidently much influenced by Teotihuancán. It took until about ad 600 before an independent culture evolved. El Tajín's own influence then began to spread, in time being felt even in Teotihuancán. The city reached the peak of its development between ad 700 and 900.



This is a model of the city, built in the highlands north of Veracruz in an area of vanilla plantations.
This is our Toltec guide. He spoke broken English, but was evidently very well educated and knew a lot about the ancient history of his country. He is standing here in the great market plaza. The pyramids have a solid core, and served simply as high bases for sacred buildings - built of palm planks and fronds at the top of the pyramid. Only the high priests, top rulers and astronomers were allowed in these buildings. The society was a theocracy of the worst kind, with scientists and knowledge workers (astronomers and scribes) as enablers of power brokers and wielders (the usual throughout history).
It was an agrarian society based on corn, beans, and starchy root cultivation. There were two plantings per year, and the high priests and rulers declared the start of planting and harvest based on divinely given information (of course, supported by the information from the astronomers and knowledge workers). They did not have the wheel, metalworking, nor cement technology, and they had no pack animals. The horse was introduced by the conquering Spainards. It was essentially a late stone age culture.
Here our guide describes one of the 18 futbol courts in El Tajin. Futbol was a soccer-like game played by two teams of 6 players and a rubber ball that weighed well over 6 pounds. The game had heavy religious meaning and was essentially a religious rite. The ruling class and nobility sat on the flat area above the shallow slanting ramps at either side of the court. Everybody else sat farther away. The player was allowed to contact the ball only with knees, hips, elbows and shoulders.
Twice a year, just before the start of planting ,the team captain of the winning team of a special religious game was sacrificed to the gods of fertility. It was essential that his blood was spilled on the ground to guarantee soil fertility ( and to keep the natives in shock and awe ). The team captain was drugged with hallucinogenic peyote, and was seated at one end of the court in a dentist chair like posture. The other team members held him in place, and because the obsidian knifes that they had were not capable of cutting the vertebral column, the victims neck was first broken, and then the second in command would cut his throat and decapitate the victim.

The relief above shows the scene.

Here Teri walks in front of the house of the ruler god of the city of El Tajin.