And now:Ish <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:
>X-Mailer: AOL 4.0 for Windows 95 sub 214
>Date: Sat, 12 Dec 1998 18:56:09 EST
>From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
>Subject: [FN] Fwd: `Mayan Riviera' Off-Limits to Mayas
>To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
>
>
>From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
>Return-path: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
>Subject: `Mayan Riviera' Off-Limits to Mayas
>Date: Sat, 12 Dec 1998 15:50:17 EST
>
>`Mayan Riviera' Off-Limits to Mayas
>
>.c The Associated Press
>
> By MARK STEVENSON
>
>X-CARET, Mexico (AP) -- Offering snorkeling and swimming amid a jungle
>setting, X-Caret is the most popular theme park along the stretch of
Caribbean
>known as the Mayan Riviera. But the only Maya tourists are likely to find
>there is Ezequiel Chan Noh.
>
>The 80-year-old former gum-tree tapper is paid to sit in a hut in a
>``reconstructed'' Maya village in a forgotten corner of the park -- a mostly
>fabricated series of rivers, lagoons and caves meant to represent the natural
>state of the area.
>
>Chan Noh spends his day weaving baskets as the occasional tourist stumbles
>upon the ``village,'' usually while looking for the park exit.
>
>``I worked cutting mahogany until the trees ran out,'' Chan Noh said. ``I
>tapped gum trees, now that's all gone.''
>
>He remembered a time when little money changed hands in the area, and most
>Mayas led self-sufficient lives fishing or farming.
>
>``Now, so much is bought, nothing is made,'' Chan Noh said.
>
>The Mayas also once had a history of defending their land: They fought one of
>the last major Indian rebellions on the continent, The Caste War, which
wasn't
>crushed on the Caribbean coast until the early 1900s.
>
>Still, Chan Noh said he's happy to have the relatively undemanding job at the
>theme park.
>
>Many other Mayas on the Mayan Riviera are not as lucky: They live crowded
into
>construction camps 25 miles to the north.
>
>There, 50 men or more are squeezed into each 20-foot-by-80-foot, unventilated
>tarpaper shack, in hammocks so pressed together they don't have room to
swing,
>with one toilet for every 30 men.
>
>Most are brought from neighboring Maya states like Yucatan to live in the
>camps for as long as two years, while they work in the building boom that
>tourism has brought to this sunny stretch of Mexico.
>
>Most of the workers still speak a Maya language, and their ancestors ruled
the
>area before the arrival of the Spanish.
>
>But their $5-a-day wages don't leave enough to pay the $39 entry fee for X-
>Caret, and security guards keep them from entering the beaches where the
>temples their ancestors built still sit.
>
>``They build these poorly made camps, and bring people in to work in subhuman
>conditions, and the cost to the company is almost zero,'' said Tulio
Arroyo, a
>member of the Cancun activist group Alianza Civica.
>
>In the camp, few people were willing to talk as two security guards waved
>residents away.
>
>``It's a hard life,'' construction worker Pedro Peech said before he spotted
>the guards and fell silent.
>
>AP-NY-12-12-98 1549EST
>
> Copyright 1998 The Associated Press. The information contained in the AP
>news report may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or otherwise
>distributed without prior written authority of The Associated Press.
>
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Unenh onhwa' Awayaton
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