by MARK VIALES
Dzan, Mexico – Surrounded by dense jungle and beneath intertwining canopies of towering trees, Luis May Ku, 49, trudges ahead through shoulder-height bushes searching for a rare plant. The oppressive 40-degree Celsius (104 Fahrenheit) heat dulls the senses, and the air, thick with humidity, clings to our skin, causing beads of sweat to form and trickle down.
After scouring the thickets, May, an Indigenous Maya ceramicist, stumbles upon a shrub similar in shape and texture to others around him, but insists this one is special. He touches the soft, sprawling leaves and tells me it is wild ch’oj (“indigo plant” in Mayan, anil in Spanish) – or Indigofera suffruticosa – which is a key ingredient to create the revered Maya blue pigment.
“It took years before I found it – indigo – and most people from Yucatan believed it to be extinct on the peninsula,” May says with a pensive look, lifting his sombrero made from interwoven huano palm leaves to wipe his brow with the back of his hand.
“Chokoj (hot)!” I say to him in my limited command of Mayan as we crouch behind the metre and a half (5-foot) high ch’oj bush to escape the relentless, blistering sun. He turns to me with kind eyes and offers me water from his bottle. Advertisement
“The Yucatan Peninsula is going through its worst drought in decades,” he says. “Let’s rest, and I’ll tell you how I recreated Maya blue.”
Maya blue: the colour of ritual
The colour of the iconic dye is akin to a clear blue sky or the turquoise of the nearby Caribbean Sea.
It was used to paint pottery, sculptures, murals, jewellery, clothing, altars and, chillingly, the human beings the ancient Maya offered to their gods, to garner favour. According to Spanish Franciscan friar Diego de Landa Calderon – most famous for his zeal in destroying Maya codices – the Maya painted human beings before forcing them onto an altar and cutting out their beating hearts.
Other victims, cast into the Cenote Chenku or Sacred Well (cenotes are interconnected, submerged limestone caves) at Chichen Itza, were similarly covered in blue. A clear sky during a drought was a sign for priests to pick their next victim and paint them in the same colour to sacrifice to the rain deity, Chaak, believed to live in Xibalba – the Maya underworld – beneath the cenotes. The priests hoped this would bring rain to provide a bountiful harvest for their crops.
When American archaeologist Edward Herbert Thompson dredged the Sacred Well in the early 20th century, 127 skeletons were recovered, among other objects. He also found several metres of blue silt, which later studies suggest was Maya blue that had washed off sacrificed victims and ornaments.
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