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El Tajin
Where so much began
Football – or soccer, as it is called in the United States - is the most popular game in Mexico, as it is in most of the world. Supposedly it was brought to Mexico by British miners working the silver lodes near Pachuca in the early 19th century. There are those, however, who argue that the game originated in Mexico long before the Spanish arrived. The Conquistadors, you may hear, took the game home with them, changed the rules somewhat, and then let the British bring it back.
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| Ancient soccer pitch? |
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Sound crazy? Yeah. But at almost every archaeological site you come across in Mexico you will find a ball court. The similarities to the modern game are enormous, everything from using no hands to scoring by slamming the ball into a goal. Not only did what might be modern football – or soccer – originate in Mexico, but it may well have first been played in the remote jungles in northern Veracruz at a place called El Tajin.
This area also claims to have given the world bungee-jumping. And vanilla.
People generally agree at least that this is where vanilla originated.
Soccer is another matter. And bungee-jumping may be stretching things.
Proponents of El Tajin as the birthplace of soccer, however, have 17 ball courts to prove their point. Ball courts are found at most ancient ceremonial centers in Mexico, but none I know of has quite so many as El Tajin.
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| Former star |
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Sound crazy? Yeah. But at almost every archaeological site you come across in Mexico you will find a ball court. The similarities to the modern game are enormous, everything from using no hands to scoring by slamming the ball into a goal. Not only did what might be modern football – or soccer – originate in Mexico, but it may well have first been played in the remote jungles in northern Veracruz at a place called El Tajin.
This area also claims to have given the world bungee-jumping. And vanilla.
People generally agree at least that this is where vanilla originated.
Soccer is another matter. And bungee-jumping may be stretching things.
Proponents of El Tajin as the birthplace of soccer, however, have 17 ball courts to prove their point. Ball courts are found at most ancient ceremonial centers in Mexico, but none I know of has quite so many as El Tajin.
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| Indian Flyers |
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The Totonacs had their own style of defying death. In a ritual ceremony now performed as entertainment, four men, a long rope lashed to their ankles and about their waists, leap from atop a pole 100 feet high while a fifth remains aloft on a minute platform dancing, beating a drum and playing a primitive flute.
The ropes supporting these Indian Flyers, as they are known, are wrapped around the pole. As the lines gradually unwind, the flyers swirl gently to earth.
Bungee-jumpers, sustained by elastic cords, make leaps that are far more dramatic, but perhaps not quite so beautiful.
"New Zealanders claim they originated bungee-jumping, and I suppose they did," said Felix Malpica, an executive with a Veracruz radio network.
"But the way we see it, they got their inspiration from our Indian flyers." Political correctness has made slow progress in Mexico. Indigenous people still are called Indians.
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| Prehispanic Totanac |
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The Totonacs of today are among the most recognizable of Mexico's indigenous peoples. The women in their weeds may be undistinguished, but the men dress up, donning ballooning white cotton outfits, with blouses buttoned to the neck and bleached bloomers tucked into black ankle boots.
"The gaiters are a recent adaptation," said Guzman, the tourism official. "In the old days they went about barefoot."
In El Tajin, as well as in nearby Papantla and more distant Veracruz, the Totonacs wander the streets selling vanilla, both as an extract or in its dried seed pods.
Vanilla, which is form of orchid, originated in northern Veracruz while Tabasco, the neighboring state to the south, gave the world chocolate.
More than a flavoring, vanilla here is regarded as an aphrodisiac. Totonac men are legendary lechers, lusty polygamists who rarely, according to Guzman, live beyond 40.
The ancient Totonacs are known for the grinning figurines they left behind, the only pre-conquest figures ever seen smiling.
"And we know why," Guzman observed.
El Tajin itself takes its name from a mischievous lad of the misty past who, say the myth-makers, opened a sorcerer's trunk and let out the rain. This may explain frequent bouts of inclement weather in these parts and why relatively few tourists make their way here.
The archaeological zone itself, with its monumental ruins, is quite spectacular. It includes an attractive museum and an appealing restaurant. In recent years, Veracruz tourism authorities have lured in travelers by organizing what is supposed to be a cultural festival highlighted by the spring equinox March 21. Some describe the festivities are more like an orgy, but, it can be argued, that is the way the Totanacs would have liked it.
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| El Cumbre Celebration |
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