Subject: Re: Why NOT Greenland
His name was Rios Mott, and he was also a regular on Pat Robertson’s “700 Club”.

There was a bit of bigotry, the elites and business wanted to control the mountain areas where the truly traditional Mayans lived - they were dirt poor and essentially had their own Mayan ways so Mott concocted a story that they were siding the rebels (communists because that was our bugaboo back then). M

Anyway, I read the Military would go out there and as they approached the village if anyone fired a shot at them they would kill everyone in the village, and other the villages they would kill them all anyway. And they had camps where they force fed Christianity to them. I've seen pictures of the mass graves for Chichicastenango. I think that some of the people I saw are in those graves. If they were lucky they got the camps. I need to find a good book and see if anyone made a documentary. I was 16 so I was out there in 67-68 and the slaughter was 80-83, They likely killed about 60-100,000 of the Mayans or more and it caused the Mayan diaspora to surge. There are still some 10 million Mayans in Mexico, but the story is that these Mayans practiced the old ways.

When the Catholics encountered the Mayans, in the conquering phase (1540-1690), they'd have parades with Jesus Christ nailed to the cross carried through the streets. This reinspired Aztec sacrifice and the resurgence in the hinterlands caused the Catholics to invade to stamp out the Mayan religion and they destroyed all the Mayan scrolls. Destroying the scrolls meant there wasn't anything to translate all the symbols carved into the rocks and buildings. But a Mayan scroll translation dictionary was created, got to Russia and a fellow began translating some of the pictures of the symbols. Later, a 16 year old kid got a hold of a copy, went down to the structures and became an expert in how to translate. We learned a lot and our picture of beautiful natives living in harmony with the landscape changed to the harsh warfare, slaughter, slavery, religion, and pestilence we know today.

Damn, just thinking about it again I would like to read Latin American history again, but right now I'm caught up in loading taxes back into my mind for the VITA season. We need to teach more history of the Americas, most of our history is taught badly in schools. I went to four different high schools as my family moved and I didn't get some history classes We were just one giant wave of destruction in the Americas, but there were smaller waves before us.