http://www.azcentral.com/news/articles/0313bushruins0313.html

For Bush, Yucatan ruins hold an allure

Chris Hawley
Republic Mexico City Bureau
Mar. 13, 2007 12:00 AM

MÉRIDA, Mexico - Your place or Mayan?

As President Bush courts Latin America, he is becoming an unusually
frequent visitor to ruins of this ancient Mesoamerican civilization.
Today's visit to Uxmal, Mexico, during a summit with Mexican President
Felipe Calderón will be Bush's third official visit to a Mayan site in the
past year. He visited Mexico's Chichén Itzá in March 2006 and Guatemala's
Iximché on Monday.

That's a lot of pyramid-gazing, especially for this president.

Bush has visited only a handful of ancient sites abroad since taking
office, including the Roman Forum, the Great Wall of China and the Purana
Qila, a fortress in India. Last year, he apologized to Indians for skipping
the Taj Mahal during a trip to Asia.

Ancient locations can make ideal presidential stops: Many, like the Mayan
sites, are remote, with big open areas perfect for landing helicopters.
And, perhaps most importantly, they're easy to close off when needed.

During Bush's visit to Chichén Itzá last year, protesters were kept far
beyond the gates of the fenced-off ruins. Mexican journalists watched the
visit on closed-circuit television in Cancun, over 100 miles away.

José Huchim, director of the Uxmal site and a coordinator of the visit,
said Uxmal was chosen mainly because Mayan cities, with their jagged
pyramids and stately temples, make great photo ops.

"The buildings and the decorations of the buildings, all that attracts
interest," Huchim said. "These are areas that conserve a certain ambience,
and that makes them ideal for these types of visits."

The latest Mayan day trips come just weeks after Mel Gibson's film
Apocalypto outraged many Latin Americans, who accused it of propagating an
overly violent, historically inaccurate view of the Mayans.

"That movie was clear evidence of the lack of knowledge that exists about
this culture," said Carmen Valverde, director of the Mayan Studies Center
at the National Autonomous University of Mexico.

Calderón's office said the visit had nothing to do with the movie or
soothing any injured national pride.

Not everyone is happy about the visits. In Guatemala, Indian priests said
Sunday that they planned to perform a spiritual cleansing of Iximché after
Bush left.

The ancient Mayans ruled over a constellation of city-states scattered
across southern Mexico, Guatemala, Belize and parts of Honduras and El
Salvador.

Uxmal flourished and foundered several times from A.D. 750 to 1200, when it
was finally abandoned because of a prolonged drought. The president and
first lady will visit Uxmal's oval-shaped, 129-foot-high pyramid known as
the Magician's House, Huchim said. They also will tour the Governor's
Palace and the Quadrangle of the Nuns.

It will be the president's only sightseeing trip during his two-day stay in
Mexico. Most of his time will be spent in meetings with Calderón at a
restored former plantation.

Often, the families of traveling presidents get to do more sightseeing than
the presidents themselves. In Uruguay, for example, the first lady strolled
around a 17th-century Portuguese fort while her husband was in meetings
with President Tabare Vazquez.

Sometimes, it's the first ladies who undertake the riskier trips. In 2005,
for example, Laura Bush braved protesters to visit the Western Wall and the
Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem. She also visited the eighth-century ruins of
Hisham's Palace in the West Bank.

The most infamous first lady to visit Uxmal was Empress Charlotte of
Mexico. Charlotte was a Belgian princess whose husband, Maximilian, was
sent to rule Mexico after an 1862 invasion by France.

Charlotte made the long trip through the Yucatan Peninsulain 1865. At
Uxmal, local officials reportedly removed ancient phallic sculptures out of
concern they might offend her.

Her time in Mexico ended badly. In 1867, resistance fighters executed
Maximilian. Charlotte, who had gone to Europe to plead for military
reinforcements, went mad with grief.