MONTE NEGRO,
Mexico – On a frigid mountaintop, archaeologist Christopher
Glew plucks a 2,000-year-old piece of pottery from the red
clay and turns it over in his hand.
He sees the broken ceramic utensil as a clue to unlocking
the mystery of an ancient civilization in Oaxaca state. But
even as Glew revels in the prospect of that discovery, he is
preoccupied with a challenge faced by more and more
archaeologists: conflict in Indian communities over whether
outsiders should be exploring Mexico's sites.
Glew, a 28-year-old doctoral candidate from the University
of Michigan, has spent the past six months mapping and
collecting artifacts from the majestic ruins known as Monte
Negro, or Black Mountain. The 200-acre site offers a snapshot
of the period when indigenous groups in the Mixteca region
were moving from loosely knit settlements ruled by chiefs to
complex societies living in huge cities.
Working with San Francisco archaeologist Kim Popetz, 29,
and her husband, computer engineer Marcus Popetz, 27, Glew has
begun tracing the pattern of life in the densely populated
settlement, which may have been one of Mexico's earliest
cities.
Monte Negro is unique because its settlers left after 500
years and never returned. Unlike other sites in the Mixteca,
where successive groups built on top of earlier occupations,
the ruins have survived since about 300 B.C. relatively
unscathed.
Perched on a 9,000-foot-high mountain dotted with black
oaks, the site was a sacred place. It has a panoramic view of
the neighboring states of Puebla and Veracruz.
At the ceremonial center, stone columns towered over two
temples where tombs containing pottery and human remains were
found by Mexican archaeologist Alfonso Caso 60 years ago.
Ronald S. Spores, a renowned archaeologist who has worked
in the Mixteca region for 42 years, insists modern-day
archaeologists are no longer "hung up on looking for
treasures."
"What we're concerned with now is what was happening at
Monte Negro and how it relates to other settlements," he said.
"This was part of a long, long adaptation of the people and
their culture that's still going on today."
For Glew, the treasure buried at Monte Negro is knowledge.
"How was it founded? Why was it founded? What was life
like? Why was it abandoned? That's what we're trying to find
out," he said.
After living with the 30 Mixtec Indians who now occupy the
site, he has learned that the past can't be explored without
understanding the present.
The Indians, who call themselves the "people of the
clouds," continue the isolated, agrarian life of their
ancestors, sustained by corn, beans and squash. They are poor
and have little education. Yet they've come to accept and even
appreciate Glew.
Down the mountain, however, in the small town of
Tilantongo, where other Mixtecs live, people are suspicious of
the archaeologist's motives.
Their doubts have been sparked by years of
misunderstandings with other researchers who've studied Monte
Negro, said Raul Matadamas, an archaeologist with Mexico's
National Institute of Anthropology and History who was
assigned to monitor work at the site.
"They reject him, saying that he is a gringo, he is taking
gold, he is taking money," Matadamas said. "That's normal. It
has its roots in history."
Many suspicions
The people of Tilantongo whisper that
Glew has special contact lenses that allow him to see
treasures beneath the earth. They say he sneaks out in the
dead of night to steal riches from the ruins.
When the farmers of Monte Negro rose to Glew's defense,
townspeople in Tilantongo accused their neighbors of accepting
bribes to protect the gringos.
The townspeople claimed Glew promised to leave his Dodge
pickup as a payment to Monte Negro when he finished the first
phase of his research yesterday and headed back to the United
States. Some even suggested that Glew – who conducted his
research with a grant of less than $10,000 – promised to give
the pueblo an airplane.
At a community meeting Glew hosted Dec. 14, he dealt with
the accusations.
"I am not stealing anything. If I do that, I'm going to
jail," Glew said. Then the boyish-looking archeologist
softened as he told farmers in a one-room schoolhouse, "I have
only good memories of this pueblo."
The wariness Glew encountered in Monte Negro is mild
compared to conflicts that have erupted at other sites in
southern Mexico. In 1997, a Canadian archaeologist authorized
by Mexico's federal government to remove a half-ton Mayan
altar was pistol-whipped by villagers in Chiapas and chased
into the Usumacinta River. And just a few weeks ago, Matadamas
had to travel to Oaxaca's coast after townspeople fired
weapons at an American archaeologist.
Villagers are tired of being viewed as research subjects,
as if they were soulless stones, Matadamas said.
"I have seen other archaeologists who have been very cold,
distant, who love Mexico despite the Mexicans who live here.
There was no cultural exchange," he said. "With just cause,
(the townspeople) say all the foreigners come to steal. Why?
Because they steal information. They go and work and obtain
information. They get their doctorates and go off to earn a
living. And the pueblo? There it is, like an object to be
studied."
Complicating the situation, the uneducated farmers of the
Mixteca feel inadequate in the face of well-schooled
foreigners. They call themselves "ignorant," even though they
are the true discoverers of the ruins.
"We grab books sometimes, but we don't understand the
contents," said Francisco Evencio Pedro Cruz, the mayor of
Tilantongo. "I know the pueblo has a lot of history.
Christopher explained it to me in scientific terms. But I'm
not very educated. I don't understand scientific things."
While Glew was working at the site, Pedro Cruz sent workers
to remove huge stones used by Monte Negro's settlers to build
their dwellings 2,000 years ago. Before federal authorities
could stop them, seven truckloads of stones had been hauled
down the mountain to build a jail and a market in Tilantongo.
Pedro Cruz told townspeople "those stones don't matter to
me."
But Matadamas said the mayor had damaged a sacred place
where Mixtec Indians go to communicate with their ancestors.
"I can put the stones back. That is not a problem,"
Matadamas said. "But the offense that was committed at this
site is, for many people, a sin that cannot be erased."
'Senor Gringo'
Matadamas hopes Glew's work will stir
new community interest in Monte Negro.
He urges the people of the clouds to protect their natural
treasure against thoughtless poachers and, perhaps, even open
a modest museum where their children and grandchildren can see
the pieces of the past that Glew and his fellow researchers
have unearthed.
Slowly, the message seems to be reaching a divided
Tilantongo.
"We are proud that we still have this," Francisco Garcia,
treasurer of the town's governing committee, said as he walked
across an elevated temple at the heart of Monte Negro's
ceremonial center. "For us, this is a remembrance that our
ancestors left us."
Glew plans to return in a year or two and begin excavating
buildings on the mountainside. Matadamas predicts Glew's work
will put Monte Negro back on the map, ending six months of
neglect by archaeologists.
"The site is going to attract a lot of attention because of
the data Christopher is gathering," he said. "To speak of a
city before the birth of Christ is going to provoke a heated
debate in the archaeological world. The proportions, the
construction, the intensity of the architecture at Monte Negro
speaks of a social system that was very complex."
The American archaeologist with the easy laugh and
self-deprecating humor, the man known as Señor Gringo, has also broken new
ground with the people of Tilantongo.
"Take this message to your country," Adan Millel, one of
the top authorities in Tilantongo, said as Glew bid villagers
farewell. "You are welcome as often as you want to visit Monte
Negro. I hope you will return to our land."
