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We’ve all seen the picturesque photos of the ancient ruins in Central America. There are majestic pyramids standing atop towering mountains, stone cities that remain in place as ages have come and gone, and the beautiful greenery that has grown up around them as they sit unpopulated in their quiet splendor. The question is: to where did all those people who built these magnificent buildings disappear?

It seems like common knowledge that the Inca, the Aztecs, the Maya, and their neighbors are all gone now. If they were still around, we wouldn’t have to excavate and translate stuff found in the ruins because we could just ask them what everything was for, right?

This is where common knowledge fails us (surprising, isn’t it!). Do you want to know where they all went? The answer is pretty much nowhere—they are still here today.

Tens of thousands of people living in Mexico today have Aztec blood flowing in their veins. The Inca culture has been a part of the Peruvian culture for over two thousand years, although it has diminished quite a bit in the past few centuries. The Mayan people are the most populous survivors, approaching the 10 million mark, mostly in Guatemala.

Wait, if that’s so, then why can’t we simply talk to these people about the ancient cultures and learn all about them? If they have always been around, why aren’t they in control of their own land? And they can’t still be practicing that human sacrifice stuff, can they, so how do their cultures survive today?

There is one word that sums up all of the questions about why these indigenous peoples lost control of their land: “conquest.”

The European conquerors who took over the land oh so many centuries ago did more than just seize the reins of power, so to speak. In addition to defeating the reigning powers militarily and becoming the de facto rulers of Central and South America, they enforced a sort of cultural lockdown on the people they found there.

The Roman Catholic Church figured that these “heathens” needed salvation, and blessed the missionary journeys of its priests as they sailed to the New World, conquering peoples with ideas. The political and military leaders surely agreed that conversion was a good idea because it could basically serve as anti-rebellion indoctrination. Could you rebel against your priest when it was clear that God had sent him to you? I didn’t think so.

The priests are known to have destroyed many documents and records of Inca, Aztec, and Maya histories, to show that the old ways were dead. Remember, these weren’t historians who conquered the Americas—the actual victors cared little if anything for the culture of their new subjects.

Use of the native languages was discouraged. Practice of the native religion was condemned and punished. In short, the Indians were forced to unlearn their own culture. The children were taught less and less about their past, until no one knew anymore at all.

Asking a modern Mayan about the purpose of an ancient temple would be like asking a modern Egyptian what the purpose of the pyramids at Giza was. I, an American, couldn’t tell you exactly why we have the Washington Monument, or why it’s shaped like it is, and if there is any related symbolism, I have no way of genetically knowing. Likewise, thanks to the thoroughness of our priestly friends in the 1500s, there is no one left to tell the original stories of the Maya, the Inca, or the Aztec.

The mighty Aztec capital of Tenochtitlan, once conquered by Hernan Cortes, is now Mexico City. The Aztec people are now Mexicans. Little of the old ways remain today, as most things have been supplanted by Western or new ways.

Inca traditions survive stubbornly in Peru today. In remote villages older people speak only Quechua, the official Inca language. They also keep Inca customs in food, music, and religion that have all but died out in urban areas. Still you can find villages where they export their traditional style of weaving.

Many of the ancient holiday occasions are still celebrated, like Inti Raymi, for example—the Festival of the Sun, traditionally a type of harvest festival. These are no backward peoples that technology just passed by! Run a search on the internet, and you’ll find sites where the villages offer their uniquely styled weavings for sale.

In a big change from the other two, the Mayans are not reduced to a small group, or anywhere near minor. In fact, they were 7 million strong in 1995, and still expanding and growing. In Guatemala (the country with the most Mayans), they account for over half of the population—hardly a minority at all.

The modern Maya are survivors, having made it through terrible times of conquest, disease, and cultural attacks. The Spanish were the first to totally wipe them out, thanks to the spread of illness and intelligent military tactics. Later, attempts to wipe them out culturally by Catholic missionaries left the culture further weakened.

In the present day, the Spanish descended leaders of Guatemala (who ethnically make up about 2% of the population) still oppress the Mayans and through terrorist tactics attempt to drive the Mayan people off of their land in order to seize it for themselves. These tactics have been reduced a lot in the past few years, but have by no means vanished.

Recently in 1992, a K'iche' Mayan woman named Rigoberta Menchu won the Nobel peace prize as she spoke out against the ethnocide committed generally against her people and specifically against her own family by the Guatemalan government. Things were really rotten, but have been improving, thanks to the efforts of the more recent governments.

The Maya have already achieved great strides forward, helping to implement a new form of government very similar to the one found in South Africa, which is very understandable, since both countries share a past of ethnic turmoil. Both countries also shared the same problem of the majority of the citizens being oppressed or discriminated against merely because of their race.
There may soon be a Mayan political party in the Ladino controlled congress—something that would have been unheard of 20 years ago. As the Mayans begin to organize themselves, it is clear that they are far from an “extinct” race! They are a thriving, living people, with their own languages being taught in their own schools in their own country.

The newspapers (run by non-Mayans) in Guatemala sarcastically suggest that due to the recent less anti-Mayan policy brought about by the government as of late, the country should be renamed “Guatemaya”. On the other hand, would it really be such a bad idea to name the country after its most numerous occupants? Of the Maya, the Inca, and the Aztecs, none are dead. None are gone. War, smallpox, and several other diseases helped to reduce their numbers. Ideological attacks from the West helped to weaken their culture. But they have survived, at least in part, and we’re lucky that their distinctiveness remains, for it is diversity that makes this world so interesting.

Picture and Info Source: mayalords.org, www.incas.org, The Maya, 6th Edition, Michael D. Coe, Publisher: Thames and Hudson, Copyright 1999.