This mural was painted in early 1996 and was initially intended to represent the links between the Central Mexican cultures, especially Teotihuacan, and the Mayas, of both the Highlands and Lowlands, in what are now Yucatán, Belize, Chiapas, Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador. It was also meant to suggest the persistence of these cultures' influences, especially here and now in California. The first pair of figures are a Maya Prisoner, bound for sacrifice, and his Teotihuacan Captor (the later image from a monument found at Tikal.) The other pair are
Hun Hunahpu and the Merchant God (known to scholars as
God L.)
On the wall seen just below, there are those two figures I had used before from the film
Zéro De Conduite hovering above the ruins of
Palenque. For me, these two authority figures represent all the regressive elements in our education systems, and the process of molding students into compliant members of society, which entails filling children's heads with misinformation which they falsely claim as fact.
This wall depicts the ball game where the prisoner is bound and rolled down the stone steps of the temple pyramid. Of course the way in which the Maya artists conveyed this was far less bloody than in actuality, and I followed suit in my rendition. It may be that the ball here is only meant to
represent the prisoner. Not having lived in Kabah or Tikal two thousand years ago I can't say for certain what actually took place. I do know, however, that it bore no resemblance to what Mel Gibson presented in
Apocalypto (and in his ridiculous case, he absurdly set his gross misrepresentation of Maya culture in the sixteenth century AD.)
