(Mayan) Priests to purify site after Bush visit

Associated Press ^ | 03/09/07 | JUAN CARLOS LLORCA

[presidio9]

Mayan priests will purify a sacred archaeological site to eliminate "bad spirits" after President Bush visits next week, an official with close ties to the group said Thursday.

"That a person like (Bush), with the persecution of our migrant brothers in the United States, with the wars he has provoked, is going to walk in our sacred lands, is an offense for the Mayan people and their culture," Juan Tiney, the director of a Mayan nongovernmental organization with close ties to Mayan religious and political leaders, said Thursday.

Bush's seven-day tour of Latin America includes a stopover beginning late Sunday in Guatemala. On Monday morning he is scheduled to visit the archaeological site Iximche on the high western plateau in a region of the Central American country populated mostly by Mayans.

Tiney said the "spirit guides of the Mayan community" decided it would be necessary to cleanse the sacred site of "bad spirits" after Bush's visit so that their ancestors could rest in peace. He also said the rites — which entail chanting and burning incense, herbs and candles — would prepare the site for the third summit of Latin American Indians March 26-30.

Bush's trip has already has sparked protests elsewhere in Latin America, including protests and clashes with police in Brazil hours before his arrival. In Bogota, Colombia, which Bush will visit on Sunday, 200 masked students battled 300 riot police with rocks and small homemade explosives.

The tour is aimed at challenging a widespread perception that the United States has neglected the region and at combatting the rising influence of Venezuelan leftist President Hugo Chavez, who has called Bush "history's greatest killer" and "the devil."

Iximche, 30 miles west of the capital of Guatemala City, was founded as the capital of the Kaqchiqueles kingdom before the Spanish conquest in 1524.

[Harrius Magnus]

"I really wished people wold learn the difference between a duplicate and a similar article. The article in the thread is not a duplicate. While they are about the same subject they differ and are from two complete different sources"

I really wish people did their research before spouting off. Actually, they are from the same source (AP) and read identically through the first four paragraphs, where the first article then ends.
So, King Etiquette, go check your bed for bugs, or wash your hands a few dozen more times, and leave people, whose only purpose is to help inform, THE HELL ALONE.

[keats5]

Now THAT was funny.

[Jacob Kell]

"Additionally, the Mayan calendar ends in 2012 (I can't remember which month)."

I think it was either December or November. Anyways, what was really said was that another 5,200 year period would come to a end on 2012. Basically, the Mayans believe that world history is divided into cycles of 5,200 years.

[Constitutions Grandchild]

5,200-year cycles? So, like who was old enough to pass that information on? It makes my head hurt to think about the possible answer. Theory always makes my head hurt. They could have it down to a science, for all I know, but it seems like they should have some proof to back it up if they went to all that work figuring out calendars, cosmology and such.

I never could get how all these supposedly advanced civilizations could figure out the universe and then self-mutilate themselves, make blood sacrifices and go to war over who had the highest pyramid. It just doesn't seem logical to me, but then, not much in life is logical to me.

Other civilizations are supposed to have a lock on the divine, yet they pick up rocks and stone each other (again, with the rocks). I'd build a nice house with the rocks, have a nice garden with no rocks, have children who play with rocks, but NO -- it's rocks for killing, blood sacrifice, be-headings. Go figure.

[Froufrou]

Yet nobody pinged xcamel?!