Mitla, Place of the Dead October 19, 2022
“The last (underground) chamber had a second door at the rear, which led to a dark and gruesome room. This was closed with a stone slab, which occupied the whole entrance. Through this door they, threw the bodies of the victims and of the great lords and chieftains who had fallen in battle…and so great was the barbarous infatuation of those Indians that, in the belief of the happy life which awaited them, many who were oppressed by diseases or hardships begged this infamous priest to accept them as living sacrifices and allow them to enter through that portal and roam about in the dark interior of the mountain, to seek the feasting-places of their forefathers. […] And the unhappy man, wandering in that abyss of darkness, died of hunger and thirst, beginning already in life the pain of his damnation, and on account of this horrible abyss they [Zapotec] called this village Liyobaa.”
All the names translate to Place of the Dead—Liyobaa in Zapotec, Nuu Ndiyi in Mixtec, Mictlan in Aztec Nahuatl, which the Spaniards immediately bastardized as Mitla. In 1553, barely two decades after the Conquest, the Archbishop of Oaxaca had learned quite enough about the indigenous spirituality and power structure. He ordered that the city of Mitla, population 20,000, be evacuated of its elite inhabitants and destroyed.
Located some 30 miles north of the capital city and tucked away in a mountain valley, Mitla was a sacred place for both the Zapotec and Mixtec, as it stood atop the entrance to a genuine underworld. Beneath its temples, the Spaniards were horrified to discover a maze of maintained tunnels and tombs, leading Friar Toribio de Benavente Motolina to deduce at the time that the word Mitla literally meant “Infierno”—Hell—a term without any comparable meaning to the Amerindians.
The Catholics may have conceived of Hell as some devilish place underground, but to the locals Hell seemed to be unfolding in real time aboveground. The religious intelligentsia of Mitla were hurriedly pushed out, and the Catholic padres took their place, moving into the old residences and erecting Iglesia de San Pablo from the bricks of dismantled temples, showing everyone exactly which God was the best God. Thousands of natives were driven away, including the high priests and scientists. The tunnel entrances were sealed. The history was buried.
The mystical significance of Mitla is revealed today in the anomalous architecture and anachronistic stonework. For more than a dozen centuries, people cared for this place, even as they traveled back and forth from the subterranean world. The most striking examples are numerous basalt columns, which are of perfect trigonometric symmetry. Each is freestanding and weighs up to 20 tons. Somehow these columns were transported to Mitla from a quarry over a mile away. Given the sheer weight of the stone, its oceanic hardness, and the polish of its exquisitely chiseled contours, this would seem the work of a superior technology. Some consider it extraterrestrial in origin. Those people can write their own story.
Still, there are other arresting anomalies to consider, chiefly concerning sharp distinctions between the lower layers of Mitla ruins and upper layers. At the foundations of the old temples, the stones are gigantic and fit together with flush right angles, forming joints and cantilevered archways, no mortar necessary. Such expert engineering is consistent with the basaltic columns, which seem designed and arranged in a way to support an equally splendid roof. Instead, above the fine masonry, we find crude if sturdy walls composed of small pieces of stone rubble cemented with copious ashen mortar. The result is something of an exquisite mess—as if the tops of the structure were trashed while the parents were away, and the children had to quickly cobble together a replacement before the elders got home. Of course, this is a seismically active region, so there are alternative reasons for the mess on display.
Or, the “children” in this story are the Zapotec, who did indeed make substantial additions to Mitla after 1000 AD, and the “parents” are from a tribe altogether different and long gone. Archeologists suspect Olmec influence, while others draw a line straight to alien visitors. Regardless, the megalithic remains of an ancient yet advanced civilization tickle the imagination with questions. Unfortunately, the Archbishop answered those questions for himself too soon. He had learned the stories of ritual human sacrifices in Mitla, and that was certainly enough for a rational Christian to conclude that the only alien presence and advanced civilization in Oaxaca was from a distant planet called Spain.
128 years after Archbishop Albuquerque de Oaxaca had the underground cavities of Mitla walled shut, a subsequent friar, Francisco de Burgoa, bowed to local pressures to have the tunnel system explored, if only briefly:
“When later there fell upon these people the light of the Gospel, its servants took much trouble to instruct them, and to find out whether this error, common to all these nations, still prevailed; and they learned from the stories which had been handed down that all were convinced that this damp cavern extended more than 30 leagues [90 miles] underground, and that its roof was supported by pillars. And these people, zealous prelates anxious for knowledge, who in order to convince these ignorant people of their error, went into this cave, accompanied by a large number of people bearing lighted torches and firebrands and descended several large steps. And they soon came upon great buttresses which formed a kind of street. They had prudently brought a quantity of rope with them to use as guiding lines, that they might not lose themselves in this confusing labyrinth. And the putrefaction and the bad odour and the dampness of the earth were very great, and there was also a cold wind which blew out their torches. And after they had gone a short distance, fearing to be overpowered by the stench, or to step on poisonous reptiles, of which some had been seen, they resolved to go out again, and to completely wall up this back door of Hell. The 4 buildings above ground were the only ones which still remained open, and they had a court and chambers like those underground; and the ruins of these have lasted even to this present day.”
Francisco de Burgia, 1681 [ArxProject]