Danger in the Ruins
Freidel is starting to win some converts. Francisco Botzoc, 47, the project foreman, previously made his money cutting down trees. The excavation job has been a revelation to him. "I always thought the Mayans just piled up rubble. Now I can see there were structures," he says in Spanish. The archaeologists pay workers the equivalent of about $200 a month, 30 percent more than local farms offer. Botzoc and his friends now agree, "there will be more jobs if this is a park" than if it is burned and looted. "We must protect it," he says.
Freidel is not alone in the fight to protect the site. Guatemalan government agencies, as well as nonprofits such as RARE Conservation, Rainforest Action, and the Wildlife Conservation Society, have set up nearby offices and are training locals to set up ecotourism businesses and harvest the rainforest sustainably as well as sending in monitors and guards to protect the park. But Freidel's dig has been one of the most successful preservation ventures so far, says Carlos Albacete of ParksWatch, a nonprofit that monitors parks around the world. "If they were not there, El Peru would have disappeared, burnt," says Albacete, who heads the nonprofit's Guatemala office.
The shield Freidel has erected around Waka' will only last as long as he has money to support it. He'll need to raise $300,000 to pay for next year's dig and several million more to jump-start tourism businesses. But that is all down the road. Thrilled with the discovery and convinced that Rich and Piehl will be able to clear the tomb before the rains and looters come, Freidel steps outside and lights a cigar. The workers gather on benches and camp chairs as a staffer hooks up a generator, DVD player, and projector aimed at the wall of the archaeologists' dining hall.
Freidel leans back in his chair and chortles at the escapades of George Clooney and his gang of thieves in Ocean's Twelve . It's only a movie; Freidel's treasures are safe, for now, anyway. In the black, starless sky above the palm jungle, the moon rises orange amid the smoke of fires just a few miles away.
Born: July 11, 1946
Family: Wife is Carolyn Sargent, an anthropology professor; two daughters.
Education: B.A. and Ph.D., anthropology, Harvard
Books: Maya Cosmos and A Forest of Kings
[map]
GUATEMALA
Guatemala City
Maya Biosphere Reserve
Laguna del Tigre National Park
Tikal
El Peru
MEXICO
EL SALVADOR
BELIZE
[Scale of miles] 0 50 MILES
[inset] Area of detail
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