Twisted Fate

One of the biggest dangers to business is an inability to adapt as the world changes. We are all familiar with once respected household names that have vanished, due to their failure to respond to a new environment: Blockbuster; Pan Am; Kodak; Wedgewood; Our Price; Woolworths; and Encyclopaedia Britannica to name but a few.  

Our Price, Brixton - no longer a name on the high street

Writers better and more knowledgeable than I have explained their demise – for example by highlighting Blockbuster’s refusal to acquire Netflix and Our Price’s and Kodak’s failure to appreciate the appeal and ease of digital access for consumers – it is notable that only 61 companies from the original 1955 Fortune 500 List remain today. You need to be alert to what is going on in the world and be proactive and innovative to ensure survival, especially now that the speed of change seems to be becoming ever faster. If you don't spot cracks in the foundation disaster will follow.

The impact of technological advancement on business really struck me when I was on holiday last week in Mexico. We had gone to Central America to explore the ancient Mayan sites and hence, whilst in Mexico, we spent some time in Mérida – an attractive town, with a colonial heart, built on the site of an ancient Mayan settlement close to some of the best locations and temples.

Mérida street

Mérida, which has been the cultural capital of Yucatán since the arrival of the Spanish Conquistadors, was, until the end of the First World War, the centre of the world’s rope trade. 

Fibres being prepared for rope

Our driver told us that by 1900 Yucatan was providing 85% of the twine for the huge North American wheat harvest (this commercial arrangement had been orchestrated by a giant, domineering U.S. corporation, International Harvest – in a not dissimilar approach to that of the United Fruit Company in Guatemala. When Cyrus McCormick invented a grain harvester to reap the U.S. grain crop, it was designed as a machine that could tie the bundles of corn stalks into sheaves – to do this it required a strong smooth twine and Yucatán was able to oblige);

Cyrus McCormick's grain harvester 

almost all the rope for the world’s navies and merchant ships; 

A fully rigged ship could use up to 4 miles of rope

and the majority of burlap bags for the transportation and storage of crops. Wealthy landowners ran plantations (or “haciendas” – the Spanish word for estates). These were based on slavery – not dissimilar to the plantations of the American South. The owner (the hacendado) lived in grand house in significant comfort;

Hacienda Yaxcopoil

smaller homes were also provided for significant employees such as foremen; the labourers slept in workers’ dormitories and during the daylight some toiled in the fields, whilst others were involved in processing plant fibres or in the factory where the ropes were made. Each hacienda had a chapel and most had a jail.

The advent of The First World War resulted in a huge surge in demand, as the military of all sides required cables, cord and twine - 95% of the rope used in the Great War came from the town of Mérida and its surrounding area.

Mule being unloaded off a ship, Alexandria Egypt 1915

Local landowners became even richer due to what locals referred to as “green gold”. The Haciendas that were built were opulent and grand. Then suddenly the boom ceased, a change happened and the hacendados did not see it coming. Nowadays once glorious haciendas sit crumbling and deserted. They are atmospheric and attractive but also a tangible warning to any business of the need to remain alert to the activities and inventions occurring around the world.

Sisal, as it is commonly called, is a plant that the Mexicans refer to as henequen – it gets the name sisal from the small port of that name, from which it was once shipped to buyers around the world.

Henequen

I am familiar with sisal as a floor covering – we have it on the stairs outside our kitchen. Prior to processing, the plant looks like aloe vera crossed with a pineapple and it produces long and strong natural plant fibres; hence it was and still is ideal for making rope.



Henequen plantation

Mayan tribes had used the fibres for centuries to make sandals, mats and twine. From the 1800’s Spanish masters forced them to work on their estates, built on land that had belonged to the Maya, and, when demand outstripped labour supply, Chinese were imported (due to their supposed ability in pineapple cultivation – the two plants look very similar)

Pineapple plants

and then the remaining Chichimec nomads, the Yaquis, brought in from the Madre Occidental area of Chihuahua in northwest Mexico - a convenient subjugation to prevent future revolts in Chihuahua – over half of the Yaquis population were deported to work in slavery on the henequen haciendas in the early 1900’s. It is a disturbing and shameful history.

Mayan sisal worker labouring under the strain at a hacienda
Mural by Pacheco on the wall of the Palacio Gobierno, Mérida

A downside of natural fibre rope is that it is prone to dry rot and needs to be twisted into thick cables to be strong – which makes it cumbersome.

Wallace Carothers was born in Iowa in the late 1890’s. He was a student, majoring in Maths and Science, at the start of World War I and, as a result, due to the shortage of teachers, he found himself promoted to become the Head of the Chemistry Faculty at Missouri.

Wallace Caruthers

He enjoyed research and so moved to Harvard and then, to become a pure researcher and escape having to teach, he accepted a job with Du Pont. In 1935 he ran a small lab. He discovered that a combination of chemicals, when mixed with water, produced fibres. Initially it appeared that although the first threads produced were strong the subsequent strands were too weak to be useful. However, once he realised that the issue was caused by excess water leaching back into the mixture (and hence diluting the concoction), it was a simple matter of redesigning the equipment and then a viable new synthetic fibre was created – nylon.

Making a continuous strand of nylon using a paint roller

Although initially intended for the fashion industry (specifically stockings) it was soon used accepted for industrial and military purposes, especially for the forces in the Second World War. Caruthers never witnessed the success of his discovery as he committed suicide in 1937. Nylon is very strong, quite light, stretches well and has a high shock-absorption capacity – it is also immune to dry rot. It was not long before nylon was the preferred substance to sisal for the creation of rope, resulting in the demise of the Haciendas of Yucatán.

As we wandered through deserted haciendas, ate a good lunch at Hacienda Ochil (a converted plantation,

processing area with drying racks, 

remains of the rail transportation system

and steam chimney that once powered the factory, 

with a small museum,

restaurant, 

chapel, 

amphitheatre built over a cénote (sinkhole)

Ochil's amphitheatre

and interesting examples of local artisan work, including sisal bowls and taco boxes) and admired the Chinese cemetery in Mérida (there is still a thriving Chinese community within the town), 

it was impossible not to think of the speed with which the world can change. Man has made rope for over 17,000 years – the earliest fossilized fragments date from that time (which makes it an older invention than the axe (circa 6,000 BC) or the wheel (circa 5000BC).  It is probable that rope in some form existed much earlier than even the first homo sapiens. Some modern apes show elementary skills at creating tools and the rudimentary use of ropes and early humanoid tools show wear marks and twisting that could indicate the use of rope (for example for fixing in place a spear point made of flint or for tying things together). For the past 75 years ropes made of synthetic fibres and metal have been in vogue – they are easier to make using automated machines and are not restricted by the need for the yarn to be spun in one long line (necessitating the use of rope walks).

Rope walk, Chatham Dockyear
longest rope walk in the UK, making long ropes for sailing ships
that could pass through pulleys with ease.

However, I wonder if opinions will change.

Traditionally rope has been used for the hangman’s noose and I wonder if we are unwittingly destroying our environment and thereby metaphorically hanging ourselves with a rope of our own making. Increasingly we hear of the harm that man-made substances are having on our environment – sea birds dying after consuming or becoming entangled in plastic,

Black-footed Albatross entangled in party balloons

a turtle maimed by a drinking straw

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4wH878t78bw ,

and lost fishing lines and nets entangling sea-life,

petitions by environmentalists seeking a change in our behaviour and even a whale supposedly asking for help in the removal of plastic from its mouth.  Some things need to change, but, as I commented at the start of this piece, change is a constant in our existence. We must build upon what has gone before to ensure a better future. This has been said before and so I will leave you with Friedrich Nietzsche’s observations from Thus Spoke Zarathustra:

“All beings so far have created something beyond themselves; and do you want to be the ebb of this great flood and even go back to the beasts rather than overcome man? What is the ape to man? A laughing stock or a painful embarrassment. And man shall be just that for the overman: a laughing stock or a painful embarrassment… (…) 
Man is a rope, tied between beast and overman – a rope over an abyss… What is great in man is that he is a bridge and not an end: what can be loved in man is that he is an overture and a going under…”

Rope suspension bridge made by the Incas

Shake, Rattle and Roll

After our trouble-laden journey, it was bliss to arrive at the hotel in Antigua (a short drive from Guatemala City), have a shower, grab a bite to eat (our first black beans of the trip) and then exit out into the warm air to explore. 

Picturesque is an understatement for the town, Antigua, is the former capital of Guatemala, with cobbled streets, charming colonial architecture and an easy-going, cosmopolitan ambience. We followed the crowd down the grid of streets towards the main town squares, churches and cathedral.

Antigua is nestled in a broad highland valley with the surrounding slopes covered in pine trees and forest. Its apparent calm belies a turbulent past – both socio-politically and as a result of its location. 

Huge cones of three volcanoes overshadow the town and they have played an active role in its history. Volcán de Agua destroyed the first Guatemalan capital and even now there are shattered remnants of once-stunning edifices destroyed by earthquakes, mud-slides and eruptions. Volcán de Fuego is still active today – snorting small puffs and plumes of gas and smoke into the sky, a constant reminder of the potentially devastating impact of Nature.

People have learned to live with the threat and the architecture reflects this – buildings are surprisingly squat 

with hard cores concealed within pillars to absorb shocks, buttresses and tapered arches to withstand quakes and resist collapse. 

(They remind me slightly of coping strategies used by people under repeated stress – relying on support from friends and becoming entrenched and immovable in the hope of remaining strong and undamaged). 

Our first stop was the church of La Merced – a fantastic example of Antiguan Baroque. Buttermilk yellow - with exquisite, fine white plasterwork decoration like the most elaborate of wedding cakes – some of the ornamentation exemplifying the need of the Spanish invaders to connect with the local community. For example the maize cob and cocoa pod (both sacred to the Maya) are shown under the Virgin Mary, above the doorway, on the glorious façade.

The church was constructed by the Mercedarians (the Order of Mercy was the first religious order to establish a monastery in Guatemala) – they must have been a stoic and determined group of men, as three temples or churches were constructed on the site, and each destroyed by quakes or lahars, before the current building. The first church, completed in 1583 was destroyed in an earthquake in 1749 and La Merced as we know it was completed in 1767. There was a wedding occurring at the time that we visited – with an elaborate banquet and decorations around the famous fountain and under the Mayan-style arches.

We were welcomed inside the church, but tiptoed around and tried not to disturb.

There is a famous figure of Jesus Nazarene, sculpted by Alonso de la Paz in 1650, with noticeably dark skin that appeals to the local community - it is paraded through the streets during Holy Week with thousands paying for the honour of sharing the burden.

I was interested to see the faux mosaic decorations on some of the pillars – these have been created out of small pieces of paper cut from magazines by prisoners.

The church helped sell similar artworks to the public, thereby raising funds to support convicts’ families – the pillar decorations were a gift to the church from the prisoners by way of saying “thank you”.

After La Merced we ambled down Antigua’s equivalent of Fifth Avenue, lined with boutiques selling jade jewellery, art galleries and a surprising number of western-style restaurants and cafes. We passed under the Santa Catalina Arch – inspired by the Corridoio Vasariano above the Ponte Vecchio in Florence, it enabled the nuns to cross from their secluded convent on one side of the street to their buildings on the other without having to come into contact with people.

Just beyond the arch a group of children were re-enacting traditional Mayan dances.

The dance we watched incorporated a Spanish style bull fight – a legacy from the Conquistadors and subsequent colonisation. 

Their costumes and movements reminded me of a combination of Morris Dancers and Pearly Kings and Queens

(a picture of Pearly Kings had bade us farewell as we departed the UK).

British Pearly Kings and Queens
Annual Harvest Festival, Guildhall, London Sept. 2012

We made our way to the main square, the Parque Central. 

This has always been the heart of Antigua – a pleasant place to sit, stroll or observe. It is surrounded on four sides by significant buildings – the Church represented by the Cathedral; 

the State by the Government buildings; 

the Armed Forces by the ancient army barracks and military headquarters (the Palacios de Los Capitanes Generales); and 

Photo by jRo

on the fourth side Commerce, with shops and restaurants hidden under shady arches. 

In the centre of the square is a famous fountain depicting mermaids with water spewing like milk from the breasts – a risky subject matter when it was initially conceived in the 1730s (a time when women were shrouded from head to toe). 

A local story goes that there was a man with four daughters who were very vain. They all decided that they did not wish to marry as pregnancy and childbirth would ruin their good looks (especially their breasts during lactation). Their father berated them for refusing to provide him with grandchildren and told them they had hearts of stone. The following day when he awoke he discovered each of them petrified in their beds and these girls were then placed as the figures on the fountain.

Certainly each girl is slightly different from her peers and the fountain, which is a 1936 replica of the original, is used as an example to the would-be wives and mothers of Antigua.

We explored Saint Joseph’s Cathedral on the edge of the square. Originally the main entrance was up the steps from the square, but most of the building was destroyed in the devastating earthquake of 1773 and what now functions as the cathedral was once one of the side chapels. I have never been into a cathedral in which you have to turn sharply to the right on entering in order to enter the nave. The original aisle and former cathedral has been blocked up and the ruins behind are awe inspiring

It must once have been one of the most impressive cathedrals in all Central America but Nature is supreme. Pillars built to withstand tremors lie shattered on the ground 

and the sky can be seen through the remains of the dome.

Only the crypt, with its two crematoria ovens, remains 

as well as the former underground chapel, where the Spanish nobles worshiped in seclusion. 

This cave-like place of worship has subsequently been retained as a shrine by the locals, with Mayans introducing a carving of the concubine of Pedro de Alvarado (the brutal Spaniard who conquered and ruled Guatemala). Luisa de Tiaxcalaa became in effect the third wife of Alvarado and bore him three children (his other marriages were barren). The complexities of Alvarado’s private life in some ways depicts the complications of Guatemalan history, but more of that to follow…

Don Pedro de Alvarado

We wandered back to our hotel, past smart bakeries (one housed in the former home of Luisa de Tiaxcalaa) 

and sweet shops.

When we got back to our hotel we discovered that another wedding was being celebrated and we were serenaded by the punctuating sounds of  firecrackers and the marimba, being played on the roof whilst a talented local pianist competed with “Au Clare de la Lune” in the dining room. 

Marimba player

A complex mix from various cultures, at times inspired and often discordant – in many ways a good metaphor for Guatemala.

Views of Antigua