Crafting the Secrets of the Ancient Maya: Media Representations of Archaeological Exploration and the Cultural Politics of US Informal Empire in 1920s Yucatan

Abstract

During the 1920s, a wave of U.S. scientists and journalists descended on Central America and the Yucatan Peninsula of Mexico to unlock the riddles of the ancient Maya: their origins, their cultures, and their disappearance. These expeditions, widely publicized in US newspapers, taught the public about both the Maya and US past and present. In this article, I compare media representations of archaeological exploration in Yucatan published in 'The New York Times'. I analyze Alma Reed’s reports from her 1923 visit to Yucatan against Gregory Mason’s dispatches from the later Mason-Spinden Expedition in 1926. Each journalist drew different conclusions about the nature and identity of the ancient Maya, yet sought to transform readers into vicarious stakeholders to maintain US dominance in Yucatan. They recreated cultural and scientific ties between Yucatan and the United States damaged by plummeting henequen prices and a series of radical socialist experiments designed to bring the ideals of the Mexican revolution to the region. I show how cultural representations of empire and assumptions about the indigenous bolstered informal US economic empire and strengthened both real and imaginary relationships between Yucatan and the United States.