Mayan Princess
Soon after moving to New York, my mom visited, and we traveled to see my sister in Boston. At her suggestion, we spent an afternoon at the Harvard Museum. Wandering its sterile halls, I found myself in the Mayan Relics room. It was always unsettling to see pieces of my culture so far from home, stripped from their context and displayed alongside other “ethnic” artifacts, as if they shared only their otherness.
In a quiet corner, I noticed a small, unassuming photo in a frame. The caption caught my eye: Juan Ramón Cueva, Honduran archaeologist, assistant to the Peabody Foundation in the excavation of Copán’s ruins.
I was stunned.
I hurried and grabbed my sister.
“Is this… Papá Juan?” I whispered, keeping the words from my mother.
He was larger-than-life in my grandma’s stories — an Indiana Jones figure, the kind of heroic adventurer conjured by Eurocentric ideals, striding confidently through the jungles of Copán. But the photo before me unraveled that image. Instead of a towering, chiseled explorer, I saw a short, stocky man with dark, weathered skin and a proud Mayan nose. He stood beside the ancient pyramid, his rugged hands resting by his sides, standing humbly next to a Mayan statue — a relic now just steps away from me in the sterile museum. He was wearing tweed pants and vest with a worker sweater, a broad rim hat and boots — formal attire that seemed absurd in the sweltering Honduran sun.
I snapped a photo and sent it to my grandma.
“Abuelita, is this your dad?”
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“Hija, where are you? That’s him!!” she replied full of pride.
I studied his figure: rugged hands, a steady posture, his face stern but calm. He wasn’t the heroic archetype I had imagined, yet there was something undeniably profound in his presence.
As I stared, a wave of shame overcame me, a remnant of years spent idolizing European ideals studying in Italy. My cinnamon-colored skin, darkened in tropical summers, had once embarrassed me. Now, gazing at Papá Juan’s proud figure, I felt vertigo, as if the museum dissolved around me.
Suddenly, I was there.
My feet touched the rain-soaked earth, bare and damp. My modern clothes were gone, replaced by a simple white tunic. My skin glowed that deep amber, smooth and luminous, just like my Abuelita’s in the Pacific sun. I raised my hands in wonder — delicate, strong, unfamiliar yet utterly my own.
The jungle around me pulsed with life, the echoes of macaws filled the air. Towering above me was the unfinished Hieroglyphic Stairway of Copán.
A voice startled me.
“You’re the Mayan Princess,” the voice whispered, echoing the words my grandma often claimed with pride about her lineage.
Just then the vision began to fade. The sounds of the jungle dissolved into the muffled hum of the museum vents. Back in the sterile room, I stood before Papá Juan’s photo, but I was different. I wasn’t just a visitor to the museum or to my heritage. I was a part of it, as it was a part of me.
Somewhere, I imagined, my ancestors celebrated this rediscovery.
