I took this picture in 2003 while on a trip to Tabasco with my friend, Louise Hose​, and company to explore the Cueva de la Villa Luz (the Cave of the House of Lights) near Tapijulapa. It caught my eye, and I've since discovered it's iconic for Palenque sculpture. The trip, the people, the cave (and who can escape the poetry of the name--the Cave of the House of Lights?) all were iconic for me.

The rodent jaguar is at the base of a pilaster (an attached, non-supportive column or pier) is expressive of the Mayan's innate ability to somehow combine naturalism and fantasy, zoology with the monstrous.  Certainly it's an unsettling greeting at the top of a climb up a funerary temple platform.  Like their hieroglyph writing, Mayan forms emphasized and kind of fluid geometry with rich, rounded forms with very few sharp edges (say in it's right cheek bone), and no angles.

This was my first trip to Mexico as an adult and, I'm afraid, it spoiled me. Palenque is only partially carved out of the forest--there's still much to be excavated--at the point where the mountains meet the coastal plains near the border of Chiapas and Tabasco states.  It's exposure is eastward, towards the dawn and towards the Olmec territory, a civilization that preceded the Mayan civilization by a millennium. Compared to other, similar sites,  it's relatively unvisited, undeveloped, and the rules of exploration very lax.  You could still climb the pyramids, enter the palaces, sit and ponder--as I did with the college students who accompanied me.



Pilaster base, Temple Of Inspcriptions, 7th century , at Palenque, Chiapas, Mexico. Photo by JRPC