3d ago

Tourist attacked by locals after climbing forbidden Mayan temple in Mexico

Tourist Attacked by Locals After Climbing Forbidden Mayan Temple in Mexico

Summary

A German tourist was arrested and attacked after climbing the Temple of Kukulcan at Chichen Itza, Mexico, during the spring equinox.

Video footage shows locals shouting insults and physically confronting the man as National Guard personnel detained him.

The temple, a UNESCO World Heritage site and one of the New Seven Wonders of the World, is off-limits to climbers due to preservation laws and safety concerns.

Violators face fines up to $16,000 and possible prison time.

The incident occurred amid a crowd of 8,000–9,000 visitors.

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BrikoX @lemmy.zip

3d ago

Tourist Attacked by Locals After Climbing Forbidden Mayan Temple in Mexico

people.com /tourist-attacked-by-locals-after-climbing-forbidden-mayan-temple-mexico-11701730

100 comments

Lucky that he didn't get his heart ripped out and the head thrown down the steps

Fuck yes. Doesn’t matter if you’re a German tourist in Mexico, an American tourist in Japan, or a Chinese tourist at an American buffet— respect the local etiquette if you are going to travel.

I was lucky enough to go there when they still allowed people to go up the temple at Chichen Itza, and it was pretty cool, but I couldn't image just climbing shit they tell you not to. Especially when the reasoning is protecting heritage.
Honestly, he's lucky he didn't trip on the way down. Those stairs are steep.

Hell yeah! When you're visiting another country, you are a guest in their country and should obey their laws and rules.

Good. Wish more locals in tourists hotspots would gang up on asshole tourists. Like Bali is infested with entitled westerners and asshole bogans. It’s the colonial mindset these tourists have.
- The rise of the digital nomad is just soft colonialism with tech bros.
  
  Colonialism is about extracting resources. Living in a low cost of living area on passive income attained globally is quite the opposite.
- I know a woman who is insanely entitled and is currently in Bali. I feel bad for the locals who have to experience her presence
- How's Bali
  
  I hear it’s infested with westerners and bogans.

Good, now sacrifice him to whatever God they believe in

Lucky they didn’t get their heart cut out and show to them like in the good ol days

oh shit... i was there on that day! and i missed it...
- I bet you'd have been able to see it from the top of that pyramid though.
  
  Sounds like an episode of Always Sunny.

Not an American tourist this time
- There's a weird moment where it's "Fuck, here we go aga... wait... it's not our fault this time?"
  
  UN: "USA, NO!"
  USA: "What? I'm right here."
  UN: "Sorry, force of habit. GERMANY, NO!"
- Whilst being from a country with delusions of grandeur seems to make them more likely to exist (or at at least more likely to feel free to act like that), all nationalities have wankers.
- I think I've seen this movie, the American runs in afterwards in a fedora. /s
  
  It belongs in a museum!

I wish more people got their asses kicked for violating historic places and things.
- Or, really, any stupid shit when visiting somewhere. I'd have loved it if that "influencer" that yoinked that wombat got flogged in the public square like she deserved.
  
  Remember how a bunch of pissants from LA were damaging and even killing Joshua trees? I do, the trees still hunger for profligate blood.
  
  Hang on. What?! I have to look this up now.
  Edit: I am so pissed now. Glad she's left.
  
  Abso fucking lately.

Good. That's what they get for being a jackass.

A German tourist
Sorry for not sending out best. I hope the guys wore socks in sandals at least to properly represent our national outfit.
- Eh don't feel too bad, death valley will consume 10 of your countrymen by the closing of summer. Seriously there's running bets on my area about how many Germans will die and from what, safe bet is 5 from heatstroke.
- Every country has its idiots, but none moreso than America right now.
  
  Not really, the thing with the US is just that it joined a long list of countries led by people who should be committed for their own good. The US is not unique really at this point.
  US tourists have nothing on UK stag-doers. Those people are a plague.
- I used to work in a tourist area of CA, and most German tourists are very friendly and usually have a good dry humor, only ever had one be rude, but I think he was an offical going to the military base and not a tourist. He didn't like me walking past the lobby in a restaurant he was waiting to be seated in, I don't know how it is elsewhere, but when your picking up and paying for a to go order in the US, you don't wait to be seated, you just go to the front of house area and pay, typically front of house worker or owners aren't seating people unless it's an incredibly slow.
  
  You just happened to work in a tourist area that is above the budget of most of our worst offenders (sorry if this sounds classist, it's absolutely not meant that way)
  
  German tourists in Spanish resorts are the ones who will go out at night to put their towels on the pool chairs to reserve them for the next day, something which only ever works because other people are too polite to just thrown the towels away when they get there in the morning.
  In my own experience living in a couple of countries in including big tourism destinations, people from bigger and wealthier countries have a bigger tendency to behave as entitled wankers who think that they own the place when out of their country than people from smaller or poorer countries, so in touristic places you get for example more Germans, Brits and Americans doing "I don't care for others" stuff than say Dutch people or Greeks (whilst, curiously, in their own countries they tend not to behave like that, or at least not as overtly so).
- I'm only German by heritage, not citizenry... but goddamn do I love socks-n-'stocks, aka Birck-n-socks.
- I think someone mixed up this one and the other recently arrested legalized US german immigrant.
  Perhaps a swap at the border would do the trick. 🤔

I climbed that pyramid forever ago when it was still legal to do so.
Tons of people were going up & down. I didn’t realize things had changed and that it was also on the list of “new” 7 wonders of the world.
It was a bitch coming down though because it’s so steep.
Anyway, dude should have known better.
- I climbed the pyramid at Tulum in 1989. I hear its not allowed any more.
- Yeah I was just thinking the same thing - it’s closed now?
  
  All of these had to be closed off because jackasses who tried to take away a piece of the monument, or because they didn't tread well and fell down.

The headline annoys me, it makes it sound like a hapless tourist was attacked by vicious indigens.
I can well imagine how they told him not to do it, and eventually had to resort to physically getting him back down when he just didn't listen. Maybe technically an attack, but at the very least it should've read:
"Tourist violating ancient artefacts attacked and restrained by locals" or some such.
- I've seen enough of these stories that it was very clear that they climbed the temple (a no no) and was quickly karmaed by locals. Which is the proper way of things.
- So you decided to not read the article and fabricate your own, fictional version of events?
  Video also shows members of the public running up to the man as he was being led away by National Guard personnel, and hitting and yelling at him in the process.

Sounds like a cause for human sacrifice
- Mayans usually only sacrificed nobility. This dude got a "von" in his name?
  
  Mayans -o- French
  I have trouble believing that, though. Usually, like everything in ancient religion, human sacrifice was nowhere near that standardised, and the Mayans also sacrificed animals. Wikipedia only mentions that they preferred to enslave non-noble prisoners of war,

I have no problem with this.

What an idiot not only for potentially damaging an ancient pyramid but also because those stairs are only about 3" deep and it would be incredibly easy to come tumbling off that when coming back down. I scaled one that was maybe 10 feet tall outside Playa Del Carmen (not a perserved one but one you can climb on) and even that was terrifying to come down as a tall person.

Idiots.

I guess I'm glad my parents took me in the late 80's/early 90's when you were still allowed to climb it.
I keep meaning to get my mom to dig out the photos we took from the top.
- I went in the late 70s and was even allowed to pick up antique shards (and take them with me all the way back to Germany .... oh wait

I’ve seen this movie. Don’t the plants kill them?
- But that one the locals won't let you go if you touch it. Force you to stay on it.

8,000 and 9,000 people were visiting the temple at the time
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- Archen used karma. It was super effective.

Punks jump up to get beat down. Or I guess climb up to get beat down in this case.
- If this isn’t the first Brand Nubian joke on Lemmy, I’ll be shocked. It might be the first for the whole Fediverse.

Would bet 5€ that the idiot is some kind of 'travel influencer' or something similar.

Don't fuck around in the archeology zones!

It's great that we're enforcing laws that are there to protect our anthropological heritage. It's not so great that it means this violator is attacked by the locals.
As an aide, I feel like Mexico themselves have quite a ways to go to protect the heritage site. The grounds of Chichen Itzá are absolutely overrun with "tour guides" telling dumbed down or outright fabricated stories and literally hundreds of souvenir stands with obnoxious sellers that don't shy from any tactic to try to get your attention.
Walking around in that area should be serene, educational and immersive. Instead, it's like being in a kindergarten, where hordes of salespeople are incessantly calling out to you ("where are you from, sir, where are you from?"), literally throwing cheap Chinese junk in your direction, playing drums and pan flutes or squeezing squeaky toys and gimmicks that are meant to sound like monkeys. It's a cacophony of cheap garbage and harassment from locals (and nonstop clapping to hear the temple's acoustic effect) that takes you out of experiencing your surroundings in an inkling of tranquility. In fact, only from specific angles is it even possible to capture a photo of the Temple of Kukulcán without the brightly colored eye sores of a hundred nearly identical souvenir stands visible directly adjacent to it.
Mexico should also take more pride in this site and treat Chichen Itzá with more respect.
- It's not so great that it means this violator is attacked by the locals.
  It's not?
  
  Not for me; I don't endorse violence.
- Virtue signaling BS. That motherfucker deserves his ass to be beaten to shit
  Honestly wish he fell from the top
  
  Good grief, this is such a toxic community.
- No matter how much you try, Chichen Itzá will never be tranquil, it is visited by thousands of tourists every day, so it will always be crowded and full of voices.
  Vendors are usually local indigenous people, and selling to tourists is their only source of income, it would be silly on their part not to take advantage of the situation.
  
  Perhaps you've not visited this place, so for an impression: the area itself is very large and open and the site has restricted access with a fairly pricey admission fee.
  Voices don't carry very far in this environment, however the issue is that there are literally hundreds if not close to a thousand vendors literally screaming for attention. My objection is to the authorities who have permitted this kind of presence at a heritage site. Of course locals have taken advantage of the situation, that much is very clear.

You got to wonder how much damage that thing gets just being constantly exposed to the weather
Normally ruins like that have jungle right up to the edges or its partially buried.
At any point would it be worth trying to put some sort of protective coating on it like a type of historically accurate stucco to recreate what it looked like in the past?
- No.
  Restoring historical artefacts in a way that is sympathetic to its age is more or less impossible.
  You're not protecting what's there, rather creating something new.
  
  Well, in 500 years it may be destroyed anyways. Isn't it a little selfish to not try and preserve it in some form for future generations?
- Stucco is much more fragile and degrades rather quickly.
  That's why it usually hasn't survived in these monuments and why it usually isn't restored, it would cost way too much on maintenance.

Its just like strippers. You can see, but never touch or you'll regert it for your next tattoo. No regerts!
- Stripers! Things that stripe!
  
  No regerts man

Wow, they made the temple in Forza Horizon 5 a real thing! How did the tourist get around the invisible walls though?
/s
E: fun fact actually, in the game it isn't covered by an invisible cube, but rather a pyramid shape that starts at the X and Y of the temple corners but is about 1.5x the height of the temple. Strangely enough, other temples do use a cube/rectangle barrier that far exceeds the height of the asset it is protecting (mostly structures at Ek' Balam). This suggests that this temple was unique and handled seperately, but the lower protection is really strange. Maybe just an oversight, maybe a requirement from Mexico officials, worried that the usual system wasn't enough to keep players from messing with it - which, amusingly, allowed players to get above it, but other structures are immune.

100 comments