Resource Reviews: Honest History Magazine - A Journy Through the Jungle (issue #11)

 Honest History – Journey Through the Jungle

The first time I saw advertisements for this issue, I saw major problems. I was barely able to get a preview of the magazine and already noticed it was not good. I got a copy of the full issue and did a complete review.

Each issue starts with “A Letter for Young Historians.” I noticed several problems in this letter. First of all, they should capitalize “Native” and “Indigenous” when speaking of people. They did this through the entire issue #15 called A Native Story, but not this one. Not capitalized = plants, animals, etc. Capitalized = people and cultures.  It says that they “wanted to explore this topic from a native perspective.” I was skeptical and this was proven to be false throughout the entire issue. It then uses past tense language like “lived there” instead of present tense. These people still live there and the cultures still exist. I was, however, surprised and impressed that they explained how to use “Maya” vs “Mayan.” Maya is used when speaking of people, places, and culture. Mayan is only used for language. This is a common error, so I am glad they explained it and used the words correctly throughout.

Page 7 has a brief explanation of Mayan languages, and it’s fine, but the image of Indigenous people on the page is stereotypical.

Next we come to “You Probably Didn’t Know…” on pages 8 and 9. It starts with “Like the ancient Greeks or Romans, the Maya had a plethora of deities – over 250 gods.” A few issues here: this should not be past tense. Maya religions still exist in some form. And why compare it to Europeans? There is no reason to do this. Unless you’d do this when talking about the Greeks and Romans – “Like the ancient Maya, Greeks and Romans had…” – there is no need to do it here. Let Indigenous cultures exist outside of European contexts. On page 9 it says “Maya structures are still being discovered to this day.” Sure, by Europeans/Euro-Americans. But the Maya people there have always known those structures are there.  They’re not being “discovered,” they’re being identified for the first time by outsiders. Those outsiders that refused to listen to Maya people that told them the structures were there. It also says that “only three of the Maya books (or codices) survive today” with no context as to why only 3 still exist today. It says nothing about the Spanish destroying their extensive written records. This is important context. It’s passive and makes it sound like these written records just disappeared.

The article on pages 10-11 is about “People We Should Know.” You would think that if their goal was to highlight Native perspectives that they’d, you know…highlight Native people perhaps? But no. They highlight two non-Mesoamerican archeologists. One is Cuban and European, but not culturally Indigenous or Indigenous to Mesoamerica. The other is Euro-American. No Native perspectives here. It’s all about outsiders “discovering” things in the jungle. Things the Indigenous peoples of the area already knew about.

The article about “The Maya Today” is very needed, because so many resources including textbooks say that they “mysteriously disappeared” which is hogwash. It’s mostly a decent article. But it does say the Spanish “forced many to work on plantations.” So why not say the Spanish enslaved them? Why skirt around the issue of slavery? Whenever it comes to the enslavement of Indigenous peoples in the Americas, almost no one writes “enslaved.” They usually dance around it with phrases like “forced them to work” or “made them build…” or whatever. Stop doing this, folks. It was slavery.

Page 14 starts an article that I find atrocious. It is called “Diego de Landa: Hero or Villian?” Woah. This question should never be posed, especially to children, about violent colonizers that caused irreparable damage. This shouldn’t even be a question at all. He was an Spanish colonizer who forced people into Catholicism and burned most of the Maya written records. It doesn’t matter if he ultimately ended up recording some of their language in his awful book. He should never be credited with anything heroic. The article also says “De Landa was particularly angry because he thought the Maya were practicing human sacrifice. One summer, he even hosted an auto de fe (meaning “act of faith”). Auto de fes happened in Spain during the Inquisition (where Catholics hunted people with other beliefs), and while these were going on, Catholics would condemn people for not converting to Catholicism; the accused were often burned.” So, we’ll say “human sacrifice” when referring to Mesoamerican cultures, but not Europeans? Burning people at the stake for different religious beliefs is *drum roll* HUMAN SACRIFICE. Call it what it is.

There’s some cool stuff about Maya math, which is fun. 

Then we have the feature article called “Tracing the Ruins” starting on page 18. Yet again, they are highlighting non-Indigenous Europeans/Euro-Americans. There are no Native perspectives present. The article calls them “explorers.” If you’ve read any of my reviews, you know how I feel about that word. These men, while not violent invader colonizers, were not “explorers” either. They were exploiters. The article also refers to past violent colonizers “explorers.” Euro-Americans love that word. The article is clearly about these people traveling to Central America/Mesoamerica. Yet it flips back and forth between saying that and “South America.” They did not go to South America! But the article states things like “Stephens knew that an adventure in South Ameirca…” and then returns to saying Central America. These are not the same thing, Honest History. (Never mind the fact that they call this “adventures.”) On page 22 they quote one of these guys who used a racial slur (s*v*g*s). They do not censor it nor do they explain anywhere that this is a harmful slur. They just use the quote as if there is nothing wrong with it. Page 25 says “Suddenly, the ancient Maya were brought back into the public eye as skillful engineers, extraordinary craftsmen, and intelligent thinkers.” Just because they were brought “back” into the Western eye, doesn’t mean this wsa revealed to the entire public. “Public” should not default to Europeans and Euro-Americans, like this does. The Maya always knew these things about their own people, and still do. The article is full of Eurocentric language like “forgotten time,” “discovers about the ancient Maya world,” “great adventures,” and “first to show the world the beauty and wonder of ancient Mesoamerica.” None of these are “discoveries.” It’s all information that a) was recorded by earlier Spanish invaders, and b) the Maya already knew about.

The next spread made me laugh. This is what I saw in the previews before getting the whole magazine. For being supposedly “honest history,” this is hilariously wrong. It’s so simple that I can’t believe no one in the writing and editing process noticed how wrong it is.  

“How to Tell the Four Mesoamerican Civilizations Apart”

It includes: the Maya, Aztecs, Olmecs, and Incas. Do we see the problem here?

The Inca are NOT a Mesoamerican civilization! South America is not included in the term Mesoamerica. The Inca Civilization was in South America. I absolutely cannot understand why Honest History would be so dishonest about something so simple.

Beyond that, there were many more than four civilizations in Mesoamerica. Why does it say “the four” with the word “the” there?? So do the Zapotec, Mixtec, Toltec, Totonac, and others just not exist? I also do not see the need to pluralize Aztec, Olmec, and Inca like they do.

For the Aztec, it says they are “also called the Mexica.” No, the Mexica are “also called” the Aztec. And the Aztec triple alliance was more than just the Mexica. It also included the Tepaneca and Acolhua, among others. It says they used the Nahuatl language to “name the Olmecs, Maya, and Incas.” The word Olmec does come from Nahuatl, but Inca does not. At the end it says they were “such terrific farmers that they grew avocados and invented guacamole!” That’s like saying “The Europeans were such terrific farmers that they grew wheat and invented bread!” It’s an odd thing to highlight when you could highlight their chinampas (man made islands for farming), or aqueduct system, or many other things about farming.

“Olmecs.” It says that the “Olmecs probably invented a way to make rubber into a ball and used it to develop early ball games.” They didn’t “probably” invent it, they did invent rubber. And they didn’t just “invent a way to make rubber into a ball” – they actually invented rubber with tree saps. This makes it sound like rubber itself is a naturally occurring substance. They used rubber for more than sports balls, too.

“Incas.” This just does not belong here. It doesn’t belong in this issue or this article. The whole issue is about Mesoamerica. The Inca were not Mesoamerican. It says they had no written language, but doesn’t explain that they did have a detailed method of recording information. They invented quipu. It isn’t written on paper, but it’s a “written” language in a sense.

On page 28 we have yet another article highlighting a non-Native researcher. This one is about a Siberian/Russian woman who noticed patterns in written Mayan language. It’s another article highlighting white people and crediting them with “discoveries.” It says “glyphs remained a mystery.” Did they really, though? At the time of de Landa’s destruction of Mayan language resources, there were still Maya people who could read Mayan writing. While that was several hundred years before this woman came around, the Maya people were still able to read their writing into modern times – at least until the end of the 1600s. Hundreds of years of forced assimilation, persecution, and forced Spanish caused the Maya to not be able to read their writing anymore.  It wasn’t a “mystery,” it was forced to near extinction. The article says that through modern scholarship, Europeans “revealed that the Maya were a technologically advanced civilization that existed for over 3000 years!” They did not, this non-Maya woman did not. She helped expose the Western world to this fact that the Maya people already knew about themselves and their ancestors.

An article on page 32 is titled “Tools of the Trade: Tools Used in Archaeology.” This article is also not focused on Native perspectives and yet again, we focus on archaeology instead of Indigenous voices. The images are mostly white people doing archaeology as if this is the only way to learn about Indigenous cultures of the past.

Immediately following that, we have an article called “Interview with an Archaeologist.” Again, a white archaeologist is being highlighted. No Native perspectives or voices. In the article she answers the question “What do you hope to discover about the history of the Maya through your work?” Never mind the Eurocentric use of the word “discover,” her answer is ridiculous. She says she wants to find out “whether the people living at Gallon Jug were in contact with other Maya people living in nearby cities.” Of course they were!! Not only were there extensive trade routes connecting people throughout North and South America, the Maya were extremely skilled tradespeople and seafarers. They built roads, had interconnected cities and towns, traveled the oceans extensively, had trade with cultures throughout the Caribbean and coasts, etc. This is all well known, especially by researchers and archaeologists. This can also be learned by talking to actual Maya people. In another question she says that the things they find “become the property of the Belizean state.” This is a colonial perspective. In reality, everything found by outsiders belongs to the Maya. They’re just looted and then claimed by colonial governments.

Pages 40 and 41, are about ancient Maya beauty practices. It is very othering and written as if their standards were weird. It also assumes that the readers are all Western/Euro. It says “Like any culture throughout time, the Maya had a standard of beauty that was quite different from what is considered beautiful today.” Considered beautiful today, by whom? There are different cultures around the world today that have different standards of beauty. This is written only for white/Euro-American children, clearly.

There’s a few short spreads about corn and sculpture, and then we end with the “Timeline Through Mesoamerica.” It starts with “1800 BC: Early Villages appear in Mexico and Guatemala.” Aside from the fact that they’re still using BC and AD, this date is absurdly wrong. There is evidence of people in Guatemala going back at least 18000 years and in Mexico almost 30,000 years. Why start with only 4000 years ago?? Both issues about Indigenous peoples of the Americas from Honest History have timelines with ridiculously recent dates. This perpetuates myths that we’ve only been here a short time, that our cultures and civilizations are “young” and not like the rest of the world, etc. It is harmful. The timeline includes the Inca, which were not in Mesoamerica. Half the timeline focuses on Europeans and European interactions, as well as “discoveries” by non-Indigenous people. It says that Cortes was an explorer, which he was not. He was a violent colonizer.

Some overall thoughts:

•         This entire magazine issue is focused on non-Indigenous peoples and perspectives. The opening letter claims they wanted to use Native perspectives, but not once did they do that is this issue. No Indigenous people from the area are featured or mentioned by name. No Native perspectives are used.
•         The magazine focuses on archaeology almost exclusively as well, instead of living knowledge among Indigenous peoples today. This is a harmful, but common, focus when learning about our pasts. There are no stories from Indigenous people or scholars and no Indigenous histories told.
•         Are there any Indigenous writers for this issue at all? I don’t know. In issue #15 they used some Indigenous writers, but it doesn’t seem like they used any here.
•        It is incredibly Eurocentric.

This issue will do more harm than good and perpetuates a lot of harmful and false ideas about how we should learn about the past. I do not recommend it.