| | |  Travel & Outdoors | August 2009 
Mexico Accepts UN Recommendations on Pyramid Site
 Mark Stevenson - Associated
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August 08, 2009
Mexico City – Mexico said Friday it accepts the recommendations of a U.N. committee that criticized a now-suspended plan to install lights on the ancient Teotihuacan pyramids to make it accessible for nighttime visits.
Julio Castrejon, a spokesman for Mexico's National Institute of Anthropology and History, added, however, that while the institute "totally accepts" the U.N. findings, officials are not dropping the idea of lighting ruins to encourage more tourism and boost local economies.
He was responding to the UNESCO World Heritage Committee, which monitors historical and natural heritage sites around the globe.
At its most recent meeting in Seville, Spain, the committee expressed concern that "the lack of a management plan appears to have allowed developments to take place, which have had a negative impact on" on the Teotihuacan site near Mexico City.
The committee requested that it be allowed to evaluate such plans in the future, presumably with the power to suggest changes. It also asked Mexico to draw up a management plan and form a working group of local, state and federal officials to increase coordination for protecting the site
Castrejon noted the project had been suspended and the lighting system removed, after it drew criticism from preservationists, union activists, legislators and some academics.
The U.N. committee also said the project caused damage to the pyramids' surface. Castrejon said none of the pyramids' original material was damaged. The pyramids had eroded over time, and much of the stone facing that was drilled into for the project is actually restoration material put in place over the last century, he said.
He said the small holes made in the modern restoration materials for light boxes and wiring also were patched with cement mimicking the color of the pyramids' stone.
Castrejon cited other ruin sites in Mexico, like the Mayan temples at Uxmal, as proof that nonintrusive lighting systems can be used to increase tourism and benefit local communities. He said something similar could be considered as part of a new proposal for Teotihuacan.
"If there is a viable and timely proposal, and UNESCO agrees to it, then it should be carried out because we believe that cultural heritage should be used by, and for the advantage of, the neighboring communities," he said.
Preservationists claimed the small, disguised light boxes and metal cable conduits damaged the pyramids' surfaces and the aesthetics of the nearly 2,000-year-old site.
After the criticism surfaced in January, the institute required the state government to lessen the project's impact by using fewer attached fixtures, but that did little to mollify critics and the project was eventually scrapped.
A popular tourist site about an hour's drive north of Mexico City, the massive pyramids at Teotihuacan were built by a relatively little-known culture that reached its height between 100 B.C. and A.D. 750. Teotihuacan was abandoned by the time the Aztecs arrived in the area in the 1300s and gave it its current name.
The local government launched the project to create a nighttime light and sound show for tourists, and defended it by noting that similar displays are used at archaeological sites around the world. |
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