[Aztlan] fall of the multepal

[Diehl, Richard]

NEWS FLASH! FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Palace Coup at Chichén Itzá! King K'ak'upakal and brother depose the Multepal Troika that has run city since the 1990 Schele-Freidel Uprising!

Twin Tollans: Chichén Itzá, Tula, and the Epiclassic to Early Postclassic Mesoamerican World, a new book edited by Jeff Karl Kowalski and Cynthia Kristan- Graham (Dumbarton Oaks, 2007) reveals tumultuous changes in the way Chichén Itzá, Maya-land's major metropolis at the end of the first millennium AD, was governed. Eighteen years ago Linda Schele and David Freidel proposed that the city was not ruled by a paramount ruler in traditional Maya fashion, but rather by a council of leading individuals. However, new data and reinterpretations of existing information reveal that K'ak'upakal K'awiil, also known as "Fire is the Shield of K'awiil", perhaps assisted by his brother K'awiil Kopol and abetted by his parents Lady K'ayam ("Lady Singer" or more loosely, The Emmylou Harris of Yucatan) and cho-ko-wa-ju?-a-b'i "Jawbone", defeated their former overlords at Ek Balam and established an independent state under King K' sometime in the late 9th century. This apparently occurred prior to the opening of Chichén to the Toltec-led Mesoamerican Co-Prosperity Sphere based at Tula, Hidalgo. King K' does not seem to have established a dynasty; at least it is not known who succeeded him. Whoever that may have been appears to have fully integrated northern Yucatan into the short-lived Tula-based free-trade zone. Was his successor Ce Acatl Topiltzin Quetzalcoatl, the pulque-besotted rounder who was expelled from Tula by his born-again subjects? Your reporter doubts it but strongly encourages his readers to peruse this weighty (in EVERY sense of the word) tome and form their own opinions about what really happened at The Mouth of the well of the Itzá. Please do not hesitate to let him and the world know if you read the evidence differently than he does. 

Your humble servant,
Dick Diehl