Mayas to have a palace in southeast Mexico

From an article by Juan David Leal in the Latin American Herald Tribune:

YAXCABA, Mexico – The Maya culture, which reached its peak more than a thousand years ago, will soon have a new and enormous museum in the jungles of Mexico divulging its secrets, authorities of the southeastern Mexican state of Yucatan said.

Construction of the Palace of the Maya Civilization began Monday, coinciding with the beginning of the winter solstice, on 400 hectares (988 acres) of land in the municipality of Yaxcaba.

Yucatan Gov. Ivonne Ortega laid the cornerstone for the project, which will consist of six galleries to be built in several stages. The first two will require an investment of 300 million pesos ($23.6 million).

This cultural space will be “a building that shines with technology, but with the same mythical and mystical spirit that invests the archaeological areas of Uxmal and Ek Balam,” Ortega said.

She said that the palace, located 15 kilometers (9 miles) from the ancient Mayan city of Chichen Itza, “will attract an additional 500,000 tourists to Yucutan in the short term.”

“We’re going to promote the cultural renaissance and the international renaissance of our art and our traditions,” Ortega said to hundreds of Indians from nearby towns, most of them living in dire poverty.