NAFPS Forum

Hello,

I'm looking for in about the so-called "Mayan Elder", Hunbatz Men.
I know some people who have been fooled by this guy. I'm looking
for info to debunk him.


Thanks,

Johnny Asia, Guitarist from the Future
http://johnnyasia.info
 

I found this info:

http://faculty.smu.edu/dfreidel/ANTH3334_Fall/PDFs/030_ReligionDissection.pdf

 Movie: Incidents of Travel at
Chichen Itza


Points to remember:
* The film follows Quetzil Castañeda through the
archaeological site of Chichen Itza and Maya town of Piste

•The site attracts New Agers and both foreign and local tourists, including the descendants of the Maya builders of the site

•The local Maya of Piste “invade??? the site to sell souvenirs and make a living.




 Hunbatz Men, a self-proclaimed Maya shaman, conducts tours of Chichen Itza and other Maya sites for foreigners wishing to learn about Maya spiritualism. His ideas are not those of traditional Maya, simply typical New Age spiritualism using Maya words.

 
 
“My ancestors have ancient knowledge about the Itzas-those who built Chichen Itza. It is said they came from the North, but north of Chichen Itza is the sea-only one day's walk! It is said that WATER ATE THE BIG STONE OF KNOWLEDGE. I believe what my ancestors say so we were probably originally part of Atlantis, and came here when it sank. Many went to other places like Egypt. The Olmecs were living here when the Itzais came. It was the Olmecs who gave us the name MAYA???. – HUNBATZ MEN
 

Feathered Serpent was a god of Venus as Evening Star
Witnessing the Spring Equinox at Chichen Itza

•Traditional Maya cannot perform their rites at Chichen
Itza as this is forbidden by the government as the site is a public park.

•New Agers flout the laws and perform rites with no basis in •traditional Maya beliefs. (The ritual we saw in the temple atop the pyramid derives a lot from Tibetan customs. There was nothing in there remotely Maya.)


•The New Age ritual was to inaugurate a new period of love and understanding – the Age of Aquarius. Archaeology and history tell us that the temple was actually the site of sacrificial rituals to the Feathered Serpent, a god associated not just with creation but with bloody warfare. So why do New Agers believe charlatans like Hunbatz Men and ignore the real information on Chichen Itza?

Hi!
I'm Jaime and I live in Tucson, Arizona

Debunking Hunbatz Men should not be a very difficult thing to do!

Have you heard his interview on Prophecy Keepers – he’s the featured creature on Prophecy Keepers radio the radio that’s always about to go under unless you act now and send them lots of money!

http://www.prophecykeepers.com/hunbatz-men.html

In the Old interviews
http://www.prophecykeepers.com/hunbatzmen.html
Robert GhostWolf arranged this interview

The site says:
“Hunbatz Men is a "Daykeeper" of the Lower or "Itza" Maya, the equivalent of a king of one of the three Maya Kingdoms.

 He thinks he’s a King, he associates with well known frauds, not just Slick Bobby but Red Elk, Blue Otter and the fraud with my name Jaimie O Perez, he doesn’t know anything about the Maya but he knows everything about Theosophy ….
I think it’s safe to assume he’s a big fraud.

There was a speaker at UofA about two years ago at the museum who addressed the issue of Mexican-Americans looking for their roots and the concept of Atzlan. He talked about the big increase frauds who claim to know something about Mayan culture and how they try to peddle New Age concepts as Mayan spiritual beliefs to Mexican-American people hoping to re-connect with their indigenous roots. He said that when Mexican-Americans can’t access legit Mayan spiritual leaders they turn to frauds who tell them things that sound true to them like the Mayan prophesies and crap like you hear on Art Bell’s radio show.  I can’t remember his name, but ol’ Hunbatz was right on the top of his list.  He said that it’s highly unlikely to find person of Mayan descent who can speak authoritatively about Mayan spiritual beliefs, but that there are many, many middle class Mexican men pretending to be Maya spiritual leaders in order to make money.  There are actually more Mexican men engaging in fraud and ripping off Mexican-Americans than there Caucasians ripping off Caucasians.  It’s a huge problem here in Arizona. A legit Mayan spiritual leader wouldn’t travel around the United States alone making radio appearances, he would be needed in his community. 

Just off the top of my head this guy comes off like a real fraud. You should be able to show that all his information is second hand and comes from modern New Age books.

He seems to have read a lot of Blavatsky since he’s talking about magnetic points moving to “la India??? (This comes from Theosophy).  He can’t focus on one topic.
He’s all over the map talking about elders from Venezuala and Columbia and he mentions Lemuria and Atlantis - this comes from Blavatsky’s Theosophy written in the 20th century.
http://www.answers.com/topic/lemuria-continent
If I wanted to debunk him I’d start by showing that he’s just quoting books written in the 20th century.

If you speak Spanish, it might be easier try to contact people with legit ties to Mayan elders.

Jaime Perez (not the fraud)

From our old friends at Debunking Debunkersrule

-----------------------------
http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/Debunking_debunkersrule/message/172
To all those who question Hunbatz Men's authenticity - he's generally
considered to be a big fraud by legitimate, serious people in the
Aztlanista/Brown power movement. Only fringe lunatics promote him as
a spiritual leader.

I've been told that Hunbatz Men's real name is Cesar Mena Toto, that
he's Mexican and that he doesn't speak Mayan, and barely speaks any
other languages. I don't know if this information is accurate or
not, but I've heard it from several sources. I also heard he can't
enter the United States and has to stay in Mexico or Guatemala and
conduct his crystal skull ceremonies. Chichen Itza is just a tourist
trap. It's fake. It was created by anthropologists. It's the perfect
place for this fake shame-on to make his money. He has no formal
training whatsoever with any legitimate Mayan spiritual teachers and
can't possibly be considered to belong to any authentic day keeper
lineage. It`s pretty well known that his `knowledge' comes from Jose
Arguelles.

I checked out all their websites and I've concluded that the people
involved with the Gathering of One Global Eden event are basically
repeating everything that Arguelles invented.

In the mid 1980s, Hunbatz Men started out his career as a plastic
medicine man doing a version of the "dreamspell teachings" made
popular with Anglos Arguelles.

Wikipedia has a (surprisingly) good account of the criticism of
Arguelles:

"Although Argüelles states that his tools and calendar are clearly
not a Mayan calendar, much criticism of it focuses on the fact that
his works remain completely unsupported by any professional Mayanist
scholar[citation needed]. Amongst many criticisms leveled at it, it
is pointed out that the interpretation merely co-opts an ancient
tradition by recasting it in New Age terms, unknown, unused and
undocumented among the Maya. Many of Dreamspell's influences come
from non-Mayan sources, such as the I Ching and pop psychology
[citation needed]. What's more, Argüelles' calendar is based on a
different day-count than the traditional Mayan calendar. As
mathematician Michael Finley notes:

"Since the 365 day Maya haab makes no provision for leap years, its
starting date in the Gregorian Calendar advances by one day every
four years. The beginning of Arguelles' year is fixed to July 26.
Thus his count of days departs from the haab as it was known to Maya
scribes before the Spanish conquest. Arguelles claims that the
Thirteen Moon Calendar is synchronized with the calendar round.
Clearly, it is not."[1]
His calendar is also not correctly synchronized with that observed by
the Maya. For example, in the traditional count January 1, 2005 is 5
Muluk, while in the Dreamspell it is 2 Etznab.

Argüelles countered this criticism by stating that his calendar
is "correct and biologically accurate...for the whole planet", and
that he is the "heir of the legacy of Pacal Votan and the instrument
of his prophecy, Telektonon". [1] Argüelles is now one of several
individuals who have contributed to the spread of Mayanism, a
collection of beliefs based on metaphysical speculation about the
ancient Maya."

Hunbatz and.other frauds such as Aluna Joy Yaxkin immediately cashed
in on the popularity of the neo-Mayanist daykeeper groups with New
Age Anglos.

Hunbatz appeared on Prophesy Keepers radio and on the Art Bell show,
which should tell you something. The "Mayan calendar movement" (a.k.a
Dreamspell) , may be wildly popular with the UFO obsessed the Art
Bell fans, but it is a pseudo-tradition. It follows a false
daycount, and has incorporated bizarre New Age concepts such as
Atlantis and wild tales about alien encounters, it can only be
destructive towards any legitimate attempts at a Mayan cultural
revival.

Arguelles is also the creator of the "harmonic convergence" and the
idea that a cataclysm will take place on or about the year 2012. The
ideas expressed by the "Gathering of One Global Eden Event" folks
sound like they come directly from this guy. (Wikipedia says that
his interpretation of Maya cosmology is held as completely unfounded
by Mayanist scholarship)

Arguelles has met with Mayan groups and they rejected
his "dreamspelling" .

Dr. Michael Coe, a professor of anthropology at Yale and a specialist
in Mayan culture, dismissed Dr. Arguelles's predictions as ''totally
crackpot.'


There's a discussion about his new age crackpot ideas in this forum

http://forums.tortuga.com/viewtopic.php?
t=362&postdays=0&postorder=asc&start=0

There's a complicated debate on these pages:

http://alignment2012.com/debate2001.html

Here's a New York Times article about Arguelles invention of
the "Harmonic Convergence" (note the similarity to his ideas and the
Global Eden people)

http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?
res=9B0DE5D8173EF932A2575BC0A961948260&sec=&spon=&pagewanted=all

The Don't pay to pray site has a couple of books on the subject:

Claiming Knowledge: Strategies of Epistemology from Theosophy to the
New Age
By Olav Hammer
http://books.google.com/books?id=Nl26tCsGE5UC&pg=RA1-PA247&lpg=RA1-
PA247&dq=Arguelles+Mayan+rejected&source=web&ots=98R1ozFTNb&sig=yAQme3
iPOr5DDbYDOUaPnlL9YLA&hl=en

I've also heard several scholars on the subject claim that the whole
Mayan calendar hype was invented by Christian evangelicals who were
only interested in converting the ignorant savages to Christianity by
scaring them with apocalyptic tales like the ones in the Bible
focused to environmental concerns. I don't have a source, but I'll
post one if I find it.


There's also an intense Mayan Calendar debunk on YouTube from Matterik

What I think about the Mayan calendar and the New Age gurus

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NtGPTxLoK6Q

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If you've got a minute, join, rate high and mark as your favorite and
the word gets out to the real ignorant savages on YouTube.

Jaime

There is indeed a massiv "war" on who has the right date - which is ... anyway it is crap
Which is actually the date the REAL mayan are counting on? Is there any information out?

the typical fight on the right date occurs on the Tzolkin and the calendar round which is the tzolkin and the haab together. This is where all the guys try to be "right"
what I mean is, if there any known tribe or person who still maintains these calenders in a traditional sense?

 

Here is great info by anthropologist John Hoopes on the new age Mayan-cult which names many frauds including Cesar Mena Toto/Hunbatz Men, a name given by Jose Arguellas. A great sumary line:"Mayanism provides an ongoing foundation for the invention of sacred tradition and the emergence of new religious movements in the ongoing quest for meaning, control, and personal success."
Here's the main article:     http://www.academia.edu/2174047/Mayanism_Comes_of_New_Age