CAMPECHE, MEXICO — My obsession with clay Jaina figures started about a year ago at the Museo de la Cultura Maya in Chetumal, Mexico. That is where I set my eyes on the tiny statues of a Maya woman wearing an elaborate blouse and ear spools and a young warrior with facial tattoos and scars.
The 6- to 7-inch-tall figures -- depictions of ancient Maya in traditional dress -- looked so lifelike that I half expected them to speak. When a museum guide told me that the statues behind glass were replicas of statuettes unearthed at Jaina, the Maya island of the dead off the western Yucatan Peninsula, I was determined to learn more about the figures.
The delicately detailed terra-cotta statuettes, described by experts as the finest figurine art of ancient America, were buried with each deceased person on the island, as many as 10,000 in all.
Pursuing my obsession, I headed to Ticul, a pre-Columbian Maya town about 50 miles south of Merida that's known for its red-earth pottery, where I was told the replicas of the Jaina figures were being made.
In the area around Ticul's central plaza, I saw ceramic statues of ancient Maya figures, some about 9 feet high. In front of a colonial church, a sculpture of two white hands cradled a pot. Although local shops sold everything from tchotchkes to fine art pieces, no one could tell me where to find the replica figures.
Just as I was about to give up, I found a gallery called Arte Maya, where I met the man who made the statues near the town's center. Andres Mena Sanchez had also been making Jaina replicas for 20 years. He explained that Jaina is a man-made island on the western side of the Yucatan that became a necropolis because the Maya associated the west with death.
Inside his gallery, my pulse quickened as Mena Sanchez showed me the small replicas: a statue of a woman giving birth, a ball player, a shaman with a deer headdress, a weaver, a priest figure with only one arm. Some of the terra-cotta sculptures were painted, others not.
Mena Sanchez found pictures of them in archaeology books and created molds. Some figures were formed by hand, and others were a combination of molds and free-form. It was a technique used by the ancient Maya who made the original Jaina figures.
I bought the one-armed priest for $22. But I was not satisfied with owning a replica. I wanted to see the real thing. I contacted sources in Campeche and got permission to visit Jaina with a guide.
