As the game progressed, the intensity of the crowd grew into a fever pitch. The stark athleticism of the players was only matched by their careful strategy.
The players out there looked like they were a human version of pinball. They passed around a rubber ball they were never allowed to touch with their hands or feet. The ultimate goal was to make the ball pass through a hoop, guarded by the opposing team’s players.
This game was known as Pitz in Classical Maya, and this scene may as well have unfolded 2500 years ago, somewhere in central America. Pitz held deep spiritual meaning, often serving as a ritualistic embodiment of the cosmic struggle between life and death, revered by these civilizations as a sacred link between the earthly realm and the divine.
The Olmecs—predecessors of the Maya—used rubber to make these ceremonial balls for sport, and for waterproofing things. They passed this knowledge down to the Maya, who passed it down to the Aztecs.
Eventually, the knowledge of how to cultivate rubber made it across the Atlantic ocean. European colonists and explorers were fascinated by these bouncing balls, made of something completely unknown back in Europe. Curiosity gradually turned into commercial interest by the early 16th century.
During the late 19th century, demand for rubber rose dramatically. Bicycles were being fitted with a new type of inflatable tire, and rubber was suddenly everywhere—in industry in the form of hoses and gaskets, and in the home as parts of waterproof clothing.
The advent of Henry Ford’s mass manufacturing was still decades away, but rubber was really on the rise. There wasn’t nearly enough being produced through traditional means to meet rising consumer demand.
Here’s where things got really messy. As the world’s ability to produce industrial goods began to blow up, natural resources weren’t always able to keep up with traditional means. This imbalance led to some of the worst treatment of human beings in all of history, including chattel slavery in the US for hundreds of years.
In South America, the Rubber Barons were the prime example of this phenomenon.
Here, the insatiable demand for rubber led to horrific exploitation of indigenous peoples and laborers. Human rights were secondary to production, with forced labor and brutal punishment for the slightest infraction, real or imaginary, liberally doled out.
Meanwhile, the Amazon began to be carved out, and species began to go extinct. Ecosystems were getting out of whack.
The consequences of this exploitation left deep scars in these regions, both socially and ecologically, a stark reminder of the human trade-offs embedded in the march of industrial progress.
Henry Ford was one of the main drivers of industrial progress, but his insanely increased production capacity, coupled with his desire to own every piece of the process, led Ford to make perhaps the biggest business mistake of his life, and you can read about Fordlandia here:
Today, modern industries continue to grapple with keeping up with demand at the expense of human rights. Balancing economic growth and ethical practices wasn’t high on the radar of the Rubber Barons, but it needs to be front-and-center for us.
What are some modern parallels to the Rubber Barons of yore? How do you think you’d do in a game of Pitz?
Today I would think it's the lithium we have the same problem with. The amount of energy used to create the batteries for the supposedly green electric cars is atrocious. And a similar lack of humane treatment of workers in the mines.
Also I'd be terrible at Pitz. I was never good at soccer or quidditch.
I actually first heard about pitz when I visited Chichen Itza with my Mexican-American friend from Denmark (her parents were diplomats here). At the time, she said the winners of the game would be sacrificed, which was considered an honor. Having read up on this later, it does appear that there were occasional sacrificial games, but it didn't seem to have anything to do with who won. Instead, sometimes people who were already sentenced to be sacrificed would be equipped with sports gear and got to play the game first. I can imagine you weren't playing your best with the inevitable doom awaiting at the end.