Documentary presents Mayan alternative to Gregorian calendar

By Pablo Jaime Sainz

What day of the week is it today? What date of the year? Do you know what time it is? Maybe your life is inundated with calendars, agendas, clocks, watches. Time, time, time.

In today's world, it seems we're always in a hurry. Hours go by, then days, weeks, years... The calendar we measure our time with is called the Gregorian Calendar, which was implemented by Pope Gregory XIII, and it uses the 12 month, seven day per week system.

A new documentary film offers an alternative world-view to the result-oriented, almost robotic view of the Gregorian calendar. "Between 2 Worlds," a documentary film directed and written by Chula Vista resident Jose Jaramillo, is a critique of the Gregorian calendar while introducing to the more nature-friendly, human-developmental-focused Mayan calendar.

"It is a film about the revealing purpose of the Gregorian calendar and the European notion concerning Manifest Destiny," Jaramillo said. "It is all about the unexamined assumptions and criteria upon the world has based the daily life of mankind. It is by far the greatest and most profoundly unquestioned instrument of control ever perpetrated upon the people of Earth."

The film, which is in English, was premiered on Thursday, Sept. 20, at the Ultra Star Cinemas at Hazard Center, in San Diego.

In his film, Jaramillo proposes this: In order for humans to live a better life and to prepare for the changes that, according to Mayan prophecy, will take place in 2012, humans need to change their state of mind to the Mayan calendar, which focuses "a new world" of harmony with nature and the universe.

"The Mayans developed a unique system to track time, but the Mayan perceived time as a pure synchronization and harmony with nature and with the universe," Jaramillo said.

According to the Maya prophecies, humanity has always stood "Between 2 Worlds": the old world of power, technology, and money, and the new world of peace, love, unity, and harmony. And our task according to this prophecy is our need to balance these two worlds, before the end of the Mayan cycle in 2012.

The Gregorian calendar, Jaramillo said, represents an old world that's outdated, inhumane, and useless.

"Because we are living in a world that is rushing all the time, people are getting stress, because they don't have time for their own families, and that is what I think is wrong about the Gregorian calendar," Jaramillo said. "The Gregorian calendar was codified after the Doctrine of Discovery, and assumes that the power of the Christian Church around the planet had the power to take any land owned by non-Christian peoples. It allowed for a method to people for economic and political measure of time."

The documentary includes original footage from Jaramillo's travels in the Maya world, including the Yucatan Peninsula in southern Mexico. The film, which was financed by Jaramillo, cost about $25,000 to produce.

In "Between 2 Worlds," Maya calendar scholars give their opinions in favor of the Mayan calendar and encourage people to start implementing the philosophies of the Maya to their daily lives.

"We don't think about it, but we're using a calendar, the Gregorian Calendar, that constantly tells us that life is not going anywhere," said author and Mayan scholar Dr. Carl Calleman. "We're just on this year after year. It's a worldview that tells us that life has no purpose, and creation has no purpose, and evolution has no purpose. It's just this endless, repeated cycle of the Earth around the Sun."

For Ramon Mendoza, an artist and philosopher, "the Mayan calendar is a textbook, it is a map it is a way to know who we are."

Jaramillo, who's originally from Guadalajara but has roots in Mayan Yucatan Peninsula, said that, "reintroducing the Maya calendar is an emergency plan for people of Earth."

He also offers conferences and public talks at the Chula Vista Civic Center Library. He also encourages people to create their own Mayan Calendar study groups.

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