San Juan Chamula y Zinacantan

Hello all,

I am writing to you from rainy, and chilly San Cristobal. I am at the moment waiting for my laundry to be finished and wearing shorts and a t-shirt. I never thought I would be this cold in Mexico! And if I were better at converting meters to feet in my head I would let you know how high it is here, but I can't even remember the meters at the moment. Ay, que lastima!

I have decided to stay here until the end of the week to continue the Spanish classes I have been taking. I keep hoping that one of these days I am going to open my mouth and perfect, beautiful Spanish will come pouring out without effort. Sometimes by the end of the day I am so tired. I know also that I am too hard on nyself, that I am improving and most importantly, I am able to communicate with people about whatever I need to.

I have explored some of the local nightlife here. There is live music every night, and a salsa club. Miraculously the other night I was in a bar dancing along to the live reggae music when who should appear at my side but Nayla, an old friend that I traveled in Europe with who I haven't seen for 6 years. It is always strange to run into someone you know in a place so far out of context, but it was fun too. We got a chance to catch up on what's been happening in the meantime.

Yesterday I went on an interesting adventure to two Mayan pueblos that are close to San Cristobal. The first stop was San Juan Chamula, the second Zinacantan. One of the fascinating things about these pueblos is that they are located within 2 kilometers of one another, and yet two different languages are spoken, religion is practiced completely differently, and they each have distinct traditional clothes that the majority of people wear. In Chamula the women wear black furry skirts and white tops. The men wear white furry tunics over white pants. I put myself in the Spanish speaking arm of the tour, because it was a much smaller group and less obvious because everyone else in it was from Latin America. We looked at the traditional houses, made of sticks and adobe, the fields planted with corn, beans and squash. Our guide told us about the Mayan cross, and that, especially in this village the cross is not related to christianity, but represents the time when the earth and the sky separated to create the space where humans and animals live. He spoke of the traditional healers, and how many of them attend to the supernatural causes of illnesses. For example, it is thought that every person has a totem animal, and that some sicknesses are caused by loss of contact with that animal. In this case a ritual must be done to reunite the person with nature.

Of course the story of the conquering of the indigenous people is always a sad one. The Maya were such an advanced society in the pre-colombian era with an alphabet, the Mayan calendar and complicated mathematics. Many Mayan texts existed that were burned by the Spanish, and in the present day Chiapas is the state in Mexico with the largest population of indigenous people, as well as the lowest literacy rate. Many children work rather than going to school, and many schools are inadequate because they do not teach the children anything about their own culture. In this way, the language, and certainly the writing of the language is being lost.

One of the most fascinating parts of Camula is the church. Our guide, who could speak tzotzil, the language of this pueblo, told us that contrary to the conclusion of many anthropologists that the Mayan religion and Catholicism have united in this pueble, he believes that they really practice their ancient religion with a mask of Catholicism. Although the church is "Catholic", mass is never held there. The walls are lined with saints, but he says that they represent the old gods and goddesses. The floor of the church is covered with pine needles. People come to the church with hundreds of candles, clear a space on the floor, line up all of the candles and light them. They also bring other offerings, soda being one of the most obvious. I am not sure how coke became part of the ritual, but it is now. Inside the church I watched a limpia, a ritual cleansing of a sick person. The woman performing the ritual brushed the sick woman all over with a live chicken. Afterwards she broke the chicken's neck.

The last stop in Chamula was the graveyard. All of the headstones face east. White crosses are for children and pregnant women, blue and green crosses for middle aged people, and black crosses for the elderly. Each cross bears the name of the person and the date of their death, it does not show their date of birth. For the Maya death is a part of life, and the most important date of someone's life.

In Zinacatan we didn't see as much of the city. We went to a house where three women were working with their backstrap looms. This village is known for its textiles, and the traditional dress here is beautiful, purple, blue, teal and silver embroided flowers on black shirts, shawls and skirts. The men also wear colorfully embroidered tunics. This pueblo is wealthier than the other, and the economy is based on selling flowers grown in huge greenhouses. In the house I got to sample some food, and posh, the local liqour used for celebrating and praying. I also had the chance to watch the women at work on their weaving. It is amazing the difference between their looms and the huge floor looms I learned to weave on in the states. Their looms are a few sticks tied together with strings, all of which they tie to themselves and use their weight to create tension in the weave. They made beautiful things.

It is an amazing gift to be able to see living indigenous cultures. There is a lot of sadness in it as well, because so much has been robbed, descrated and destroyed. Once I move on from here, I will go to see a few of the ancient Mayan ruins, remnants of the time they were the powerful entity in this region.