Zinacatan and San Juan Chamula

I´ve spent my first week in San Cristobal, and I´m liking the city more and more every day. There has been a music, theater and dance festival in the main plaza all week, which makes for fun evenings. I´ve found a wine bar (great Mexican wine for 20 pesos!) where I love to sit and people watch, there are lots of bars and cafes with live music every night and plenty of cheap and delicious places to eat. Here are a few more pictures of the city:

Without my Spanish class yesterday I was able to take a short day trip to some of the indigenous villages nearby. I went with a tour group, which was great because a guide was necessary to understand much of what we saw- plus I was able to meet other travelers from Chile, Argentina, Germany and other parts of Mexico. Both villages are indigenous Maya, but have surprisingly different cultures and customs.

In the first village, Zinacatan, we visited a home (it was interesting but a little too much of a tourist set-up for me) where we saw women weaving in the traditional manner- with the tapestry attached to them by a belt- the picture explains it more clearly. We also got to watch a woman making tortillas by hand and got to try them with guacamole, beans, cheese, salsas and crushed pumpkin seeds.

The next town, San Juan Chamula, is much bigger and is actually an autonomous city- they don´t pay any taxes to Mexico or Chiapas and have their own government and police force. The most interesting part of the city is their religion- a mix between the ancient Mayan and Catholicism.

We were able to go inside the church and observe some of the rituals- it was unlike anything I´d ever seen before. The floor of the church is covered in pine needles and there are candles lining every table top and even parts of the floor. Statues of saints in glass boxes line the walls and people sit on the ground in front of the saint they need to call on- there are no pews or seats anywhere in the building. Then, the people perform traditional Mayan rituals- we saw a woman rubbing eggs all over a baby who had a fever. In another group an old woman rubbed a live chicken all over a man who had a more serious illness (I don´t know what was wrong exactly) and then broke the chicken´s neck. It´s essentially an exorcism- the chicken or eggs extract the sickness, sin or bad spirit from the person and are then sacrificed. Another, less intense tradition involves the drinking of posh, an alcohol made from sugarcane. The Maya used to make posh by letting it ferment underground for three weeks and something about the earth and chemicals in the soil and such would end up making it carbonated. Then, when the people would drink it after a prayer it would make them burp- and this is believed to be the sin or confession leaving the body. Now, instead of making posh underground and waiting three weeks, the people drink a shot of uncarbonated posh and follow it with Coke! Coca Cola now plays a serious role in their religion and rituals! (It´s true- I swear!)

It´s a fascinating mix of the pre-colonial, colonial and modern eras. Oh, another interesting point- all of the statues of the saints have mirrors and reflective coins covering them to deflect the bad spirits and sins that leave people´s bodies during the rituals. All, that is, except for the first six statues when you walk in- these are saints who have failed to help anyone in the community so have been shunned and left mirror-less so they have to absord all of the bad that comes out in the people praying in the church.

Finally, here are a few pictures from the markets (these are especially for you mom!)

More to come soon!

-C