Inside the church of San Juan de Chamula, a fine cloud of smoke filled the air. It rose in wisps from hundreds of thin, white candles, perched delicately on the floor in ranks of 5, 10, 20, 40. Scattered around them lay a loose carpet of pine needles, the green arcs overlapping in dizzying patterns. The scents of pine resin, melted wax and burning wick mingled in my nose, and the chanted prayers of the indigenous Chamulans — who knelt before the candles, with bottles of Coca-Cola and pox, a homemade sugar-cane liquor pronounced posh, at their sides — made me feel as if I’d entered another, more mysterious universe.
In reality, however, I was just 20 minutes away from San Cristóbal de las Casas, the lively Spanish colonial city where I’d begun my frugal journey through Chiapas. That morning,
I’d walked to San Cristóbal’s market area and located the colectivo, or shared minivan, heading to San Juan Chamula — the closest Indian town in the Chiapas highlands — where I hoped
to get an introductory glimpse of native Chiapanecan culture. A fare of 8 pesos (roughly 60 cents at 13 pesos to the dollar) got me to the town center, a wide, beige plaza that was home to a marketplace and to the
church (admission 20 pesos), where I witnessed the religious rituals of the Chamulans, a subset of the Tzotzil Maya, who make up about a third of Chiapas’s nearly one million indigenous people.
Not that I’d necessarily needed to leave San Cristóbal to do so. Everywhere in that city I’d seen Indians, many in the colorful outfits of their home villages: black tufted-wool skirts, white tunics, embroidered shawls. And their unique form of religion — a blend of Catholicism and ancient Maya beliefs — spilled out into the stone-paved streets. Near my hotel, a storefront church was open day and night, and one afternoon I found pine needles matting the sidewalk in front of a small hospital.
San Cristóbal was not always so kind to Indians, said Walter Morris Jr., an American anthropologist better known as Chip and the author of “Living Maya,” who arrived there in 1972.
“At the time — and it’s much, much less now — the town was very racist, and Indians were not allowed in town,” he told me at his house in San Cristóbal. “They were allowed to come in for markets, but they had to leave by the end of the day. This was a ladino town, as they said, and the Indians had their own towns.”
Today, though relations between Indians and the ladino (i.e., non-Indian) and mestizo (mixed-ancestry) populations can be extremely tense, indigenous peoples are slightly better off.
“But they have remained intensely Indian, and the ones closest to the town are probably the most traditional,” Mr. Morris said. Indians, he added, want to show that “they are Indians, they are not ladinos, mestizos. They are themselves. They are Maya.”
That pride was evident in Chamula, where photography inside the church was forbidden, punishable by seizure of your camera and, potentially, arrest. Religion here is serious business, so much so that Chamulans who convert from Catholicism have been expelled from their villages. And I got the sense, both in the church and later, when I walked around town, that tourists like myself — and there were hundreds — were merely tolerated, and that an invisible barrier, fortified by centuries of discrimination, would always remain.
My awkward, self-taught Spanish didn’t help, but even so I felt resistance. Inside the church, I asked a man cleaning candle wax from the floors if he knew the symbolic meaning of the pine needles.
“Se mantenga fresca,” he said. They keep the place smelling fresh. It was only later, at the Museo de la Medicina Maya back in San Cristóbal, that I learned each needle represents a person being prayed for. (The soda and liquor, meanwhile, make you burp, supposedly releasing toxic spirits.) Was the man keeping me at a distance? Or was the answer more complicated than he could explain — or I could understand?
Because I felt extremely uncomfortable gawking, and because there didn’t seem to be much else do in Chamula, I made my way to the next closest Indian village, Zinacantán. The ride there was slightly complicated: No colectivo traveled a direct route, so I had to pay 9 pesos to reach a crossroads, and then, when no Zinacantán-bound colectivo appeared after 15 minutes, I hailed a taxi and paid 40 pesos for the remainder of the journey through the hills and into a cozy valley. It was only $3, but it seemed exorbitant at the time, and I silently fumed.
As soon as I stepped out of the van and into the flat expanse of concrete that passes for the center of Zinacantán, I was surrounded. Five girls — all dressed in the electric-indigo shawls that are a hallmark of Zinacantán textiles — were demanding to know if I was interested in artesanias, or artisanal crafts.
Instinct kicked in. After years in Southeast Asia, I know exactly how to tell pesky vendors I’m not interested. But just as a firm “No!” was about to emerge from my mouth, I held back. Maya weaving is gorgeous stuff, colorful and well made, combining a worthy knowledge of history and myth with a keen sense of fashion. I was interested.
So, after a quick look around the big white church in the middle of town, I corralled one of the girls. We ambled down a small road, the thick mountains rising in the near distance, then turned a corner and walked into her home, a typical compound centered on a courtyard and surrounded by family rooms.
The girl’s father and a few young men sat at a picnic table in the courtyard and barely looked up as I entered, but her mother and sisters sprang into action. One sister picked up a small, primitive loom that hung from the ceiling and gave it a few demonstration pulls. The mother, meanwhile, guided me around from embroidered shawls to stretches of vibrant fabric to a rack of scarves, where a short one with fiery orange and sky blue stripes caught my eye. I wasn’t entirely sure it had been made right there (the shop was called Artesanias “Maria Isabel,” at 31 Avenida Juan Sabines, 52-967-679-1809), but I bought it for 50 pesos; night in the mountains can be cold.
Then, because it was lunchtime, I asked the girl’s mother where I could find good, true Chiapanecan cuisine.
Her eyes lit up, and she ushered me into the kitchen, an almost bare room where a wood fire glowed red under a broad griddle. Her daughter came in and began to press and toast tortillas, which she piled on a low table next to small dishes of strong, crumbly cow’s-milk cheese, a mild but sweet tomato salsa and pepita, or ground toasted pumpkin seeds. For 10 minutes, as the sun poked through holes in the corrugated tin roof and drew fingers in the rising smoke, I sat at the table, methodically assembling and devouring the purest lunch I’d had in days, and washing it down with a local favorite: Coca-Cola.
When I could eat no more, I asked to pay for my meal, and the girl looked at me quizzically. The soda, she said, cost 15 pesos. She made no mention of the food. I handed her the few coins and left, stunned.
A few days later, however, I would learn from a friend that this was standard in Zinacantán, and that it was not entirely out of the goodness of my hosts’ hearts: there was probably, my friend said, another dish on the table, containing a single coin, where I was expected to leave my contribution, whatever that might be. (Indeed, when I looked at the photos I’d taken, there it was.) In other words, what I’d thought was heartfelt generosity was actually a well-rehearsed ritual for tourists like me.
I felt deceived, naïve and, at the same time, guilty. Hadn’t I deprived the family of 5 or 10 badly needed pesos? But if they needed the money, why charge me for the scarf and not the snack? Was this some element of Zinacantán culture that I couldn’t understand? Clearly, the invisible barriers still stood strong, as I’d fully expected them to. You can’t just wander into a town a stranger and wander out an insider.
But in the weeks since, I’ve realized that I had a choice: dwell on the touristy aspect or try to recapture that initial feeling of elation, when I left that girl’s courtyard full and happy and feeling blessed, if only for a moment.
Next stop: The Maya ruins at Palenque.
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