Life As Canvas

As soon as we stepped off the bus in the small town of San Cristobal de las Casas, we knew Chiapas was going to be different from the other Mexican states we’d seen so far. It was the usual routine – 7am in the bus station, tired eyes, accosted by enthusiastic taxi drivers, we found a hostel and dropped our heavy packs. Breakfast. As we plodded into town to find food, I noticed the women weighed down by bags of goods, babies slung around their backs. These are Maya women, short, dark, and round in shiny blouses with black wool skirts down to the ankles held by a scarf tied around the belly. They wear their hair in two long black braids with one ribbon woven into both linking them together at the ends. Within an hour I wanted to stay, sink in, and sprout some roots.

I couldn’t quite explain what it was but I think things felt more authentic to me in San Cristobal than they had in a while. The people there are beautiful not for the magazines they read or the shoes on their closet floor. They have only one pair of plastic jelly shoes, no closet, and sometimes no floor.

Babies are present everywhere – it’s as if they’re simply part of the daily wardrobe. Little heads or feet stick out of colorful cloth bumps on women’s backs while they embroider blankets, sell them in the markets, and then pack everything away and carry their goods through town.

The men drive buses and taxis, sweep the streets, work in hotels. They wear jeans and button-up shirts in the city and black wool vests with cowboy hats in smaller villages. The men are around doing things but the women are really present. In all sorts of colors of shiny shirts and shiny metallic smiles, they do the heavy work.

Kids roam the streets with things to sell, too. Many start pushing bubblegum and key chains on gringos by the age of 5 or 6 and never really make it to school.

Tags: Chiapas, Maya, Travel

This entry was posted on Sunday, February 4th, 2007 at 4:54 pm and is filed under Travel. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.