Soda Worship
Day: 30
Our time in San Cristobal seemed to pass by with ease. Wandering the quiet cobbled streets with misty mountains in the distance then tiring and stopping for some coffee. Life for a traveller here was easy, cheap and if you desired, carefree. Today we decided to take another look at the not so carefree side of life here and met up with a small tour in front of the city cathedral. Alex and Raul run tours to some of the local Mayan villages surrounding San Cristobal. They limit the tour to 10 people and their big thing is to show the villages respectfully to tourists.
4 Canadians, 2 Germans, 1 Irishman, 1 waloon and a couple of British dames all crowded into a ’70’s VW van. No this isn’t the start of a bad joke, this was our tour to the Mayan villages of San Juan Chamula and Zinacantan. First stop was Chamula, a fiercely independent, conservative town who has taken some strong measures to keep their traditions intact. To be honest it sounded a bit xenophobic to me. For example, if you weren’t born in Chamula then you weren’t allowed to live there, if you were from another town and married a Chamula girl then she was banished from the community forever and had to come live with you. All over San Cristobal you see woman selling things on the street. They are traditionally dressed and from villages like Chamula. They had been banished for one reason or another and now eek out a tough life on the city streets.
The most interesting aspect about the community was it’s church. A mix of Mayan and Catholic beliefs, however the vatican has no authority here. Our guide led us into the church. First off he explained absolutely no pictures, not in the church and not of any people in the village. This is a big deal apparently, tourists have had the crap kicked out of them for sneaking in photos. The church floor was covered in pine needles, figures of saints lined the walls and people knelt on the floor, lighting candles while they chanted in mayan. Our guide explained how there is no priest here and no services. People come and pray to different saints. They come with different colour candles all representing different wishes or afflictions. In addition to the candles are sodas. Coke, sprite, fanta etc. With similar representations as the candles.
So let’s set the scene here. I walk down the left side of the pine needle covered floor coming across several candles burning on the ground. Bottles of soda behind them and behind the soda is a shaman, an afflicted woman of some sort and the husband of the afflicted. They are chanting as the shaman rubs plants, chicken eggs and other things all over the woman. Today wasn’t our lucky day, sometimes they sacrifice a chicken right here! The shaman will diagnose the woman and then they pray. It’s quite a unique scene to watch. I’m still not quite sure why they mix the traditional beliefs with catholicism. However, I did find out from our guide the reason that Chamula is allowed to be so autonomous. They even have their own unique police force. The national government buys votes here. They get the town to vote for them and in return the town gets to be independent.
I could go on and on about the unique, sometimes very odd lifestyle of the people here but I think you get the message. Our guide was tremendous, explaining that he believed not tourism but missionaries to be the biggest threat to the traditional lifestyle here. Mormon’s and Jehovah Witnesses are all over Chiapas and Mexico, trying to “save” the indigenous people. I can’t understand why they care, just let these people be. The last thing you’ll see is a Mayan in Utah trying to convert Mormons, can you imagine?
We arrived back in San Cristobal late afternoon. I felt that I had learned so much today. The guide answered any question we had and offered tons of information on Mexico and contemporary Mayan life. The villages were far from perfect but it was a fascinating glimpse at indigenous life in Chiapas today.
Tags: Mexico, religion, San Cristobal
Michael Coroneos
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