================= SAN CRISTOBAL DE LAS CASAS, CHIAPAS (1)
These are transcribed journal notes, undoubtedly full of typos and errors and ommisions.
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Friday 11 March 2005, San Constantino
San Cristobal de Las Casas (SCLC) - morning.
Yesterday was a down day. We rested, walked around, rested. Early afternoon we walked into the huge, ancient Templo y Ex-Convento de Santo Domingo and the equally huge textile artesans' market that occupies its grounds. In stall after stall, the same blindingly beautiful fabrics, the same trivial crafted products. Wandering Mayan vendors, young children to old crones, hector us to buy the same trivial crafts. All very much like the market spaces in Guatemala, of which Chiapas is historically and culturally a part.
And in front of the church, young girls pulling a scam we'd been warned about. It works like this: outsiders are approached by neatly dressed schoolgirls holding paper lists, questionaires. It's a school project. What does the victim thing about an array of issues? After answering, a 'contribution' is demanded. Refusal to donate may produce screamed insults or even physical attacks. I don't want to be stabbed with a pencil, eh?
BREAK-IN: A fine morning today, except for the break-in. Somewhere around oh-dark-hundred hours we heard a warbling sound. Maureen peered out our barred-and-shuttered street window, said it was a car alarm down the street. And sometime later we were rudely rousted by our own car's honk-honk alarm. I dashed out, turned it off, checked the car -- it seemed OK, except for the bent antenna.
But at breakfast time the night watchman knocked on our door, holding a plate of tempered glass. A rear window panel had been popped out. No real damage and nothing missing, but we'll need it repaired and we'll need to park off the street. We haven't put down a deposit on the casita yet -- we need to find if it has secure parking, else we'll have yet ANOTHER change of plans. Or maybe not.
MID-AFTERNOON: We were directed to a car glass shop this morning -- repair took 1/2 hour, cost 50 pesos (US$4.50). We put down the deposit on the casita, were directed to a secure parking lot, then drove around the edges of this high urban valley and stomped around town some more. Otherwise, nothing to report.
Maureen suggests that I write an article about driving in SCLC. The old town is laid out mostly as a grid, with very little in the way of hills to obstruct traffic. But the streets are narrow and often one-way, and they change names regularly. Some pedestrian streets and some multi-block edifices, and some adjacent streets being one-way in the same direction, just add spice to the driver's day, as do all the usual impediments in Mexican roads. Oh yeah, and street signs (supposedly painted on walls) are often missing or contradictory or obsolete. Any accurate account of a point-to-point drive would sound like free verse, with the names of politicans and generals, and dates and directions and colors and conditions, arrayed like random poetic refrigerator magnets.
At least such an account could be written here. In some places, it would all be fantasy.
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THE RANT:
Consider some of the events of recent days. Consider the hectoring vendors -- we are now more likely to brush aside all vendors who approach us, rather than possibly be subjected to verbal abuse. Consider the 'questionaires' scam -- we are now more likely to avoid anyone approaching us carrying a clipboard, no matter what their inquiry of cause. Consider those at-the-tope vendors who use little girls to pull up a rope to block the road -- we're now more likely to ignore all roadside vendors, and to drive right throught the ropes. The first or second such encounter may net a few pesos from us, but that's all, EVER. None others will ever get our trade. Thus a few greedy and/or desperate Mayas do all they can to turn us from their people.
And consider that roadblock, the holdup, the death threat. We had perviously felt rather sympathetic to the Zapatistas, to their struggle for indigenous rights against the powerful government and military, the wealthy absentee landlords holdig them in virtual slavery. No more. Or sympathy evaporated when we were told we could be killed. So we're buying no Zap dolls or toys or literature, patronizing no Zap cafes or cinemas or festivals. Fuck'em. A small group may profit from us (and other travelers) just once, but they certainly don't encourage us to place ourselves where we will undergo such an experience again. Do their people and their cause benefit by rousing our antagonism? Ha. Fuck'em.
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Saturday 12 March 2005 - San Gregorio de Nissa
San Cristobal de Las Casas (SCLC), Chiapas - night.
This morning came the finding of cheaper long-term parking near our new digs, then a drive out to the indigenous villages of San Juan de Chamula and San Andres de Zinacatan, to reconnoiter. In Chamula they threw out the last Catholic priest in 1854; they worship the Sun, and John the Baptist. In Zinacatan they follow the Vatican and are much friendlier. En route we picked up a hitchhiking Argentine couple; he's an architect, she's a programmer. In Zinacatan we talked with bicycling Mitch, a journalist from Berkeley; and Maureen bought a fine huiple, and I, a couple small pots. Then back to SCLC for resting etc. At night at at the nearby Templo del Carmen Cultural Center, we caught the last of a superb music-dance performance. Then loud music in the zocalo, and at the hostel. (Management says they break the rules just one night a year.) And I sat and played guitar with Michael from Berlin. Otherwise, nothing to report.
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Sunday 13 March 2005 - San Rodrigo, Solomon
San Cristobal de Las Casas (SCLC) - evening.
We're low on tequila. I went to a tienda for a half-liter of sweet 30% aguardiente -- just 6 pesos in Palenque but 10 pesos here. Have I been gringo-gouged?
YESTERDAY: Ok, so there WAS more to report yesterday. Our 30-kilometer trip to San Juan de Chamula and San Andres de Zinacatan was pure recon, ahead of the tour buses. (Actually we plan to go in a few days with a small guided group, to get the full story; and then return again later on our own, for more of the ambiance.)
We're warned that because of the tour groups, these villagers are testy. TAKE NO PICTURES OF PEOPLE in Chamula -- their faith holds that photography steals souls, say the guidebooks. We stopped in Chamula to snap a shot of the church and were immediately swarmed by small boys offering guidance and protection, a stereotypical scene. A much smaller swarm in Zinacatan, and much easier to shake them.
In the evening I played my mandolin and the guitar of Michael from Berlin. He told of he and his girlfriend being burgled at a beachfront hostel by a "junkie couple", and of catching them and demanding their belongings back. Then cops (or paramilitaries?) became involved, and started beating the thieves. Michael said he had to bribe the ?cops? to stop beating the very people who had stolen his stuff. That was on his last trip to Mexico. This time, just two weeks ago, his beachfront hotel burnt down, taking his passport and money etc. Bad karma?
TODAY: We set off this morning for another indigenous village. Tenejapa is 35 klicks from SCLC, sits atop the Chiapan highlands, doesn't attract tour groups, and supposedly has a large Sunday market that attracts folks from all over the backcountry. All true, except that maybe our timing was off re: the market. But I'm getting ahead of myself.
We climbed east into the volcanic mountains surrounding SCLC, drove through a seemingly solid suburban set of villages. Brightly painted concrete, mad taxis, garden plots, bare wood houses (Maureen says some of this looks like old Alaska), and the usual roadside menagerie of tethered turkeys and burros and pigs, goats and sheep and horses, chickens and dogs and chupacabras. (Well, maybe not the last).
Mayan women are washing clothes in a trickling creek. Some guys are running a carwash in another trickling creek. At any remote cluster of houses there's a guy with an ice cream push cart, surrounded by a cluster of yelling kids.
Still climbing, we pass the village of Romerillo -- its famed panteon (cemetary) is on a low hill, a field of simple tombstones overlooked by a string of immense, more-than-telephone-pole-sized crosses, all painted green and blue with white designs.
And eventually we reach Tenejapa, set in a low wide spot in the rocks. The centro is filled with (tarped) market stalls and trucks and a two-ferris-wheel carny. We cut down a side street, park next to continuous bare-wood houses built into vertical basalt cliffs. The cliff faces are black and pungent with wood smoke; firewood is stored in vertical crevasses. Little kids look at us and smile shyly; one boy keeps saying "hello." Later, when we leave, we say "goodbye" and he says "hello."
We stroll around the concrete town, down streets lined with produce vendors, some meat sellers, a truckload of factory blankets, an alleyway of tee-shirts. But everything in the plaza is tarped shut. Hmmm. We walk up to the entrance of the church and stop. At the far end, some sort of ceremony involving clouds of incense. A husky-looking man in traditional garb walks over and stops, facing us, not frowning. We nod and leave.
CITYSCAPE: Back in SCLC we drive to the two "temple mounts" on the east and west ends of town, Cerro Guadelupe and San Cristobal, and look down on the valley-filling city that's crawling up all visible hillsides. Our 1985 guidebook said the population then was was 45,000 -- current estimates (depending on who's calculating) put it at either 140,000 or 240,000. That's either 3x or 5x growth in 20 years. Business is great for those making and applying concrete and cinderblock.
Mitch (the SFBG journalist we met yesterday) recommended the Casa de Pan, near the textile artisans market. We lunched there -- organic and extremely tasty and atmospheric but a little pricey for budget living. Young kids came in, selling stuff -- the first guy with a flock of clay animalitos snagged 45 pesos from us for four of them, Little Daniel of SCLC said he made'em himself. I think there are schools for such fabrication.
Afternoon: rain, resting, etc. Evening: Out through the coolth for thin boutique pizza, then down to the zocalo. Crowds swarm from the adjacent cathedral. Smaller groups stroll the plaza; in its center, a 2-story lacey ironwork bandstand. Upstairs there, some cafe tables and a live marimba band. Woody music floats in the trees, over the flowers, trapped by surrounding buildings. A terribly lovely evening.
ADDENDUM: Goats are very important here, and not just for milk and meat. Women from some villages wear long fuzzy black goathair skirts; men from other villages wear long vests or jackets of the same, or long bleached mohair (or white wool) ponchos. Women from some villages wear long multicolor ribbons woven into their hair; men from some villages wear such ribbons hanging in their hats.
In some villages, only the civic-religious leaders may wear certain vests or jackets or hats, and they also wear long chains of medallions, their badges of office. Such guys usually have new boots too. Treat these fellows with GREAT respect.
In San Juan de Chamula, not only are there no Catholic priests (and the bishop is only allowed into town once a month, for baptisms and weddings and funerals), they also have little use for government doctors. (There are free federal clinics and hospitals all over Mexico.) The church is a hospital; the shamans are curanderos, healers. I don't know who counts the survival rates.
