We
entered the Chiapas district and visit
the centre of San Cristóbal de las Casas.
The city is founded in
1528.
San Cristóbal lies 2300 meters above sea level. The
city gives you a cosy and colonial
feeling. It can cool down considerably at
night.
On the right the Catedral in MAYA-colours.
De Zócalo, where
we will be well off.
The inner court of our hotel.
We thought this was the
most beautiful hotel of our whole journey.
Beautiful, thorough,
colonial and attractive arranged.
The inner court from our hotel, seen from the roof.
Today visiting two
Indian villages are on
the program. 9.30 departure to the first village,
San Juan Chamula. The village has 1 burned down church from
1600 and a new church from the 18th
century. The women carry rough
cuffs of black wool, a broad belt and blue or white blouse with
short sleeves and stitching. The men carry white
cotton trousers, shirt and wools coat.
Chamula is
spiritually and closed village. All modern influences are kept out and
everyone gets a house and food.
The women keep themselves busy
all day with weave of the costumes and the
men with amusing the gods. They do this through
exuberant rituals with music, fire work and a
lot of yelling. The whole day long they
drink coca cola and belch. (To
purify their body from evil
spirits.). If possibly they drink
much alcohol. For making
the rituals more exuberantly and therefore more amusing for the
Gods. Also alcohol is drunk to
make confessing a lot easier. The village
has a spiritual LEADER whom each year is
chosen again. You must be very
good to become spiritually LEADER, and especially
have money, to provide the whole village alcohol,
food, shelter and especially many rituals. Since the arrival of the
Spaniards in the 16th
century there has been taken place a bizarre
mixture of Catholicism and traditional Maya religions. They
don't adore Jesus but Johannes the
Baptist whereas the black Madonna is their
patroness. And in Chamula
they doesn't get married but the get baptized.
The graveyard
of Chamula.
In the background we see the burned down church
from the16th century.
Indians believe that your soul is taken away if you
photograph them. But that does not apply to all Indians. This family didn't
make any problem of it. In fact,
they even offered it to us to be photographed. Of course for a couple
pesos!!
These 2 spinners
also didn't mind to be photographed. However they
didn't look into the camera!!!
Spinner
The coloured market of Cholula with on
the background the Indian
church.
License plate from
distrito Chiapas.
This church is something special. There cannot be filmed or
photographed.
Therefore we go quietly
and cautiously into the church. Behind the small
church door a strange dark world hide itself. The
church floor has been strewn with a carpet full of
pine-needles and
leaves. We smell the intense fragrance of Copal
incense and resin, which fills the church. There
sounds lamentation and crying and
murmuring prayer. The high
wooden ceiling is jet-black
through the dens smoke
of hundreds of candles which burn on the floor and on tables. At
the walls we see dozens of
large pictures of Roman Catholic saints who here are honoured
as Gods. Ceremonies
are carried out. We have observed one. A
family, father mother and children
<----- read further.
One prays and
mutters lyrics. The mother holds a chicken.
Why does one pray? Assume they have a sick child. Through
praying they transfer the sickness of the child to the chicken.
Then the chicken is
killed by the woman. This happens discreetly. Well,
if the chicken is dead, the sickness is also dead/gone.
Further the chicken is buried on the sacred
mountain, where nobody of outside is allowed to
go there. After the ceremony everything is cleaned
up and someone else can continue another ceremony.
We drive to
the 2nd village, San Lorenzo Zinacantán,
another typical Chiapas village that has also
its own religious conviction.
It is much quieter here. Thhe village is also
more wealthy and cleaner than Chamula.
In the previous village, there were rather many
tourists, here nothing. Costume is here totally different; more coloured. We visit the white church. Simple,
but the altar is coloured. With flickering
lights...
We go to a house where a woman bakes tortillas on a
large plate. Then she fills the tortilla with cheese
and now you have a so called quesadilla. Moreover
we can compose our own tortilla
with among other things like vegetables,
sauce, chicken, tomato herbs, chilly
and beans.
Anita prepares me
to be a "witness"..
Anita (20) is a little girl from Chamula. She is intelligent, and speaks
without accent words Dutch. She goes regularly to San
Cristóbal to sell stuff.
She wants to develop more, but she will not get the
chance. With her roots she will
never be able to get a good job.
That's the way it goes, here in Mexico.
Tot nu toe
betreft het een viertal vakanties: Suriname,
Egypte, Peru, Bolivia en Mexico. Verder een kort
fotoverslag van de zonsverduistering in 1999 te
noord-frankrijk in de buurt van het plaatsje
Spincourt. Er is een mogelijkheid om mijn
gastenboek te tekenen. Deze homepage is
ontworpen door Sander van Kuppevelt (sandervk).
