13/ The Trip to Chiapas

“If there is not justice for the people, let there be no peace for the government.”

-- Emiliano Zapata

The Hot Months have arrived. 

We had known for over a year that April and May are the warmest months in Oaxaca, and since our arrival had been receiving dire warnings about them from locals and expats alike. Not only is it hot here in the spring, but it’s also the time of year when farmers are apt to burn their fields to rid them of dead corn stalks. On top of that, after the long, dry winter there have been a record number of wildfires raging throughout southern Mexico. So unlike the crisp, cool, clear days of fall, when the mountains stand in sharp relief against a deep blue sky, these days you can barely see the mountains at all. The sun rises and sets as a red ball in a sea of dusty gray. And unlike in the rainy season, there is little or no relief from the intense heat as the day progresses, as clouds only rarely arise to block the midday sun. 

As the dreaded Hot Months approached, we became increasingly interested in visiting someplace, anyplace, cooler. The place we kept hearing about was San Cristóbal de las Casas, a colorful colonial city in the mountains of Chiapas to the southeast. San Cristóbal was reputed to be not only much cooler climatically, but also a pretty cool place in many other respects. 

Chiapas is Mexico’s southernmost state, bounded by the Pacific Ocean, the states of Oaxaca, Tabasco, and Veracruz, and by the Guatemalan border. It is also the poorest state in Mexico by many economic metrics. To the extent that Chiapas has been a blip on the radar of Americans at all, it has been largely due to the social unrest and humanitarian crises that have erupted there in recent years—such as the caravans of refugees currently attempting to flee the failed states of Central America. News reports from the region often paint a picture of a lawless territory patrolled by gun-toting thugs with little regard for life or property.

But everyone we knew who had visited Chiapas had loved it. Not only was it home to one of the country’s most charming colonial cities, but it also boasted an array of natural wonders—lakes, canyons, waterfalls—set in verdant national parks; colorful indigenous traditions distinctly different from Oaxaca; and many important sites of Mayan antiquity. And the purported banditry and lawlessness? Not really an issue these days, they said. Not really.

The bus ride from Oaxaca to San Cristóbal takes at least 10-12 hours, which immediately took it off the table for us as a travel option. Nestled in the mountains at 7,200’ of altitude, San Cristóbal has no airport to speak of, so we had to book a flight to Tuxtla-Gutierrez, the state capital about an hour’s drive to the west. The one airline that flies there no longer offers direct flights to or from Oaxaca, so we had to fly two legs of an elongated triangle (via Mexico City) to reach Tuxtla. We were met there at the airport by Ricardo, the amiable driver sent by our B & B in San Cristóbal, who led us through the blinding, 95˚ midday haze to his air-conditioned car for the drive into the mountains. 

It is dead-dry and brown at this time of year, and for the first 20 minutes it was hard to distinguish between the land and the sky across the arid, rolling countryside. As we climbed out of the lower elevations, though, the sky began to take on a bluish hue; 20 minutes later, Ricardo had rolled down the windows because the exterior air was suddenly cooler than the interior. We were moving into upland forested mountains not unlike the Sierra Norte of Oaxaca. Another 20 minutes further up the road we discovered that we had climbed above the haze, and shortly thereafter we arrived in San Cristóbal.

San Cristóbal de las Casas, Chiapas.

At under 200,000 people, San Cristóbal de las Casas is less than two-thirds the size of the city of Oaxaca. Despite its diminutive size, and the fact that it is situated high in the chilly massif of central Chiapas, it feels in some ways more cosmopolitan than its cousin to the west. Two separate pedestrian-only thoroughfares bisect the Centro, lined with international restaurants, trendy boutiques and dozens of artisan galleries displaying Chiapas’s justly-renowned textiles. (Their other leading souvenir product is, interestingly, fossilized amber—available by the ton in all shapes, sizes, colors, settings, degrees of authenticity and numbers of bugs trapped inside.) The majority of tourists we encountered in the city were either Europeans—split just about evenly between well-heeled older travelers and dreadlocked, pajama-clad millennials—or Mexicans on holiday from the big cities to the north.

Chiapas lies in the heart of Maya country—an area that extends southward from the Yucatan Peninsula through the states of Campeche and Chiapas, and thence into Belize, Guatemala and Honduras. It was once a single civilization comprised of numerous city-states spread out over a vast geographic area, and today there are at least 6 major branches of the Mayan language, featuring over 20 distinct tongues. Local “tribes,” if you will, still maintain their traditional language and culture, and even compared to Oaxaca, with its many colorful traditions, there is a strong indigenous presence in the streets, markets and neighborhoods in and around San Cristóbal. Surrounding pueblos comprise communities where Tzotzil and Tzeltal, two flavors of local Mayan, are still spoken as a first language. These descendants of the warlike Maya are fiercely independent, which has led to friction over the centuries.

Tzotzil women from a nearby town take a Coke break from peddling their textile wares.

Case in point: the Zapatista Uprising. On January 1, 1994, armed indigenous villagers, led by outside socialist insurgents angered in large part by the passing of NAFTA (which, among other things, gave multinational corporations a much bigger say in decisions regarding indigenous lands), forcibly took control of San Cristóbal and many other parts of the state. They successfully defended their territory for a time before being beaten back into the countryside by the Federal Police and the Mexican Army. While the hostilities have largely subsided since then, there are still occasional incidents and the dispute continues to simmer just below the surface. 

The latter-day Zapatistas took their name from Emiliano Zapata, a much-revered populist hero who led a peasant army against government forces in the decade-long Mexican Revolution of 1910. There is now a thriving industry in San Cristóbal—known locally as Zapaturismo—selling art, t-shirts and the like relating to the more recent uprising, typically depicted by rifle-toting women with raised fists and ski masks. 

The indigenous peoples of Chiapas still display a dogged adherence to their ancient practices, and strongly resist any attempts to bring them into Western political and religious frameworks. We took a short tour of several nearby Tzotzil pueblos to get a taste of what life is like in rural Chiapas.

The church at San Juan Chamula.

One of these was San Juan Chamula, whose church, unceremoniously tagged “The Chicken Church” by many visitors, is famous as an example of the strange mix of practices that emerged from the head-on collision of Catholicism and traditional New World spiritual beliefs. There are no pews or seats in this pretty little church: instead, the floor is covered with pine needles, and the air is dense with incense. In one corner, a trio of musicians plays a slow, repetitive, trance-inducing cadence. Townspeople routinely visit the church with a shaman or curandera to have their problems resolved or illnesses treated. Seated on the floor, they light dozens of candles while drinking Coca-Cola (considered sacred for its color) and pox (posh)—a local intoxicant made from distilled corn. The shaman rubs the sufferer’s body with a fistful of herbs, and then again with an egg or, quite often, a live chicken. After this cleansing process the egg is broken, or the chicken dispatched with a quick twist of the neck. (We saw this ritual enacted several times during just a short visit inside the church.) Lining the side walls of the church are glass-covered cabinets containing life-sized representations of numerous Catholic saints, each wearing a mirror on a chain around its neck. When these saints are paraded around the town during festivals, the sun (itself a god) is reflected onto the villagers by the effigies.

A local official guards the entrance to the church. No photos allowed inside!

The locals are unconcerned with the presence of outsiders observing their rituals; what they do mind is the incursion of Christian evangelicals attempting to “save” them from their animistic practices. San Juan Chamula is an Usos y Costumbres town with its own system of governance (see A Trip to the Mountains), and by civic covenant, anyone in the village who does not follow the traditional religion is expelled from the community. Rough justice also prevails here—anyone caught committing a serious infraction (assault, rape, murder, theft, etc.) is summarily lynched, without intervention from the outside authorities. The crime rate, as you might imagine, is quite low.

The Mayan communities in and around San Cristóbal de las Casas are renowned for their colorful textiles and the inventiveness of their traditional garb. The city itself is home to a couple of spectacular textile museums, including one listed as “The Museum of Regional Costumes.” As we discovered, there is more to this particular museum than meets the eye. 

A small sampling of traditional costumes in the collection of Sergio Castro, local healer.

Before traveling to San Cristóbal we had learned of an individual there who has spent decades building schools and water treatment facilities in small Mayan villages throughout the Chiapas highlands. Perhaps even more significantly, he has also been providing medical care (especially treatment for burns, a common mishap in villages where they occasionally use gasoline to start cooking fires). By training an engineer and veterinarian, Sergio Castro is now known as a legendary healer, a sort of Mother Teresa ministering to the Maya. Supported only by donations from individuals or organizations who have witnessed his tireless efforts, Castro regularly makes the rounds to treat anyone in need, usually receiving no monetary payment for his services. Instead, over the years Castro’s patients in these far-flung villages have rewarded him with a stunning assortment of exquisitely crafted traditional costumes, which he has put on display in a modest colonial home in the Centro—which also serves as a daily drop-in clinic for indigent patients. A humble man who deflects all of the growing acclaim for his work to“El Señor” (God), Castro greets all visitors personally and provides a tour to explain the meaning and traditions behind the costumes on display. If there are patients in the patio, you wait until he is finished treating them. First things first.

Being Maya country, the lowland jungle regions of Chiapas are dotted with countless ruins. As part of our itinerary we had planned to visit the most famous one in the area: Palenque.

There are currently three options for getting to Palenque from San Cristóbal—hire a private driver ($$$); ride a big luxury bus the long way around (10 hours) through the city of Villahermosa in Tabasco ($$); or take a small-van tour through the countryside that stops at several natural attractions before arriving in Palenque and the ruins ($). Since we wanted to see some sights along the way we chose the latter—the only drawback being a 4:00 am departure. 

A small armada of vans departs San Cristóbal early each morning for this day-long excursion, the caveat being that they must all leave Palenque not later than 5:00 pm to return as a caravan—nighttime representing the greatest risk of the aforementioned banditry. About half of the passengers, ourselves included, would be dropped off at hotels in Palenque prior to our van’s return to San Cristóbal.

A good portion of this trip takes place in early-morning darkness. The first signs of light reveal a seemingly endless series of knife-edge mountain ridges, all with tiny villages perched atop them, rising above the intervening fog-shrouded valleys. After a 30-minute daybreak stop for a roadside “breakfast buffet,” you continue your descent into the lowlands. Another hour or so brings you to the two best-known water parks in the area: the cataracts of Agua Azul (blue water), and the waterfall at Misol-Ha. Both are features of the same river flowing out of the mountains through the now-steamy jungle. 

The cataracts of Agua Azul.

I had come prepared with a bathing suit to take the edge off the midday heat; the river water was surprisingly, and a bit breathtakingly, cool to the touch. Both locations were already full of tourists, and Agua Azul in particular, being a major attraction, featured a gantlet of vendor booths, restaurants and hawkers lining the lengthy trail alongside the series of waterfalls. If you managed to look only in the opposite direction, the vistas were quite enchanting.

Despite enduring an endless series of mountains turns and a thousand crude speedbumps, our trip was largely without mishap—the only sketchy moment having been when the van, coming around a bend, was greeted by a band of 20 men (apparently unarmed) holding a rope across the road. Our driver rolled his eyes and stopped the van, whereupon the group’s spokesman asked for a 50-peso donation to the local paramilitary group defending the nearby towns from another group that had apparently assassinated a local leader. When the driver gave him a $200 bill, the young man handed him $150 in change and politely wished us all a good day. 

By the time the van dropped us off outside the ruins at Palenque the temperature had soared to well over 100°. It is an impressive site, but by now we were so tired, hot and sweaty that we were barely able to take in the magnificent stone edifices around us; all we could manage was to stagger toward the nearest shade. But our plan had always been to return in the cool of the following morning for a second visit, and that proved a far more enjoyable experience. 

A temple and burial chamber at Palenque.

In the Chiapan jungle the canopy rises ten stories overhead, strung with liana vines worthy of the most robust Tarzan. Colorful birds flit by through the underbrush, and the prehistoric grunts and hoops of howler monkeys reverberate through the fecund air. At Palenque, as at other Mayan sites we have visited, the ruins rise out of this irrepressible forest—indeed, over 90% of the city still lies buried beneath centuries of undergrowth and the detritus of time. To walk along the jungle paths and happen upon a stone structure of antiquity is to discover it as if for the first time.

Once the afternoon heat proved unbearable we retreated to our air-conditioned hotel room. The following day we boarded a jet at the tiny Palenque airport (the one flight each week to Mexico City is on a Wednesday) for our return trip home. Sitting in the ultra-modern waiting lounge at MEX, my mind strayed back to the ruins at Palenque, with their faded frescoes and toppled stelae depicting vainglorious accounts of ancient triumphs. As they often do when confronted by such rude evidence of the transience—and, it must be said, futility—of human endeavors, my thoughts fixed on the words of Percy Bysshe Shelley:

I met a traveller from an antique land, Who said— “Two vast and trunkless legs of stone Stand in the desert …. Near them, on the sand, Half sunk a shattered visage lies, whose frown, And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command, Tell that its sculptor well those passions read Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things, The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed; And on the pedestal, these words appear: My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings; Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair! Nothing beside remains. Round the decay Of that colossal Wreck, boundless and bare The lone and level sands stretch far away.”