Mexico: Arista to Zapatista

Time for an update.

After leaving Elie at the Guatemala airport I bussed to Quetzaltenango. That's Guatemala's second largest city, a commercial industrial place and not much of a tourist draw. But since it was New Years Eve the streets were busy with people buying fireworks and, come midnight, I stood in the town centre and watched spectacular displays of colour rising up from the surrounding parts of the city.

The next day a series of local busses and crowded minivans (no regular transit on New Years) brought me across the Mexican border and to Tonala. Tonala is a hot dusty town on the middle of nowhere that you need to go to because it's on the crossroads to everywhere. As a world-class tourist destination it ranks just behind Dauphin, Manitoba - though maybe I'm shortchanging Dauphin. But the local plaza was a lively place in the evenings - the hallmark of every Mexican town - augmented by the fact that some fair had taken up residence. That gave the restless teenagers a chance to ride a pathetic ferris wheel and shoot at balloons to win useless dolls. Why are some things universal?

The next day I could make it to my destination - the seaside town of Puerto Arista. A long, long beach fronted by aging small hotels and thatched restaurants. It was not long before I found myself sitting at a seaside restaurant finishing off a fish meal and my second bottle of Coke (I've realized that if the local beer was no great treat I should allow myself the other local beverage which I always enjoy but never order at home.)
As a tourist destination, this place doesn't even make it to the Lonely Planet list of beaches. And around here, if you ain't noticed in Lonely Planet you ain't nuthin'. But this town is a big favorite of locals - especially during the Xmas- New Years holidays. (Another way you can tell it's not for tourists: while a few wandering vendors are offering papaya on a stick or sliced green mangos, nobody is selling t-shirts or "authentic handcrafts".) And the Mexicans arrive in droves! Large standing crowds are massed along the shoreline like Adelide Penguins on the Ross Shelf, huge families take up one or two dozen chairs at restaurants, and happy teenagers or fat fathers with little children are racing around the sand on rented dune buggies.

The crowd was huge on Sunday. But by Monday it had diminished greatly and I could find long stretches of sand and privacy. And, at evening, I left, taking a series of busses that brought me to the highlands and the airport where Ruth arrived. Our first day was a boat ride down a beautiful canyon, as part of a steady Armada of Mexican families enjoying the final week of school vacation. Then on to San Cristobal de las Casas, the centre of Mayan commerce and Chiapas tourism.

San Cristobal is one of those places that becomes a popular destination because everyone goes there. Or, to put it another way, everyone goes there because it's popular. It's way ahead of Dauphin and it shows. Nice restaurants and busy bars line the tourist streets which are clean, well-paved, pedestrian-only walkways, while elsewhere in town the cars bump down potholed dirty roads with unsafe sidewalks. In the plaza a band plays marimba to a small crowd of hardcore locals, while in the clubs and streets foreigners are belting out guitar and heavy rock to swelling crowds of Australians and Swiss. Spanish language schools easily recruit students by day - students who get together and talk in English by night.

I don't mean to suggest that, other than the presence of tourist infrastructure and a "scene", there is no reason to come here. San Cristobal does have it's obligatory massive church with overdone gilt decorations, it's bustling plaza with shoeshine boys and balloon salesmen, it's food market that seems to go on and on selling the same stuff over and over, it's lookout hill, it's craft market, a funky museum or three, - in short, everything we've come to expect in a Mexican city. But the distinctive draw this place has is the unending stream of Mayan women in fascinating clothing. Not that this stream flows independently of the tourists. On the contrary. You can't walk a half block without three or four women (or girls) approaching you to buy something. It's a classic study of ecological interdependence: tourist and Maya, like the web of predator/prey and other symbiotic relationships. How can so many women prowl the streets and fill the markets all looking to sell the same fabrics to a vastly outnumbered population of tourists, the majority of whom seem to be backpackers with little capacity to acquire? There is certainly a Darwinian advantage to the most aggressive sellers, with the accompanying consequence of starvation for those less adapted to the financial jungle.

Mind you, they do make for pretty pictures. These women are in black wooly skirts, these in hand-stitched red floral tops, these in long striped dresses made on a backstrap loom, these in traditional authentic polyester. The city is visual delight, and even after weeks in the Guatemalan highlands where I was surrounded by the richness of styles I still can't get over it. Because San Cristobal is the urban magnet of Chiapas (discounting the state capital of Tuxtla which is absolutely modern and uninteresting), people come in from all the villages and each village has it's own unique style.

Which brings me to the villages. The "must see" around here are some of the local villages with their "distinctive" cultures. Chief among those is Chamula, a town whose merger of Catholicism and Mayan practices brought me the most unusual spectacle since Elie and I toasted Maximon in Guatemala. Imagine entering the big church facing the plaza on the centre of town - standard Spanish architecture, glass enclosed statues of San Juan (John the Baptist) or Santa Ana (Jesus' grandmother), the smell of incense - what you might expect in a Catholic church. Then realize that there are no pews, no crucifix at the front, and that people are lighting rows of candles stuck onto the floor. Large groups of men in festooned hats circulate around the church, preceded by old men playing guitar and harp and followed by men and women holding candles and chanting in Mayan. Over to one side a shaman is waving a chicken over an old woman. Nearby another shaman is checking someone's pulse before having them down a large Coke. And you know something is happening but you don't know what it is, do you, Mr. Jones.

We get some explanations. John the Baptist's day is June 24 (which you would know if you've lived in Quebec) which is almost the summer solstice and so corresponds to a Mayan planting date. The grandmother of the sun god was venerated by the Mayans, so Jesus' grannie is an easy accommodation. The pulse is the sound of life, and a good burp expels whatever blocks it (things go better with Coke). The chicken . . . well, there's only so much we can grasp, but you get the idea. The priests were thrown out of Chamula two centuries ago, and since then they've evolved their own practice. It wouldn't really be right to call this a fusion of Catholic and Mayan practice, since original Mayan practice involved ritual ballgames and human sacrifice. But then, we Jews are no longer slaughtering goats and waving sheaves of wheat, but somehow we claim a continuity of practice.

At least, that's what our leadership tells us. And for these folks also, leadership is a significant issue. I won't go into it here, but the community has a well-structured system of community service and management, as well as separate church roles and controls. And control is absolute! Not only did they throw out the Catholic hierarchy in the past, but they have thrown out all dissident leaders (meaning: all Evangelical ministers and identified members) since. The population of San Cristobal has swollen greatly in recent years as tens of thousands of Protestants have been driven from this and similar towns.

Of course, nobody tells this to the tourists. We just get sold tickets for tours to come and watch the quaint people light candles on the floor and wave chickens.

The other thing we get sold is Zapatista memorabilia. Forget t-shirts of Che - here you can get a t-shirt with Subcommandante Marcos! Plus little Zapatista dolls of masked riflemen. Zapatista music. Zapatista art.
History lesson: the Zapatista rebellion began on Jan 1, 1994 (chosen because on that date the NAFTA agreement with Mexico began) with the pre-dawn armed seizure of San Cristobal and four other towns. The main demands were for indigenous rights, land reform and the rejection of multinational capitalism. The response was military repression. The war dragged on and off for two years, with attacks and withdrawals by both the Zapatistas and the Mexican military. Then came a phase of negotiations plus repression. Following the election of Vincente Fox (the first candidate in 90 years to break the one-party control of the PRI) a deal was reached, some indigenous rights were recognized and some land redistributed, some Zapatista self-government structures were created and Chiapas became safe again for tourists. Isn't that all that matters? As we travel about we see signs erected in front of rural settlements declaring them to be Zapatista communities. To enter some waterfalls and such we've needed to pay at Zapatista roadblocks.

But we also learn about conflicting values. For example, in the Lancandon jungle near the Guatemalan border live a jungle people who speak an early Mayan and who only came in contact with "the western world" in the early 20th century. Recently the Mexican government has set aside a large portion of the remaining jungle for their exclusive use and for eco-tourism. (And also, it has been suggested, to satisfy the demands of international pharmaceutical companies.) But the Zapatistas oppose this. In their view, this is race-based favoritism and the available land should be opened up for settlements and farming by the landless from throughout Chiapas. In other words, clear the remaining jungle for economic gain. Things are never simple.

Anyway, I've gone on far too long and explained things far too superficially. So I'm signing off in the hopes that tomorrow will bring me the two things I need: a wifi zone so I can send this out, and a place that makes a good cup of hot chocolate - the Mayans' enduring gift to the world.

Avi