Paul and Marie

Well, I´m glad we didn´t wait around any longer to hear from the resort.  They ended up offering us the week long gig but didn´t want us to show up for another 2 weeks!  That would cut-back our time in Guatemala to less than a week… not cool.  As awesome as it would be to relax at a fancy resort, do some fire shows and  a little teaching, the timing just wasn´t right.  Cést la vie.  We are still in touch with the resort and there is always the possibility of coming back next spring… we´ll see what happens.

We arrived in San Cristobal De Los Casas around 7 am on a foggy and chill morning in the cloud forested mountains of southern Chiapas.  Being that we had gained substantial elevation, we were back in the land of sweaters and leg-warmers.  What a shock after living in our bathing suits sin zapatos (without shoes) for over a week in the beach paradise that is Zipolite.  We met up with the girls at a cheap hostel (sin bedbugs!) close to the center of town.  As always after a night-bus adventure, we were running on enthusiasm for our new surroundings and very little sleep… sleep could wait:  We had a lovely and vibrant city to explore!  When we hit up a nearby cafe for our required  consumption, Marie recognized the two people sitting at the window from our beach time in Manzunte.  It was Inez and Mattaes from Belgium.  Little did we know that this chance meeting would set the pace for the following few days.

San Cristobal is very similar to Oaxaca in its colonial style but it seems to be a bit more thriving in terms of culture and tourism. San Cristobal has in recent years put itself on the map in relation to the Zapatista uprising on January 1st 1994.  The indigenous communities in southern Chiapas rose up to fight against the NAFTA deal between Mexico, Canada and the United States.

Finally we had a kitchen in the hostel and made quick use of it.  The days were hot and the nights were cold.  That night we bundled up and headed to a fantastic club that played some Balkan Dub music and we got to  know Ines and Mattaes better and made quick plans of visiting a few villages around San Cristobal together.

Our first tour took us to two villages,  San Juan Chamula and Zinacantan, Tzotzil villages. These people have a certain level of Christianity while still maintaining some of their own pre-colonial rituals. These people believe that by being photographed you are stealing their souls, and if you photograph their colourful church from inside, you are stealing the soul of god. In the past they have threatened tourists with cameras to the point of violence. It is very important as tourists, to recognize that certain traditions are maintained not as voyeuristic photogenic episodes but rituals regulated by their faith.  The colourful church upon entrance under view of a religious leader would not look like any other Roman Catholic Church. The floor has no pews and is instead covered by pine needles that are replaced once a week and there are places where the needles are pushed aside and several coloured candles are arranged and in front families will sit and pray for any number of things and they leave offerings of cola and they sacrifice chickens by wringing their necks. They make prayers to an array of catholic saints who all have mirrors attached to necklaces.

One thing missing from the church is priests and bibles, in fact, several years ago, all the priests were expelled from the village and bibles are not allowed. This church is not sanctified by the Vatican due to the practice of sacrifice and many other reasons, but it was definitely a head turner. We also visited a civil leaders home in Chamula were we saw a ceremony that is performed twice a day and involves incense, corn, an alcohol offering and long term chanting.  The chanting is very fast and they do it for about half an hour non-stop.  The leaders are selected for single year terms and when they are chosen they move from their home to a building built by the town to house their leader. The monetary offerings donated to the leader are used literally to buy supplies for the rituals which given the elaborate presentation require lots of funding and when you are in a community of agrarians, money does not come easy. They are a unified community and decisions are communally made. Our tour leader had origins with these communities but was not allowed to live there. Many of the artisans who sell their crafts and textiles back in San Cristobal are mostly people that had been expelled by their communities for one reason or another.

After our visit, our guide offered us an alternative tour that he does not offer to everyone.   Raul Ceaser has a broad network of contacts and he also may be the most informed tour leader we have ever had.  Since we seemed both keen and respectful of local culture he offered to take us on a trip to a Zapatista base or “Caracole”.  The “Caracole” is a central area where the Zapatistas have schools, common living spaces, medical clinics and agricultural fields that are all communally funded and run without any interference by the government. They are administrative locations used for communication purposes internally and externally. We were met by several guards with wearing balaclavas and the severe knowledge that weapons are not too far hidden.  They say, ”the guns are sleeping now”, but the reality is that  the natives in Chiapas  began their revolution with the belief that they had tried every possible method to draw attention to their cause and to force the Mexican government to address that their was a problem arising out of the indigenous populations; the only option they were left with was by the threat of violence.

The buildings in the Caracol 2,  (there are five in total throughout southern Chiapas.  The one we visited was nearest to San Andres), are painted with incredible murals and slogans and all types of messages. The strategy of the Zapatisitas had changed to one of autonomous self-reliance since most of their demands were not addressed after the violence in the mid 90´s http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zapatista.  The Zapatista groups just started working off the grid with zero allegiance to the government and are effectively independent and self governing. We were invited in to the office of the “Council for Political Explanation” where we asked questions of them and they gave us a background history of their struggle and the list of demands that include rights for clean water and land ownership rights which they do not currently have. We visited the compound for a few hours afterwards and were impressed at the organization.  Its unfortunate that these indigenous peoples´ demands of livelihood and governance are so well ignored, not unlike in Canada. Nothing new under the sun. This tour offered something so positive as to a possible future, one member of our group had some knowledge as to some of the motions in Canada relating to recovering history within different plains natives, recording all traditions and teaching  indigenous languages in the province of Alberta.  The fear being that once the elders die,  so does their communal history. With the  recent (official)apologies given by the government of Canada some fifty years  too late for the residential school atrocities. http://www.hiddenfromhistory.org/ its hard not to see a pattern in regards to indigenous people all over the world. We left the tour with a lot on our minds.

We spent a few more days wandering the awesome markets of San Cristobal and tying up some loose ends before heading into Guatemala.  We mailed a few parcels home and  did some work on the previous blog and managed to find some time in the back of a Mexican hardware store trying to explain why and how we were building a new hula hoop for Marie.

We the opportunity to go to a center outside San Cristobal called Sues Ninos and work with children as they were currently learning circus skills in preparation for a future performance.  This center provides a safe and nurturing atmosphere for children from poverty stricken families to be in, during that all too often long stretch of time between school and when the parents are home after working.  Most of the children cared for at this Austrian-run non-profit are of indigenous background.  Marie spent some time hula hooping with the kids while Reah and Kira shared their poi experience.  This organization is adamantly independent of church or government involvement and truly has the best interests of these families at heart.  We finished off the evening by performing with fire for the kids. Best gig ever! www.sueninos.org   Marie´s hula hoops were certainly well used and by the end of the night one of them would no-longer collapse.  Hence the aforementioned bewildering trip to the hardware store to craft a replacement hoop.  Seeing as the original hoop was still usable (as long as you don´t try to collapse it!) we donated it to the program. 

For American Thanksgiving we had a feast of Pizza and gin and went out for a few drinks as we were already packed and ready  for the following morning´s trip to Guatemala.