San Juan Chamula

There are times on the road where you can't help but look around and ask yourself... where the hell am I? There are others when the question is 'when' am I? What a unique experience I had today as I roused myself from a very warm bed into the very cold morning air of San Cristobal de Las Casas. Determined to find a worthy market I got my morning going with a (warm! oh thank god) shower and small breakfast before setting out and finding a collectivo to San Juan Chamula, which according to the Lonely Planet All-Knowing-Travel-Bible informed me there was a market to be had in Chamula up in the hills.

So, there I was seated in an old VW bus collectivo (Dad, you'd be jealous) amongst eight or so indigenous folk, one of whom I am positive was purposefully dressed in his Michael Jackson imitation Sunday best. The old bus wound its way up through the hills, stuck in first gear most of the way and as its engined whined I tried my best not to think about how an engine burnout would result in us rolling back into town. After about 25 minutes of passing small farming plots, green with plants or rich red-brown clay that only a masochistic farmer can love, our bus came to a sudden jolting stop in the square of San Juan Chamula. Commence Twilight Zone.

I paid the driver my ten pesos and immediately took in the environment. On a platform at the municipal building side of the square were about 40 men dressed from the ground up in boots, jeans, a white long sleeve collared shirt with a white sheepskin vest over top, secured down by a light brown leather belts with palm sized belt buckles and topped off with immaculately clean cowboy hats. The leader appeared to be at first running a sort of auction, although I could only understand numbers as the rest was conducted in a Mayan dialect unbeknown to my gringo ears. Below them were similarly dressed men but with black sheepskin vests and surrounding them were men dressed in their Sunday best (cowboy hat included) but lacking the vests. An occasional cheer from the crowd was sent up as numbers were read off by the leader as myself and other gringos wandered the square, sneaking in pictures (photos a no-no here) and wondering what the hell was going on. It was, like I mentioned from the start, a question of where am I and when am I? I doubt this tradition had changed much in 100 years. As I was informed by a Spaniard several hours later, this auction was actually the reading of government allocated funds to various communities in the area, leading to quite a few disputes and very angry (or ecstatic) looking groups of men from various nearby pueblos.

I positioned myself in a rotunda and changed over to my 55-200 mm lens. Time for zoom shots from afar. Trying as discretely as possible to take these, I snapped off quite a few before noticing a palomitas (popcorn) vendor about 50 m away. Naturally the boy selling popcorn gave me gringo price (10 pesos, later I saw them sold for 1) despite my talking in Spanish and trying to argue him down to 5. Oh the joy of being able to argue for 40 cents! I settled down with a Coke, out of the bottle- always better, and watched a Catholic/traditional hybrid procession of horse riding and smoke swinging (can a Catholic enlighten me to this one?) as it went around the square. Photography of this was strictly forbidden and while I will bend in some cases to get some great shots, this was not one of them. But, I assure you it was quite a sight and worth seeing one day.

I continued to wander around the square, observing old Mayan women selling scarves and necklaces as young whippersnappers set off bottle rockets from their hands into the sky. Sometimes their aim was bad and the rockets were more horizontal than vertical but I am still in one piece (although I am expecting another to come flying in to the hostel at any moment, quite a few going off outside... wisssshheeewwwwww BAM!). I bought a half a chicken, cooked over a grill for 25 pesos ($2) and then chopped into pieces and sat by the square to continue observing this local political happening. Determined to find the market after my meal, I wandered up the hill, stopping to buy a nice blue scarf for 50 pesos, eventually stumbling upon about 20 vendors of fruits, dried fish, and snails (noooo! not this time, thank you for that lesson Morocco. Review here, here, and here). Not quite the market I had hoped for and made my way back down the hill to the square.

But what do you know greets me? The entire square of men, led by the white vests and followed by the rest coming en mob up the hill. I had some warning for this shot, and once again switched over to BIG lens and snapped a few. Very much reminded me of that movie with Johnny Depp in Mexico and Day of the Dead and ... (Emily help me out here!). I let them pass by and on to their business and walked down to the square, encountering Pippa, an English lass from my hostel in Playa and her two Dutch friends along the way. They wanted to eat and naturally being the travel-food-fatty that I am, joined them in their quest. We sat down at a taco joint on the side of the square and were joined moments later by a threesome of very poor sibling kids who asked us for 'Uno dos peso' but settled for tacos and playfully posed for our foreign cameras. Yet another beauty of blonde women is the reaction foreign kids give them as they play with Dutch and English and even my, yes, my blonde locks. I had mine up in a bun (hmmm... will need new diction to describe my hairstyle du jour) and they wanted to play with it but told them 'Es la casa de mi cerebro' at which point they backed away, not wanting to upset the house of my brain.

Post lunch, we found a bathroom (always interesting bathrooms in Mexico) where you paid 2 pesos and tried not to slip in pools of human excrement on the way in or out. Pippa and I set off to take a look inside the church as the Dutch girls headed out to buy tacos for street dogs and other hungry children. The church itself is a brilliant mixture of white and pastel colors (like most building here in Mexico) and the inside was like the ritual in the square earlier, and interesting mixture of Catholicism and traditional religion. Pine needles scattered the floor as relics and porcelein dolls of various saints lined the walls and drapes hung from the ceiling. Settled amongst clearings in the pine needles were locals chanting as they set down burning candles. At one such spot, a rooster, in some state of mental disarray lay quietly by the candles as a local woman chanted eerily next to it. I have to find out more about this ritual later and will let you know.

I bid the girls adieu as they set off on their scooters back for San Cristobal to find an ATM and back again to Chamula to buy some boots and hopped in a very crowded collectivo. Mayan children sat on my lap and used my jeans to wipe their hands from their boiled potato lunch as we thundered down the mountain. Instead of wondering if the old VW would make it up the hill, I wondered if the breaks would work and we'd be able to stop, as well as that the door which I was shoved up against would hold lest I and the Mayan children be sent spilling off a ledge on a Chiapan roadway. Oh travel, how I love thee. It's mid afternoon now and I'm off to take some photos. I'll post photos up when I can but for now you'll just have to imagine me walking around a charming colonial Mexican town and hope that a stray bottle rocket doesn't blow me up.