Tenejapa and San Juan Chamula

Tenejapa

In the morning, (after the best spinach quiche ever) Tony and I went out to the market at Tenejapa, not on the $17 per person organised tour, but on the $4 per
person round trip on a Collectivo. A Collectivo is a taxi or a car that has a set route, ie San Cristobal to Tenejapa. Everyone who wants to get from one place to the other knows where to catch a ride, but tourists don´t usually use the Collectivos. When the driver has a full load, he goes, sometimes you might wait 5 minutes, rarely more than 10 I think. It is a terrific system of public transport. The problem was that to find the departure point we had to walk to the edge of the town, enter the entrails of a market where everything was pitched at Mexican height and I kept hitting my head on the tarpaulins or clothes on display, and out the other side of the market. The trip was beautiful and the town amazing. All the main town officials (maybe 30 of them) were lined up on plastic seats in front of the town hall, all wearing their ribbon hats. They look like the sort of hat that a goat would eat in a funny story about a naughty farm animal. The minor officials sat at their side and hoped for the day when they would get promoted to ribbon hat status.

A seemingly never ending procession of identically dressed women came out of the church in single file accompanied by some important looking men with fearsome big sticks. We were told to stand still and not to take photos. The only explanation we could get is that it all had something to do with the new year.

San Juan Chamula
In the afternoon we went to the slightly scarey town of San Juan Chamula. This town keeps its distance from the world, a tradition that began with resistance to the Spanish in 1524 and continues with gusto. The indigenous people of the towns speak an ancient language, they all wear clothes that identify their family, community and village. The idea of individuality has not really caught on here. They have ancient supertitions and unique religious rituals. A group marched around the square playing some kind of drone music, stopping at crosses mounted at various points, raised the bowl of smoking herbs to the cross then proceeded to the next cross. All the while explosions are going off, because what sort of a celebration would it be without some explosions and it seems fireworks are cheap.

Many of the vendors were primary school age children, and my impression is that many of the children who live in these towns do not go to school.

These are people for whom the next town is a threat, so we were careful. Some might see these places as quaint or authentic or charming. Tony kept uttering the word "backward".