In town the fiesta was also in full swing, and the population had congregated in the area around the church where there was more of a familiar, fair-ground atmosphere. However, Zinacantan had its own strangeness - the town costume is a dark blue/black intricated embroidered tunic for men, hung with pom-poms at the side, and matching shawls/skirts for women. Zinacantan apparently means 'place of bats', and its ihabitants call themselves 'the bat people'. In their dark shawls the women did look kind of bat-like. Men of social standing also wear head-scarfs with hats on top - grey for younger leaders and red for the elders. We saw a group of elders quite elaborately dressed, and wearing the high-backed sandals of pre-hisanic origin that we also saw at Chamula. Various other festival costumes were on show - several men were dressed as jaguars, although their costumes looked lke pyjamas so they were fairly harmless, cuddly jaguars. Nearby stood a tree painted red, with only the remains of branches left on it. This formed part of a game whereby the jaguars would climb the tree with boxes tied to their backs, while onlookers armed with toy squirrels would attempt to throw them into the moving boxes. Another man was dressed as a bird with a corn-cob in its beak, and two had black make-up on their faces. Later on as we left, a whole gang of men in bizarre outfits sprinted past... Caesar explained that they were clowns, but didn't know where they were running or why. One of them seemed to be dressed as a business-man with a briefcase and a big false head with neatly-trimmed hair and moustache.
My favourite feature of Zinacantan was the decor of the church - like Chamula's it was filled with saints wearing ribbons, pine-needles, and incense... but its pagan-style decorations were more extreme. At the far end of the church the entire wall was covered in gigantic floral arrangements, and groups of men were in the process of tying extraordinary fruit-arrangements to the ceiling. Each one was a long bar hung with all kinds of fruit and other vegetation, including entire banana-tree crops complete with the heavy, dangling purple flower in the middle. When each one was hung the ladders moved along & ropes were thrown over the ceiling's cross-beams, and a new bar was brought through, its bearers staggering under the weight. As we left, a group of men insisted that we partake of another gulp of pox, and another much sweeter drink of fermented sugarcane.