Our minibus to Chamula dropped us at a plateau overlooking the village. A fiesta was well underway… before the church in the distance… crowds had assembled with giant coloured flags… firewokds exploded continually. Our guide, Caesar, pointed out the cemetary by the carpark. Little crosses of blue, white and black stretched the earth before a dilapidated church. Blue marked the graves of persons who had died between adolescence and midlife… white marked deceased children… black the dead elderly. People who had died under unnatural or accidental circumstances were kept in a special plot… graves marked by a simple stake. Their presence is considered contaminatory… a cause of tragedy and illness should such bodies deviate from their allotted area.
Caesar started out like this;
“Many years ago I was a racist. I am a mestizo but I considered the Indians as inferior… as stupid, savage and unclean. I looked down on them in the street. Then I changed… I had experiences with their medicine and I know now that they are not stupid… their medicine works. These days I have a great respect for these people. I have been traveling to these communities for many years and I have met and made friends with many people… they are a very kind and wise people…”
Racism is not an uncommon stance in San Cristobal. Segregation was practiced up until the 1960s. Only since the 1994 Zapatista uprising have the Natives gained any real respect or recognition. Locally, a general air of racism and xenophobia persists despite increased national and international attention on the Maya. San Cristobal remains steeped in bigoted sentiments.
Caesar led us toward the village. From the settlement of small concrete houses, one building stood three floors tall over the others. The home of the distributor of Pepsi Cola. Pepsi and Coke are big business in Chamula… they’re continually swigging it in church. The reason for this is that it induces belching… belching in turn expels evil spirits. Soft drinks are a viable alternative to the traditional alcoholic beverage of posh (sugarcane moonshine). Consequently, vendors of Pepsi and Coke are fabulously wealthy.
Continuing on… we arrived at a fenced enclosure where a ritual was being enacted. Around 60 or 70 Chamulan women and children were seated on the grass inside… they were all packed in by the side of the house… upon a slight slope. The ceremonial participants were attired to resemble monkeys… three or four men clad in red trousers and belts… white sleeveless smocks… black fur encircled their faces and chins… red bands above the mouth gave an impression of simian lips. Upon their heads they wore tall, coned hats adorned with streamers. The chief monkey wore an ocelot skin as a cape. They were engaged in the task of wrapping a large bundle of poles in a cloth. The shaman’s wife stood near with two cups of billowing incense. A small band played strange and airey music. Caesar could not explain the meaning of the ritual. I can only offer a piece of vaguely related information… monkeys feature heavily in Mayan mythology as a race of people who predate humans.
Caesar took us to the house of a different shaman… led us inside the temple. The air was extremely dense with copal… dark and misty and sweet. The floor was scattered with pine needles… a great curtain of hanging pink bromeliads extended around the room… served to enclose an inner sanctum wherein stood an icon, floral offerings, candles. Dark leaves had been tied to a beam above, and these three parts: the pine needles, the bromeliads, the leaves… they symbolized the underworld, the earth and heaven respectively. An altar had been arranged before the opening to the sanctum… a simple table set with incense burners and clay cow candle holders. Flames flickered.
Caesar bade we sit on a long bench that followed the wall. A moment later, the shaman entered with a broad grin and a large glass of moonshine. Caesar thanked him and the shaman departed. We all had a taste of it… something harsh and grim. Then Caesar talked a bit about cosmogyny… certain ritual prescriptions that require three days of fasting and three weeks of sexual abstinence. Then he talked about his own experiences with Mayan medicine… his mother had been a Tzotzil and a great proponent of traditional ways. He told us how she’d cured him of a throat infection using a hot lemon (to ease the symptoms) and later a herbal infusion (to quell the disease). On another occasion he acquired a nasty rash during a visit to the jungle. When Western remedies had failed to work, his mother administered a Mayan cure that involved leaving medicinal water by a well for three days. When later applied to his body, the itching seceded and soon after the rash. Another time, Caesar cut himself with a machete. Reaching at once for the band aids, his mother told him to wait a moment… that she’d fix it. She went away and returned with a spider’s web. Upon applying it to the wound, it immediately clotted. A final anecdote relates how Caesar’s mother had taken a remedy to aid conception. After many years of childlessness and unsuccessful trying, she sought the advice of a shaman. The shaman told her her body was ‘too cold’ to conceive and that she should eat a ‘hot’ animal… a possum or a rat. Finding the notion of eating a rat somewhat distasteful, she paid a neighbour to trap a possum. The beast was skinned and boiled and eaten. She later conceived five children.
We left the shaman’s house, passing under an arch of yellow flowers. We continued down to the square, the church, the festival. Two men suddenly emerged on the path with gun powder packed metal tubes. The tubes fizzed momentarily and emitted an enormous boom. They hurried away grinning… went scrabbling to refill their canons. Down by the church, Caesar warned us against taking pictures. Mayas believe they can lose their soul if photographed. Many tourists have had their cameras and films confiscated or destroyed over it. A few have been beaten up and killed. We concealed our cameras and crept slowly inside… into the smoke and candles and music… everything a dim and unsettling murmur…………….