San Cristóbal: Religion and Rebellion in Chiapas, Mexico

Church in San Cristóbal.

A march for worker's rights and against the privatization of PeMex (Mexico's national petroleum company) through the streets of San Cristóbal.

At the Na Bolom anthropology museum in San Cristobal, which features the work of Franz and Trudy Blom, who worked on behalf of the Lacandón people and made many important archaeological finds in the region.

A very sad-looking Panther at Zoomat in Tuxtla Gutiérrez, the capital of Chiapas. Up close, you can see that black panthers actually have stripes...who knew? The park has many cool signs about respecting the animals, but the parkgoers were very loud and inconsiderate of them :>(

This is Cañon Sumidero, the symbol of Chiapas' state flag (below). The canyon is 1000 meters high and 100 meters deep in the river at it's tallest point...it was an incredible sight.If you tilt your head to the right, you can get the jist of it... so much for taking videos in vertical mode!

They call this the Christmas tree...it's formed by the run-off down the cliff-face.

We saw crocs, monkeys and dozens of bird species on a speedboat ride down the river here. The guide told us that twenty percent of Mexico's electricity is generated from the hydro-electric dam on this river.

"You are in Zapatista territory in rebellion.

Here the people speak and the government obeys."

When we began trying to get in touch with a local Zapatista Caracol we found some people to be resistant. One taxi driver told us that the Zapatista movement was “dead” and the only community that existed was a show for tourists. It seemed that the Mexican government’s defamation campaign against the Zapatistas was working in some segments of the population. Despite some misinformation, we were eventually able to obtain permission to visit a caracol in the mountains outside of San Cristóbal, so with some trepidation about what we might find, we set out.

We arrived on a foggy mountain road to find a gated compound with masked male and female guards stationed nearby. Despite being warned to bring our passports, we forgot them – Bonnie didn’t have any form of ID except for a credit card! They were very suspicious of us at first and made us wait half an hour while they deliberated on what to do with us. Once they decided to allow us into the compound, a teenage boy in a mask led us into a room with three other masked men. The first thing they asked us was “are you terrorists?” After responding that we weren’t, things lightened up substantially as we explained that we were students who were interested in their cause and wanted to learn more.

House of the junta of good government.

Next, we were lead to another building labeled “Casa de la Junta del Buen Gobierno” which served as the public affairs office to receive the caracol’s visitors (we were surprised to find out that they receive up to fifty visitors on the busiest days). We waited another twenty minutes to enter the building and eventually sat down for an hour with two representatives of the government who appear in the picture. They told us all about their history, beginning in the seventies, long before the world took notice, along with the events leading up to and resulting from the military action they took in January of 1994. They informed us that they now considered themselves a political body more than a military one and they are trying to use the global attention and support they continue to receive to help protect themselves from the often violent and intimidating tactics that have been used by the Mexican government. Organizations such as S!Paz, (http://www.sipaz.org/) serve as international observers in these areas who report and publish what they see, in an effort to deter the Mexican government from overt repression. When I asked our hosts if they foresaw a peaceful resolution to the situation, their eyes took on a sad, resigned look, as they shook their heads “no.” They said that they had made numerous deals with the Mexican government, only to see them broken each time and that such treatment cannot continue forever without provoking a reaction.
The same opinion is shared by the few other locals in San Cristóbal that we discussed the Zapatista rebellion with, they all agreed that the Mexican government had broken too many treaties to be trusted and that further violence is inevitable unless the Mexican government begins treating the local campesinos more fairly. According to the Zapatista representatives who spoke with us, they are asking for political representation in the matters that affect their lands, along with access to living-wage jobs, free education and affordable healthcare. They told us that as long as Chiapas continues to be treated as though it were a colony of Mexico, where enough resources are extracted to support most of the country, yet little, if any discernible benefit reaches the local population, we should only expect more struggles. Chiapas is a state of vast natural resources and beauty that is stricken by poverty, where up to eighty percent of Mexico’s electricity is produced and yet the Chiapan campesinos there can’t afford electricity in their own homes.
Us with our new friends. Notice the Mexican flag on the wall. The Zapatistas aren't anti-Mexico, they only oppose the corrupt government that has broken the promises it has made to these people, while continuing to capitalize on their land and resources.

Secondary School

Zapata and Anu.

for more information:
www.ezln.org.mx
We noticed a difference in the way women are spoken of and treated in the Zapatista community. While women are sometimes thought of as second-class citizens in Latin America, the Zapatistas spoke of women as equals and treated them with the according respect during our two visits. In Spanish, any group of people that contains even one man is referred to as masculine, but the Zapatistas were careful to always refer to their community members as male and female. Where others might say ‘nuestros compañeros,’ the Zapatistas would say “compañeros y compañeras.” We noticed this pattern in their speech, as well as in their publications, in print and on their website.
After we had been in the compound awhile, we began to see more and more people without masks who were going about their routine business without any concern for hiding their faces from us, though we were asked not to photograph anyone’s face or license plate. We visited the clinic (which is supplied and staffed thanks-in part to foreigners’ contributions and Red Cross assistance), the schools and a number of artisans’ cooperatives. They all seemed to be fairly typical features of a small Mexican village, but the revolutionary propaganda murals kept us from forgetting that this could become a war zone should the Mexican government choose to attack. We never saw any evidence of weapons, though we weren’t allowed to walk in the surrounding hills because we were told that the Mexican military was out there and it wasn’t safe. It was a sad feeling to think that these villagers might have to face the overwhelming superiority of the Mexican troops in a conflict again someday.

They use the corn kernels as a metaphor for the dissemination of their ideas

and philosophies carried by members and supporters into the wider world.

San Juan Chamula's church.

San Juan Chamula
The municipality of San Juan Chamula sits on a hill above San Cristóbal de las Cásas, Chiapas. While it is only about a twenty-minute bus ride away, it feels like another world. The population of San Cristóbal is made up largely of mestizos (at least the central part of town) and is full of beautiful Catholic churches, where a relatively traditional version of Catholicism is practiced. The population of San Juan Chamula on the other hand, is made up of over 100,000 indigenous people; there is one church in the center of town that practices what some locals call Catholicism, but is actually something else entirely.
Our introduction to San Juan Chamula came from an indigenous woman who we met, that was selling hand-made blankets and belts in the main square of San Cristóbal. We asked her where she was from and she told us that she was from Chamula but had recently been forced to move to the outskirts of San Cristóbal. When we asked why, she explained that when she converted to Evangelism she was excommunicated. Our reaction was to show our sympathy for her situation, to which she responded that it didn’t seem so bad compared to several friends of hers who were killed for doing the same.
We arrived in Chamula on a Sunday morning, hoping to be able to witness a church service in this community we had heard so much about. Before entering the church, we first had to purchase a visitors pass in the municipal building on the opposite side of the square. Groups of tourists entered ahead of us with official, bi-lingual guides. At the same time, a group of adolescent boys standing outside argued over the chance to give a tour through the church. We paid one of them fifteen pesos (US $1.50) to take us.
The church service that we came looking for does not exist; there is no mass, or even an altar from which to give a sermon. Occasionally a priest comes to do a baptism, but this is the only organized service that takes place here. There are no pews, no confession chamber, or anything else resembling Catholicism, other than statues of white saints in glass boxes along the walls. The people call these saints by the names of Catholic saints, such as San Pedro, and of coarse their patron saint, San Juan, but pray to them in a fashion similar to their Mayan ancestors, as animist gods. Different saints are called upon for different needs, some for crops, and others for health, etc.
We were advised not to take pictures in or around the church, as the people believe that doing so can steal the souls of people, or even more importantly, of the saints. Tourists have been punched and even jailed for short periods of time for photographing the inside of the church. When we entered the church, the floor was covered in long, fragrant pine needles and thousands of candles. Our young guide told us that there had never been a fire in this church, however the previous church burnt down years ago and two saints that were rescued from the fire were still thought lowly of because they had failed to keep the church from harm. They sat in the corner with few candles lit in front of them, while the rest were illuminated by the offerings of many praying visitors.

San Juan Chamula on market day.

Twenty-four hours a day people come to the church to pray. Our guide explained, however, that people only come to the church to ask for help when they are in need of something. There are traditional healers in the church, who wear long vests made of white sheep- skin. Sick people bring either six eggs or a whole live chicken to them depending on the severity of their illness. The chickens, that can be purchased in the market 100 feet away, are then sacrificed in the church and later eaten by the family of the sick person.
This mix of Catholicism and Mayan religions has also been influenced by the modern world. Soda bottles litter the floor of the church because it is drunk in order to burp-up evil spirits. Some people told us that Coca-Cola was preferable while others said that any type of fizzy drink would work. Soda is seen as a God-send because in the past they had to drink huge amounts of water to achieve the same effect. Fireworks and a bootlegged alcohol called pox are also incorporated into their religious ceremonies.
As we walked around the marketplace a group of forty or so men in traditional outfits sat on benches above the square looking out over the town. We were told that the men standing behind them in white vests were the police. The police do not carry guns; they are armed only with sticks, leaving the question of who is really controlling Chamula. The men sitting on the bench, we were told, were the governing body of Chamula, both church and government officials.
Remembering what the woman in the square in San Cristóbal had told us, we asked our young guide whether it was true that people were killed for converting to Evangelism. Without hesitation he told us that, yes, people are killed for converting. Not immediately however, they are warned and given four or five days to leave; if they do not, someone will come to their home in the middle of the night with a pistol and kill them. He told us that a month before we arrived, seven people started to build a Christian church in town and were all killed and their church was burnt down. We asked his opinion of what was happening here and he conveyed to us that he recognized that these people were killed because conversion threatens the society that is centered on this church.
The area surrounding Chamula is an autonomous municipality, which is outside the jurisdiction of the Mexican government. Chamula has long had a history of conflict surrounding the church, starting in the 1950’s when a Presbyterian missionary arrived in the area with the goal of translating the bible into indigenous languages and happened to convert a small amount of the population. Then, as it is today, Chamula was run by caciques or “bosses”, who came into power after a long armed conflict between themselves as the heads of the farm workers union and the enganchadores, or wealthy labor contractors. The caciques were threatened by the conversion of their people, not only because it showed that those people were critical of the practices that took place in the church that the caciques were now running, but because those that converted would no longer purchase soda, alcohol, fireworks or candles from them for religious ceremonies (MacEoin, 1996).
A priest had not resided in Chamula for years until in the mid 1960’s the Catholic Church in San Cristóbal sent a priest, who the people called Padre Polo, to live in the town. The caciques were immediately threatened by the actions of the priest, such as starting a credit union which took customers away from their monopoly on the loan business. The chapels that he had built on the edge of town were burned in order to keep attention on the central church and Padre Polo was run out of town. Around the same time, a group of Protestants was also run out of town and forced to set up a shanty town on the outskirts of San Cristóbal (MacEoin, 1996).
The white church sitting in the center of San Juan Cahmula’s square represents ancient tradition, Spanish invasion and modern capitalism. As the government and the church have merged into a single entity, religion has become the controlling social force in this community. As a result, the shanty towns on the outskirts of San Cristóbal continue to grow as more people seek refuge from religious persecution in the hills of Chamula.

MacEoin, Gary. The People’s Church: Bishop Samuel Ruiz of Mexico and why he
Matters. New York: The Crossroad Publishing Company, 1996.