+Mexico | - Trump

After a few days in Guatemala, Aaron and I took a 10 hour shuttle ride to San Cristobal de las Casas, Chiapas, Mexico to spend a few days with friends and enjoy the cooler highlands of southern Mexico. Our friends, Erin and Anastasia, are a retired couple from Oakland who have homes in San Cristobal and Granada that they hop between. Getting to San Cristoabl on a shuttle was surprisingly painless (unlike the return trip, which extended to 13 hours and felt never-ending), and Aaron and I made it to San Cristobal by mid-afternoon. 

On our first full day in Mexico, we wandered around San Cristobal with Erin from 9 AM until 4 PM and I truly lost track of time as we saw beautiful buildings, artisan markets, old churches, and museums all around. Our first stop in the morning was Na Bolom, a museum and cultural center in the former house of an anthropologist and his photographer wife. The house is beautiful and full of artifacts and photographs from the couple's time in Chiapas in early to mid-1900s. Gertrude Duby, the photographer wife, took amazing photos in Chiapas, especially of her friends the Lancandon Mayans.

An indigenous woman in one of the plazas of Casa Na Bolom had a lot of weavings for sale and before blowing our travel budget, Aaron tried out a traditional male shirt from the indigenous town of San Juan Chamula which I was grateful he did not buy since it reminded me of Catholic priest hair shirts.

Aaron wearing a traditional male shirt from Chamula

One thing I always appreciate about Mexico is how people take their discontentment with the government to the streets, and San Cristobal did not disappoint. The current President of Mexico, Enrique Peña Nieto, is highly unpopular thanks to many scandals (including corruption, extrajudicial killings, rising gas prices, and that disastrous meeting with Trump in September). Throughout our time in and around San Cristobal, we saw a lot of protest graffiti - mostly about the recent rise in gas prices, but also about the missing 43 students (learn more by listening to this podcast from April 2016, or read this article from 2014 - still no justice), and about general lack of faith and anger in the government. Chiapas has been home to the Zapatista movement since 1994 and while the presence of Zapatistas in San Cristobal is not always overt, a lot of graffiti and posters also reference revolution.
 

My favorite graffiti

 

 One of the coolest things we saw in Chiapas was the Center  of Textiles of the Mayan World (check out some of the visitor photos to get a taste), which is right next to Santo Domingo Church in the center of town. The museum has a collection of hundreds of textiles from Guatemala and Mexico and displays similarities and differences in weaving across regions. Since textiles are made with natural materials, the collection is relatively young with the oldest pieces saved only dating to the 1920s and 1930s, but the variety of textiles and the beautiful displays with lots of pieces from Guatemala were truly spectacular.

At the textile center, Santo Domingo in the background

 

Considering the contemplative life at Santo Domingo

On our second full day in Mexico, Erin, Aaron and I headed to some of the nearby indigenous communities to learn about their culture and see their churches. Our first stop was Zinacantán, a Tzotzil-speaking Mayan community just a few minutes outside of San Cristobal. Zinacantán literally means 'land of the bats' since there are tons of bats that come out of the caves all around the town at dusk/night. The town is also surrounded by huge greenhouses as flowers are its industry. 

We visited the church in the center of town, which was full of flowers and which had saints and Jesus dressed in their traditional clothing (no photos allowed in church).

Church in the center of Zinacantán - flower arch over the front door.

We then went to a house where women made weavings (kind of looked like this), a house I had visited over ten years earlier when I visited Zinacantán with my mom! Our driver told us that Zinacantán, and the next town we visited San Juan Chamula, had really strict rules about who could live there and who could join the community. Both towns are almost 100% indigenous, overwhelmingly Catholic and supporters of the PRI (the party of the current president, as much as he is not in favor). Our driver said that people who prefer other political parties or who convert to some other Christian denomination get banished from their towns and end up moving to San Cristobal. Each of the town is governed by a cofradía, a brotherhood, that enforces the rules of the community and this indigenous way of life is not infringed upon by the state - normally there is no police or military presence in these communities (an exception is made for extraordinary circumstances - as we saw police in San Juan Chamula in the wake of its mayor being killed for corruption by the townspeople a few months ago). Among other rules, people from Zinacantán and people from San Juan Chamula cannot intermarry - each town has a distinct ethnic identity and there is no co-mingling allowed.

The next stop on our tour of towns near San Cristobal was to San Juan Chamula - home of the hairy shirts. San Juan Chamula is famous for its church, which has never had a priest and which is the site of syncretism - the mixture of Catholic and indigenous beliefs. Our first stop in San Juan Chamula was the graveyard at the edge of town. The graveyard is one of the few flat areas in town, and rather than expand to the hills, when new people die they are buried on top of their relatives in the same plots. While it is hard to see from the photo below, many graves have multiple crosses piled atop each other for each new generation of the dead. Crosses are almost all made out of wood and the color they are painted indicate whether the person died of natural causes, an accident, an illness, or whether it was a child who died. The church at the edge of the cemetery was the original church built for San Juan Chamula, but when it burned down a few hundred years ago, it was abandoned and a new church was built in the center of town to replace it.

 

The graveyard at the entryway of San Juan Chamula

The syncretic church in the center of San Juan Chamula is the star attraction for tourism - people practice a form of Catholicism that involves Mayan and other traditions not seen elsewhere. The church has no priest and no pews, the floor is covered in pine needles and people come in their family groups to sit and pray in front of their chosen saint. Saints are arrayed in wooden boxes around the sides of the church and when people come to pray, they set up candles in front of the saint and speak to it in Tzotzil (their Mayan language). The ceremony can take up to a few hours, with the family telling the saint about their problems, lighting the candles as an offering, drinking soda or home brew, and sometimes offering an egg (to take in the evil) or a chicken (killing the chicken in the church - again, to take away evil). Our driver told us that the size of the candles reflects how many times the person has gone to pray on the same issue - people start with smaller candles and if their issues are not addressed with return with bigger and bigger candles to resolve whatever they are praying over. All of the saints have mirrors on their clothing to deflect the negative energy that people bring to church - a lot of time people are berating saints for not solving their issues and without the mirrors, the saints would get damaged. It is a unique and slightly odd experience to be in the church - it is both wonderfully distinct and uncomfortable to be the tall outsider standing and watching people practice their religion. We walked around the church and saw some chickens and a lot of candles, and then saw our way out. Chamula is known as a town that is not overly friendly to outsiders, they are fiercely independent and have their own practices, customs, and law enforcement, so we enjoyed our trip and then headed back to San Cristobal to wander around the rest of the afternoon.

 

With Aaron and Erin in front of the church in San Juan Chamula

Back in San Cristobal, we visited a few more churches and had delicious traditional food at a restaurant that encapsulated our sentiments about U.S. foreign policy.

 

A cross in San Cristobal. The rooster, ladder, and other painted decorations are references to a biblical story and are seen on crosses all over San Cristobal

 

Palabra (Word)

Our final day in Mexico, we took a day trip out to my favorite Mayan ruin- Toniná. Toniná is outside of the Zapatista town of Ocosingo, about two and a half hours away from San Cristobal de las Casas a bit off the beaten trail. Of all the Mayan ruins I have visited, Toniná feels the least 'discovered' with very little information (aside from tour guides), quite a bit of unexcavated ruins all around, and pretty much a free pass to walk all over walls and into palaces to see what has been unearthed. An estimated 40% of the pyramid has been excavated since the Mexican government began supporting excavations in 1980, but it is slow going, and much remains to be done. The pyramid has seven levels with thirteen palaces, and we wandered all over for a few hours, with it fully living up to my memories of being a highlight from my trip 10 years earlier.

 

Jumping on one of the lower levels of the pyramid

 

Aaron at the very top with the valley in the background

On top of the pyramid in June 2006

 

On top of the pyramid in January 2017 - taking skin protection more seriously but maintaining the hair part

 

With our fabulous hosts Erin and Anastasia

 

Aaron with some awesome pyramid architecture - we were partway convinced that this archway would lead to a time warp

Three days in Mexico was not nearly enough to eat our fill of delicious food and enjoy all the nature and cultural sites to be seen in and around San Cristobal, so we are already meditating on ways to get ourselves back in the next few years.

Going back back to Guate Guate

At the end of January, Aaron and I took a trip to Guatemala and Mexico to renew our tourist visas for Nicaragua, meet up with friends, and to take advantage of my still not having a job. I was especially excited to share a country I hold near and dear to my heart with Aaron, who had never visited Guatemala before.

I served as a Peace Corps Volunteer in Guatemala from 2009-2011, and I last visited in January 2013 when one of my friends was finishing up her service. In the past four years, Guatemala has imprisoned of a corrupt vice president and president (excellent podcast about it, or if you prefer to read, here is a a summary of the #RenunicaYa movement - gives some hope that we can do something similar in the USA), seen a surge of young people traveling solo to the USA to escape violence, and elected a clown/comedian to the Presidency.

 

 
Our first stop in Guatemala: breakfast with my former office-mate and friend Edgar (with his wife Mary and son Jesus Alberto). Edgar was a university student finishing up his practicum to get his degree in architecture when he was assigned to work in the municipality for six months. We ended up becoming running buddies and climbed a volcano together, and I went to his graduation before finishing up my service in Peace Corps.

Four buses and four hours of travel to get to my Peace Corps site: Pachalum, Quiche! First stop upon arrival: home with my host family. For two years, I lived upstairs in this two home family compound and my host family welcomed all of my family members who visited me, now including Aaron. This first stop was a sign that things have changed since I've been gone: I did not recognize two of the three children since they have doubled in size since I last saw them.

Post-lunch, Aaron and I walked around Pachalum and I took him to see places and people that I remembered. In the center of town on the side of the elementary school, we saw the very damaged remains of the world map that I painted in 2010 or 2011 with water-based paint (didn't realize that until we had painted half the map, long story).

Reunited with one of my old colleagues and her two children. Emilio (the 8 year old) was the cutest baby with curly hair when I arrived in Guatemala and I visited him at least once a week for my first year in Pachalum. He is now a very polite young man with no more curls and an adorable four and a half year old younger sister who shares her name with my grandma: Valentina.

 

With Don Joselino - the town electrician and formerly my site-mate Tiara's counterpart in the education office. 

On our one full day in Pachalum, Aaron and I went up the mountain to visit two of the communities where I spent a lot of my time working with women's groups. Up on the top of a mountain outside of the city of Pachalum is a large indigenous town called Cipres (Cypress). Cipres is a large town (probably a few hundred people live there) and as its population has grown, additional satellite communities have sprung up around it. When those communities have enough people living there, they get named and eventually if the population gets large enough they get their own one-room elementary school. I spent a significant part of my Peace Corps service going up to two satellite communities of Cipres - Cipres por el Campo (the community around the Cipres football field) and Las Minas de Cipres (the mines of Cipres) - where most of the women were related by blood or marriage (or both), and where there were virtually no men - almost all of the men and older sons have left to work in the USA. 

I met the women of Cipres por el Campo when I first visited Pachalum with the volunteer I replaced, and they were the women I bonded with the most. For at least a year, I would go up to these communities weekly and talk about civic engagement and do cooking or craft classes with the women. The classes would involve a lot of laughter, yelling, small children running all around, and sometimes home brew to celebrate some occasion.

Our guide for walking all over the mountain was Merli, one of the young ladies I was closest to over my two years in Pachalum. She is the first female of her generation of cousins to go to middle and high school, setting the example for her younger cousins (many of whom now go to high school in Pachalum). At 25 years old, she is an older first time mom and her son Christopher joined us for a day of travel.  

 

We got a ride partway up the mountain and then walked for a little over an hour to get to Cipres por el Campo

 

First stop: Doña Genara's house. Doña Genara married the oldest of 15 siblings who live in and around Cipres por el Campo and does not leave the house much anymore due to health issues. Despite health problems, she and her daughter maintain a beautiful family vegetable plot that was planted while I was a volunteer.

 

With Doña Genara's oldest daughter, Lety, and her younger daughter Amy, at the campo (field) that gives Cipres por el Campo its name. Lety has raised her two daughters on her own since her husband went to the USA many years ago, and since her older daughter had a baby two years ago, she is now also raising her grandchild. In the background you can see two volcanoes that are right outside of Antigua, Guatemala.

 

 

Lety made a delicious lunch for us, and we provided Nicaraguan rum to properly toast the occasion. Doña Rosa (between me and Aaron) and Doña Esperanza (Merli's mom, on the right) are Lety's aunts and neighbors and were also members of the women's group that I worked with in Cipres por el Campo. As is customary in all celebrations with these ladies, there was also some home brew to mark the occasion (I let Aaron drink for both of us), and some warnings that he better take care of me.

With Merli and two of her younger siblings and cousin Amy. Checha (Cesar, on the right) and Nayeli (holding Merli's baby) were two of the small children that used to run in and out of the house when we held women's meetings. They, with Merli, are the only siblings who stayed in Guatemala - two of their brothers and their dad left for the United States to work.

After half a day in Cipres por el Campo, we headed off halfway down the mountain to the community of Las Minas de Cipres to see the family of one of Merli's uncles and the women I worked with there.

 

Doña Maria with one of her grandchildren. Her oldest daughter married one of Merli's uncles, and a few of her sons had children with some of Merli's cousins and then went up to the USA to work. She was the host for many of the women's meetings we had in Las Minas de Cipres.

 

 With cousins and friends from Las Minas de Cipres and Cipres por el Campo. 

A day and a half in Pachalum did not feel like enough time to see everything and everyone I wanted to, but with only one day left in Guatemala before our trip to Mexico, Aaron and I had to hit the road early so he could see a bit of Antigua. 

 

Bus jam in Pachalum on our way out.

Antigua was the capital of the Spanish colonies in Central America, so it is full of ruins of churches, convents, and monasteries. Its location near Guatemala City and surrounded by picturesque volcanoes has helped make it into the Disneyland of Guatemala - full of tourists year round and people selling crafts from all over the country. Aaron and I did a relatively quick tour of some highlights - visiting a few stores with crafts and two of my favorite ruins.

Aaron modeling some male traje típico (traditional clothing) from Todos Santos in the highlands of Guatemala. Most men do not wear traditional clothing in Guatemala, with the exception of Todos Santos and Solola

 

In the ruins of the monastery of San Francisco

 

Next to the pilas (washing area) at the ruins of the Capuchinas convent

In the evening, Aaron and I met up with my former counterpart in the Women's Office in Pachalum, Luz Maria, and her two children to catch up on life post-Pachalum. After ten years of studying part-time, Luz Maria got a Bachelor's degree in Environmental Science and is about to start her part time job as a professor of science at an extension campus for the University of San Carlos (the national university) in Pachalum and as an environmental consultant.

 

With Luz and her children Rodridgo Jose and Maria Jose

The quick trip to Guatemala felt like an episode of 'this is your life' on fast forward. Unlike the trip in January 2013, where it felt weird to go back so soon after finishing my service and where people were halfway convinced I had come back to volunteer some more, this trip was full of nostalgia. It was wonderful to see so many old friends and new babies, and it made me excited about planning another trip in the future to spend a bit more time with folks in Pachalum.