Today I went on a tour to visit two indigenous villages close to San Cristóbal: Zinacantán and San Juan Chamula. The two villages - like other indigenous villages, too, I guess - enjoy a special status in Mexico: despite the constitutionally granted right to travel freely in the country, the villages are allowed to charge an entrance fee to their village. In addition, they have a regulation that allows them to imprison visitors who take pictures inside of their churches - apparently they believe that pictures would take away the soul of god.
Zinacantán is famous for the flowers they cultivate, and so the interior of their church was decorated with thousands of flowers, even though it was just an ordinary day. According to our guide, the decoration multiplies on holidays, when the altar all but disappears in a sea of flowers.
Another peculiarity of Zinacantán's church were many small clay animals standing beneath each of the saint's figures. The guide explained that Zinacantán has several religious authorities called martomos. Regular people can apply to be a martomo, and if they've lived a 'good' life so far, they may be appointed for one year. The martomos - the term means something like caretaker - then have to take care of the decoration of the church, organize holiday celebrations, and erect a small altar in their house. It is considered a great honor, but also means great financial expenses during the year. Now, the martomos are thought to have powerful animal spirits, and in order to make sure the spirits don't turn evil, their clay representation is deposited in the church so that god will watch over it. To give you an impression of the church decoration and the clay figurines, look at the following picture. It shows the altar in a former martomo's house who kept the altar for tourists to look at.
In the same house, we also had breakfast and visited a weaver's shop. The breakfast consisted of fresh tortillas made out of mashed corn instead of industrial corn flour. Just as with homemade vs. supermarket-bought bread, the difference in taste was huge. This is the lady of the house, making the tortillas and baking them over a wood fire:
We filled the hot tortillas with ground pumpkin seeds, cheese, guacamole, green sauce and black beans - very yummy!
After breakfast, we were shown how the local textiles are weaved. Weaving is only one part of the process, however. The weaved goods are then embroidered by hand with intricate and colorful patterns and images. After the demonstration, we tried on the local traditional dress. The couple in our group was given wedding clothes, while the rest of us wore the normal dress for daily use:
Our next stop was San Juan Chamula. There, we only visited the church. This is its beautiful outside - the only part we were allowed to photograph:
In this village, apparently, there was some kind of special celebration going on - notice the decoration saying 'Viva el Señor San Mateo' above the door:
Inside, the church was also beautiful, but at the same time very weird. There were no benches. The sides were lined with statues of saints, each with a table in front that had candles on them - a gesture to thank that particular saint for some miracle or other. On the floor of the church were more candles, hundreds of them. People sat on the floor in front of a group of candles, praying to a specific saint for the removal of a sickness - that's why our guide said the church was basically a big hospital. The amount and colors of the candles varied depending on the gravity of the sickness - and for really grave sicknesses, eggs or chickens were added to the ceremony as sacrifices. As the guide explained, eggs are used for minor stuff; they are waved about in front of the sick person, absorbing the sickness in the process, and then broken to remove the sickness. For major stuff, the same is done with chickens - and this was actually going on in the church while we were there! Quite a few people carried live chickens in a bag into the church, started the candle/prayer ritual, then waved the chicken in front of the sick person and broke the chicken's neck. After the chicken had thrashed around for a while, it died and was stuffed back into the bag.
The chicken or eggs used in this process cannot be eaten afterwards, of course: they are thought to contain the sickness, so consumption would result in the sickness entering the body again. One of the Mexican girls in the group explained to me that for them, the entire ritual is not all that strange. She said that her mum, after visiting the cemetery with her, used to wave an egg in front of her face and body, and then break the egg to remove the negative spirits gathered in the cemetery. According to her, the 'cursed' egg would then look different than a regular, 'clean' egg.
I wonder - does the pope know about chicken sacrifices taking place inside of catholic churches?
