Our time in San Cristóbal de las Casas coincided perfectly
with Carnaval, which is famously celebrated in some of the Mayan villages
surrounding the city. On Sunday we took a bus to Huixtán, a village that had
advertised their celebration on posters throughout San Cristóbal. Our expectations were fairly high,
given the publicity. When we arrived the villagers were all gathered in their
traditional dress around the town square watching a basketball game between two
local teams, while a marimba band was warming up in front of the church. Occasionally someone would light a big
bottle rocket or blow into a conch shell. We ate some tostadas at a nearby
comedor and looked for a spot in the shade.
Before long a band of masked men came dancing into the
square. Their outfits featured ripped jeans and grotesque Halloween masks, and
they jumped around, played guitars and hooted. Other, more elaborately costumed groups followed, but the
jumping around and hooting was basically the same. We wondered if we were
missing something. I bought some
local aguadiente flavored with wild cherries to see if that would help liven
things up. It did seem that most of the performers were drunk, but unlike New
Orleans, most of the crowd was definitely not. The performing groups returned to the square with one member
dressed possibly as a goat, beaten by the others with a stick. The other
groups, each in front of a viewing station where five judges sat scribbling
notes, repeated this scene. How the judges scored the stylistic variations on
goat beating was a complete mystery. We left scratching our heads, despite
enjoying the festive atmosphere.
On Fat Tuesday we tried again, but this time with a guide
named Cesar and a small group of foreigners. The plan was to visit the small village of Zinacantán, and later
San Juan de Chamula, most famous of all the Chiapas villages for its Carnaval
celebration.
The villages of Chiapas are almost entirely Mayan, speaking
various Mayan languages primarily, and retaining many of their traditional
customs. The religion they practice is something of a blend of Catholicism and
pre-Columbian Mayan polytheism. They also have their own police force and judicial
systems, and each village has a unique dress. In Zinacantán that meant
intricate embroidered bright flowery clothing, a smock like thing for the men
and a shawl for women.
The church smelled of sap incense and the floor was covered
in pine needles. Candles burned in holders depicting Mayan animals. In the
square outside, the scene from Sunday in Huixtán was being repeated--groups of
men in masks playing instruments and parading around. As we left Zinacantán we
were wondering if the whole Carnaval thing was even worthwhile. Could Chamula
pick up the slack?
As we entered town, it seemed they could. Thousands of
people had packed into Chamula’s main square, rooftops, and side streets. It
was easy to spot people from the neighboring villages because of how carefully
everyone adhered to the traditional dress of their particular village. Cesar
warned us not to take any photos or bad things would ensue. As if to underscore the point he took us
past the town lock-up, a grimy cell open on one side to the main square, where
the condemned were shamed in front of the whole community. The town has its own
police force and court system. Apparently, capital punishment, illegal in the
rest of Mexico, is not unheard of. I tucked my camera away, at least for the
moment.
We were lead
into the house of one of Chamula’s 122 spiritual leaders. Each leader serves a
one-year term taking care of one of the town’s 40-odd patron saints. Inside the
house, a temple of sorts had been built, with walls and ceiling covered in
cuttings from sacred plants and a carpet of pine needles on the floor. In the
center of the temple sat a small statue of St. Rosa de Lima, adorned in a
blanket of ribbons. Our host and his wife look after her, saying prayers and
lighting holy candles at certain times of day. Their duties prevent them from
working during their year of service, but they are allowed to collect donations
and sell pox, a potent liquor made from sugar cane and corn. They looked a bit
stoned. A glass of pox was passed around and incense filled the air. Donations were made and we bade them
farewell.
After leaving the temple we proceeded through the festival rabble
to the church on the main square. The Vatican clearly has no sway here. There
is an altar in front and a baptismal font in back, but all the pews have been
removed. Here again the floor is covered in pine needles. Families sit on the
floor in front of saints that line both walls and light candles, the melting
wax spreading out on the floor around them. Bottles of Coca-Cola are scattered
around, not for refreshment, but due to the belief that evil spirits can be
dispatched through an epic belch.
The villagers also believe that one’s soul can be frightened
out of the body during a traumatic event. If such a thing is suspected, the
person in question enters the church with a shaman. Who are these shamans? People from the community who have
distinguished themselves in some way--maybe they have six fingers on one hand,
or maybe they survived a terrible illness or maybe they just seem clairvoyant.
The shaman grasps the victim’s hands and takes a radial pulse to determine the
course of action. Eggs are cracked and dripped over the victim. Another is cracked into a gourd bowl and
divined for further clues. And then a chicken is procured, brought by the
victim—a hen for a woman, a rooster for a man, black in either case if
witchcraft is suspected. Remember, this is all happening in the church, in the
center of town. The shaman passes the live chicken over the soul-less body and
snaps its neck. The chicken is then prepared at the victim’s home and the victim
eats only the head, then goes to bed for five days. The family eats the rest,
and returning to the scene of the traumatic event, buries the feathers and
bones. All of this is done in hopes
it will entice the soul to return.
Our heads filled with these wild images, we filed out of the
church and back into the bright light of the square and the madness of Carnaval.
Groups of men in bright costumes descended on the square. They wore conical
hats— possibly made of howler monkey pelts, with streaming garlands— and held
sticks made from the stretched penis of a bull. A big explosion startled us and
sent a percussive wave through our chests. A kid stood grinning a few feet
away, with a hollowed out stone smoking in his hand. He’d packed the stone with
explosive powder and ignited it. Other kids sent huge bottle into the sky above
the square. Drums pounded and conch shells were blown. Things were getting
under way.
The middle of the plaza was clear of people and had been
covered in dry thatch. The costumed groups gathered holding large colorful
flags. The thatch was set ablaze
and the group ran 20 abreast through the flaming plaza, flags trailing behind
in a primal battle scene. The
crowd loved it. Again they ran through fire, feet protected only by the woven
sandals Mayans have worn for thousands of years. This continued until the
flames died down and the thatch was just black smoking ash. The young governor
of Chiapas watched approvingly with other costumed dignitaries on a balcony
above the square.
Next it was time to bring in the bulls. Angry, but well tethered,
they charged around the square, spreading the crowd in brief moments of panic.
Macho young men, no doubt fueled by pox, took turns trying to mount each bull
and when successful posed and preened for the crowd like a matador.
The sun beat down, the crowd fortified themselves with
grilled chicken and pox, and the scene with bulls and men was repeated over and
over. The entire time this was going on we didn’t see a single camera in the
crowd, not even a cell phone. At one point a fight broke out and the crowd
parted to make way for a posse of 30 Chamula police. They were wearing the
village outfit—a shaggy white wool tunic and cowboy hat—and waving big batons.
The crowd identified the miscreant, some form of justice was administered, and
the posse ran off just as quickly as they’d come.
The bulls were tormented but not killed. Others had not been
so lucky. As we made our way out of town we spotted several houses with bulls
heads nailed to the threshold. Cesar explained that six bulls are sacrificed
for the festival, and eaten by the villagers in one last bacchanal before Lent. He also noted the day’s fine weather and
gave credit to the prudent restraint of the town leaders. They are expected to practice
abstinence for two weeks before the festival. “If it rains, it means the
leaders had sex,” he explained matter-of-factly. It all seemed a little weird, but then again, so does every religious
festival in the world, if you really think about it.
