I'm going to put all of San Cristóbal on hold for a second and talk about what happened the next day because it was one of the most bizarre experiences I've ever encountered. We celebrated "Fat Tuesday" in a small mountain town called San Juan Chamula. Unfortunately, the one experience that is the most difficult to describe is the one place we were absolutely not allowed to take pictures. The locals strongly believe that it steals your soul. There were signs posted as we got to the main square saying "NO PHOTOS ALLOWED AFTER THIS POINT". There were men with sticks that would knock a camera out of your hand if you even lifted one up.
San Juan Chamula is a place that has mobined ancient Mayan religion with Catholicism. They have a modified crucifix that looks more like an ear of corn. David once heard that the Chamulans believe that Jesus Christ died on the cross to become the Sun God. They also highly prize Coca Cola because they believe the carbonation releases evil spirits and it's one of the few things they can't produce themselves. Their version of Fat Tuesday doesn't really resemble anything the Catholic church would endorse. They sacrifice bulls in the town square. The day is unbelievably chaotic and surreal. I will do my best to describe it, but this is something that has to be experienced.
Shortly after we arrived to town, our guide ran into a local guide named Chip who has been living in San Cristóbal for many years and knows the locals. He got us into the mayor's house for a special glimpse of the preparations. It was a small and relatively modest house. All along the walls were the male town elders - small, old men that did not talk. There was a man changing into white ceremonial clothes clsoer to the center. I saw only one woman there. She was attending to a shrine in the middle of the room. There was a huge amount of incense being burned and god only knows what else. The room was filled with smoke. There were candles everywhere and banners hanging from the ceiling. I would have liked to have stayed maybe a little longer, but I felt like I was intruding on their festival and I was concerned that I was inhaling something I would later regret. (I later found out that the locals often do hallucinogenic drugs as part of religious ceremonies).
We wandered up to the main square. There were people everywhere running around. We saw many older children dressed in brightly colored clothes wearing black pointed hats with red, yellow, and green streamers hanging from them. We later found out that the black hats were made from the skin of howler monkeys. Many of this kids had horns that played two very dissonant notes at once. Some of the kids had drums. Also in the town square, they were setting off extremely loud firecrackers. Our guide wanred us not to go near the firecrackers because sometimes they fire into the crowd. You could lose your hearing or worse.
After waiting in the public square for a bit, we went into the church. The church is especially sacred and no pictures are allowed. For a Catholic church, it was not ornate - well, not ornate in the way that one would expect. There were corn husks hanging from the walls. There were large banners strewn across the ceiling woven by the natives. There must have been thousands of candles throughout the church - on tables, on the floor, and along the wall. People would come in with candles, light a few, and simbply plant them into the stone floor and start praying. We saw some people praying fervently, bowing on their knees, and holding coke bottles up to their forehead as an offering to God (remember that they value Coke and they are preparing to give something up for Lent). All along the walls were glass cases with saints inside. The name of the saint was usually painted on the glass. All of the saints were ornately dressed and usually had a mirror hanging around their neck to ward off evil spirits. The saints looked more like large (some of them were almost life-size) porcelain dolls. Their faces had been painted to have disarming expressions. Some had a look of suffering, some looked like they had just seen God, some looked afraid, some looked at peace. Walking around the church and looking at the saints was one of the most bizarre experiences I've ever had in my life. They had an air of real people - I kept expecting to see one of the saints move - and yet the whole atmosphere was fantastical at the same time. Add to this the sound of the drums, dissonant horns blaring, firecrackers going off outside, and some sort of very strong incense. I stopped in front of the statue of the Virgin Mary (who had multi-colored chaser lights around her glass box) and meditated on what I was experiencing. I thought of places I had been where the barrier between this world and the next is very thin - like a veil that you can almost see through. I tried to "look through the veil" in this church and I saw chaos. I don't know how else to describe it.
Our group went back out to the main square. David and I decided to break off from the group and explore on our own. We could see something happening in the corner of the square. There were men in black lamb tunics. We saw them holding onto ropes. Occassionally, the crowd would shift and the kids would come running in our direction for a moment and then crowd back to where they came from. We eventually realized that they were dragging a bull into the town square with the rope. The bull would start charging and all the kids would run away for a second. Part of the "game" was for the teenage boys to jump onto the bull's back and ride it for a few seconds. They were slowly dragging the bull into the center of the square to sacrifice it. Along with the realization of what they were doing to this poor bull, I realized that I must have inhaled something along the way, because I started having mild hallucinogenic reactions - my perception was starting to go two dimensional and my jaw clenching. I told David that we should get out of here and have something to eat (we hadn't had lunch and it was past lunchtime). We found a place to have a coke and some churros. I felt a little better.
We wandered around a bit more. Luckily, we didn't see any of the bulls actually get sacrificed. They sacrifice five of them. It was explained to me why, but I can't remember it now. Our gruop eventually gathered up and went to a nearby textile town to see how the locals weave textiles by hand as they have done for thousands of years. The home where we went also made us some tortillas, but I was feeling quite out of it and passed.
