FIRST STOP: SAN CRISTOBAL DE LAS CASAS

FIRST STOP: SAN CRISTOBAL DE LAS CASAS

To travel the world you better start with the first step. 

My name is David Herrera, I am Mexican and traveller by occupation, along with my friend Luis Romo. We are from Aguascalientes, Mexico, but a few years ago we planned to do a trip to the south of the continent, passing throw some Latin-American countries. The departing date was May 19, 2015, and after a few very busy weeks and full of nostalgia, the day arrived and now we are in Chiapas, in San Cristobal.

San Cristobal is a magic town, not only because the government has considered it like that, but  because it really has some kind of mystic energy and because it seems to be trapped in the past. This town has become the most important touristic point in Chiapas, because of his good position in the map but also because of his own charm, hard to explain with words, but all the people that have been here know that just the fact of walking and get lost in this streets could be a magical experience.

To start talking about the variety of this place is necessary to talk about the people that you can find here. If you walk throw the main streets you would find people from all over the world, Japanese, Africans (like our friend Edu who is from Kenia and he is traveling in Latin America, and that now he is in the same hostel as us), Europeans, north Americans, south Americans, Mexicans from all over the country, bag packers and of course the “indígenas” descendants of the Mayans, who at the end are the ones that give this mystical energy to the place; the fact of just thinking how would be a normal day for them, the fact of imagining what is in their heads and in their hearts are very interesting thoughts. The main Indian groups that you can find here are the Tzotziles and Tzetzales who come from San Juan Chamula o Zinacantan, and come down to San Cristobal to sell their products, they speak their own dialect but they speak spanish here to be able to sell their products. You can see indígenas in the market making baskets of fresh fruit and vegetables that they sell for ten pesos, or carrying alive hens to sell; in the same way you can find them in the streets selling all kind of stuff. You can also see indigenas kids that are running and playing with their friends, but then they take their baskets and go to sell you little animals made out of clay. I think that as a Mexican I can fell that something in them is part of me, that something in their culture at the end define our social behaviour as Mexicans.

Another fascinating thing of this place is the influence of the Zapatista movement. In 1994 the “Ejercito Zapatista de Liberación Nacional, EZLN” took the government palace of San Cristobal to start a revolutionary movement in favour of the indigenas communities, this movement has been considered as the first revolutionary movement of the modern world and that have had a global impact. Nowadays the symbols of this movements are still here for example the street art, the key ring of our hostel, and in some places where they sell zapatista products, also in the little zapatistas figures that the indigenas sell, and also in one of the main streets you can find a place called “TierrAdentro” form by Zapatistas Cooperatives, this place is a restaurant and you can also buy books and other products about the movement, a lot of them made by zapatistas hands. Another aspect that we have discover is that in some commercial places they project documentaries or videos about the movement and at the end there is always discussions about them, this means that the flame of this movement is still alive and that it keeps interest in the locals and the foreigners.

Also the amount of catholic churches is something very characteristic of this place, the churches are mainly colourful in the outside and very simple in the inside, and something very interesting is the large amount of indigenas looking saints decorated with indigenas clothes, a very clear example of the religious colonization of the spanish long time ago. It is very common to get directions according to the temples or churches, for example: “you take the Street until the church where all the sellers are, the Santo Domingo church” or “you climb up until the church del Ceriillo”, or “you can have dinner in the market beside the blue church Santa Lucia”. The most important is the cathedral, but my favourites are the ones on top of the hills, where you can see the view of all the town. We have already climbed both, the one with the church of San Cristobal at the top with 250 steps, and our favourite the Guadalupe temple after 80 steps.

Well, I think that choosing this place to start our trip was the best decision we could have made, but we still have a few more weeks here to keep discovering stuff and then to continue our way to the south.

David Herrera González.

May 28, 2015.