San Cristobal de Las Casas
San Cristobal de Las Casas is cocktail of cultures and feelings. You will instantly see things you love and things you really won't want to see.
The winding eight hour coach journey from Palenque, slowly ascending through the lush green mountains to get here really sets the scene for your arrival in this town. We were now in the cooler climes of higher land, 2200m above sea level, allowing for some much needed cooler, lighter air after our time in the rainforest.
Smaller side streets of San Cristobal
The colourful artisan market
Our Airbnb host was one of the friendliest we've ever had, Rosario, and on our arrival she walked with us into the centre to show us the way. The centre of San Cristobal is a perfectly imperfect little grid of colourful, cobbled streets, all accessible by foot. The main street, Real de Guadalupe (or Guadders as we began calling it for short) runs like a spine East to West, pedestrianised and populated with people sitting at café tables on either side. This is the region of coffee and chocolate, so lucky for us this seems to be what the independent shops and cafés here specialise in.
Many of Guadders' tributaries are equally, if not more, interesting to walk along. There seems to be bit of a traveller scene here, vegan and organic options a plenty. It's easy to see the appeal of San Cristobal, and there are many people from all over the world who now call this place home (most of those people wear baggy Jesus trousers and no shoes). As the evenings draw in, the vivid blue drains from the sky and a thousand more colours come out in the streets. Mayan ladies in traditional clothes are literally piled high with brightly patterned blankets and textiles (quite handy for keeping off the evening chill) whilst cafés turn to fairy-lit bars and live music overlaps across the streets.
Looking down the main street (Guadders) from East to West. The concentration of cafes and bars is in the centre where you can see the crowds of people.
This is the one town in the world where it's perfectly acceptable to walk around with a rug wrapped around you in the cooler evenings. Louise was loving it.
But there's another side to this pretty, bustling town. The Chiapas region is home to some of the poorest people in Mexico. It's impossible to ignore the poverty here, constantly being approached by children as young as three selling food, textiles or polishing shoes in the street. It's important that we don't just skim over this and say it's all great here, it's not. Many live in the basic surrounding towns, known as the Cinturón de Miseria - Belt of Misery
Like so often, it's the indigenous people here who have the rough end of the deal. For years, the Mayan communities here have suffered violence, corruption and exploitation - as far back as the Spanish rulership to as recently as the current day. The story is complex, and it's difficult to try and obtain a true picture of what has really happened here. This blog really isn't the time or place to try and unravel a story we know so little about.
We decided to take a tour to two indigenous towns, San Juan Chamula and San Lorenzo Zincantán, just outside of the centre to get a little bit of an insight into Maya life here. Local advice was to go with the tour for safety and also for ease. The Tzotzil Mayans are the people who live in the central Highlands of Chiapas.
Zincantán, a nearby Mayan town
The two villages seemed to be shining examples of Tzotzil Mayan communities which were thriving here. Our guide told us of the profitable rose trade here, along with growing organic vegetables on the land that has been granted back to the towns by the Government a few years ago. We saw a pretty school, and a shiny new hospital with ambulances. It was really great to see a well-functioning indigenous town, but we were aware we were not seeing the whole story here. We were told that a cut of Mexican taxes and tourist tax goes into the Mayan communities, but wondered after seeing so much poverty elsewhere in San Cristobal whether this was distributed evenly.
After taking a drive around Zincantán, we were shown some traditional old mud houses, and so we could see how the place had changed over time with investment. We were also invited into a traditional Maya household with a family, where we met a mother with her three daughters of different ages. The average household here has seven children, and it dawned on us that most women here will spend a huge part of their lives pregnant and giving birth in basic conditions, whilst also having to work and support a growing family.
The eldest daughter Laura showed us how they weave the fabrics on the loom by hand. It looked both intricate and laborious, forcing the wooden beater down onto the woven fabric strands to keep the pattern taught.
Creating colourful textiles on the loom
Louise was then invited (politely forced) to dress up in a traditional ancient Maya bridal dress. All of the items had been hand woven, including a long skirt with a belt and an intricately designed floral top. Other layers of silks were added until, much to Louise’s disappointment, it was all topped off with a white cape worn head to toe, that left nothing showing but her face. In the politest way possible, she said she felt like E.T.
I too was asked to join in the ‘ceremony’. Unusually, the Mayan man wore an even more elaborate dress for a wedding day. He started with thin, colourful sombrero complete with purple tassels, and a bright purple, flowery cape. If things didn't seem feminine enough, the look was completed with a handbag for the groom. I was told that this was so the husband could provide for the wife once married. To be fair it was a well made leather satchel that I could see a few knives in, rather than bridal gifts.
After stepping back in time and delicately removing our many layers of wedding outfits, we were invited through to the kitchen. A real bonus, my ears pricked up instantly as it was that peckish time of day between breakfast and lunch. We sat around a huge comal, the heart of any Maya kitchen, and a lit open fire beneath. We were in the family kitchen, and one of the daughters was preparing a dish for us to try.
We felt privileged to experience this first hand, not only the cooking methods but also authentic ingredients and combinations they were using. In my eyes it takes real skill to cook consistently on open fire - with a gas stove or electric oven you can precisely program to how you would like something cooked. I asked if they used a certain type of wood, and the guide translated that harder, dense woods were used for slow cooking, so they burned with a low heat and slowly. For a dish they wanted to cook quickly, such as tortillas, they would use smaller, less dense wood that ignite and flame much quicker. He also added that a wife knows the smell of the wood from her kitchen, so if her husband ever comes home smelling of a different wood, she knows if there’s any funny business going on.
Cooking on the comal
Black beans - a staple in the diet here
The daughter of about 15 years old, was skilfully pressing blue corn tortillas in a traditional wooden press which flattens the masa dough into even thin disks. The blue corn tortillas were then cooked directly on the comal, then quickly flipped by hand and stacked in a basket to stay warm whilst she prepared more. They were filled with slow cooked black beans, a fresh tomato salsa, toasted pumpkin seed flour and fresh Chiapas cheese which was crumbly and chalky like Wensleydale. Whilst this was going on, the mother was preparing coffee on the same comal, and smoking some homemade chorizo sausages high above the flames so they didn't get too hot. The blue corn tortillas were a great brunch snack - low fat, vegetarian, high energy but time consuming to make. The smoke filled room added to the atmosphere making it one of our most memorable dishes we have tried in Mexico so far.
Our experience so far in San Cristobal de las Casas has been a mixed one. The town is colourful and peaceful, and has a great variety of food, however the signs of tough life and hardship are very apparent here. It's been great to see how things are turning around for the indigenous communities but we know there's still a long way to go. We hope that things continue to improve for the people of this town.