None of us has to be told twice. Outsiders have been fined or beaten for taking pictures in this church. A German tourist was killed in this town for photographing a religious ceremony.
After 10 days in Mexico, these 15 Wabash students have become bold in fanning out, talking with the locals, trying to absorb as much of the culture as they can. But this morning the constant banter and Wabash swagger are subdued; the guys crowd closer together. We move with some apprehension through the atrium that encloses the ritual space of this community—it feels as wild and unpredictable as its namesake.
But easing our trepidation and piquing our curiosity are the words of the people we’ve met in Chiapas to prepare for this day.
For Juan Carlo Hernandez ’04, this is the church home of Maruch Santiz Gomez, whom he interviewed in San Cristobal. Her book preserving the lore, beliefs, and folk remedies of her village’s elders gained her fame in the international art world.
For Nick Dawson ’04, this is the former church of Xunka Lopez Diaz, whom he met at the Chiapas Photography Project after buying her book about her expulsion from this community.
For Carlos Carillo ’05, these are the people that agronomist and self-made medic Sergio Castro has dedicated his life to serving.
We’ve read of this place in Rosario Castellanos’ The Book of Lamentations—these are the people who carried Castellanos’ ladino family up the surrounding hills on their backs.
Our guide, Chip Morris, wrote the The Living Maya, the definitive book on these people, and he’s moved among them as a friend and a neighbor for 30 years. The students have steeped in his perceptions for two days now.
If ever a group of Wabash students was prepared for this powerful cross-cultural experience, we’re it. Yet nothing sufficiently prepares you for this church of St. John the Baptist in a land where every promontory, large rock, every bend in the road has a name. The hills are alive, and it’s not with “the sound of music.”
The daily work here—weaving, tilling the soil by hand, cutting wood, feeding and caring for the family—is sacred, the work done by heroes in the myths and songs of the people.
Some inhabitants will tell you of their soul companion that roams the hills in the form of an animal—creatures to be respected and attended with prayer and sacrifice.
In Chamula, ancient Mayan beliefs mingle with Roman Catholicism—the “syncretism” we’ve been observing in various forms since we arrived in Mexico—to form the costumbres of these descendants of the Maya. A cross is placed on the eastern wall of every Mayan home to commemorate the risen Christ and the rising sun; on the patio another cross faces west to salute the sun’s passage below the earth.
Paul Stephens ’04, a Roman Catholic, wonders aloud what this syncretism will look like inside the church. Except for the ornamentation above the arched doorway that gives it the look of an embroidered portal, the church looks like many missions we’ve seen throughout Mexico.
But step over the threshold, and La Iglesia de San Juan Bautista is anything but typical. Bromeliads hang from the rafters, long needles of pine trees cover the tile floor, interspersed with hundreds of lit candles affixed to the floor by their own melted wax. There are no pews. Statues of saints rest in glass cases decorated with pine branches along the walls, waiting for the feast days when they’ll be washed and their clothes and jewelry will be cleaned by a couple honored with the task.
The Chamulans have brought the earth inside this building, and it’s not the candles, saints, incense and chants that sanctify these elements of the earth, nor the trees, plants, or their fragrance that sanctify the trappings of the church. For the Chamulans, it’s both.
The students take it all in slowly. Thirty or so parishioners have gathered in one corner for a baptism, the priest speaking over a child swaddled in an embroidered blanket. Next to us, two men in traditional garb are speaking in the cadences and strangle glottal stops of tzotzil, the local language. We weave through an obstacle course demanding attention and balance and made more difficult by the thought that knocking over a candle could be mean serious trouble. I’ve never seen so many 19-22 year-old American males move with such deference and care.
Luis Flores ’04 and I pause above an old woman kneeling on the floor, a younger man and a boy at her side. She’s placed rows of candles in front of her. A Pepsi and an orange soda—both officially recognized offerings—are set in front of them. A live chicken, seemingly drugged and unaware of its fate, rests beside her.
Near the front altar and the statue of the church’s patron saint, Professor Dan Rogers is asking questions of an elderly Chamulan when a younger man interrupts.
“These are superstitions,” he says, speaking in Spanish instead of tzotzil so that Rogers can understand him. He is a convert to evangelical Christianity—one of the 15,000 or 35,000 (depending on which side you speak with) expelled from the town since 1967. Rogers is getting nervous about the direction of the conversation—and the fact that he’s in the middle of it.
The evangelical continues the debate. Behind him the old woman wrings the chicken’s neck and places the dead bird in front of the candles on the floor, offering up a prayer and sacrifice to the boy’s soul companion.
“Superstitions,” the young man repeats.
The old man stares quizzically, as if he has no knowledge of the word, no category for its meaning.
In the center of the sanctuary, J.R. Ford ’02, a senior football player from Whiting, Indiana has accidentally knocked over one of the candles. He’s struggling to set it upright but the wax won’t stick, and he looks around to see a boy charged with protecting the church watching him intently.
So Ford walks over to the boy, apologizes in his best Spanish, and asks for help. The two walk back to the candle and set it upright, the boy accepting Ford’s thanks with a smile.
Outside, the students are talking with vendors and buying field corn sprinkled with hot pepper. Dawson and Rogers are asking a woman where they can buy a Mayan cross (a symbol whose presence pre-dates the arrival of Spanish missionaries here).
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Weavings from the village of San Andreas Larrainzar are the most intricate and, to my eye, the most beautiful we’ve seen. But on this day, the village is a stark contrast to that as the students gather in front of the church. We’re late arriving, the market is nearly closed down and smells like the bottom of a trash can. There’s no way to be inconspicuous when you walk into an Indian village with 14 Wabash students. We’re the only hulking Anglos in the place.
In front of the church is a scene right out of the book: the village’s civic elders in ceremonial garbs are lined up, several of the religious elders talking with them.
But the church is closed to us, we discover, and our guides have some work to do. A tourist in one of Jack’s previous groups had been caught taking a picture of the church’s bell tower and was jailed and fined $600. The tourist was freed, but the elders are still offended. We need a gift. So Jack Nelson and Morris collect pesos from each of us and return with several cases of refrescos for the elders.
Soon, our gift is set aside, and a ceremony we’d read about in Juan the Chamula, of the course’s text, unfolds before our eyes. A religious elder moves down the line of civic leaders, placing his hand on the forehead of each and giving him a bottle of liquor. The nuances of the ceremony are different than we’d read in the book, but Morris fills in the blanks.
The students have developed a deep respect for Morris, bolstered now as we move inside the church and a group of San Andreas women who’ve been praying file by Chip, greeting him like one of the family. He lived here in 1972 when he first began studying the Maya of Chiapas. Now he’s laughing and asking questions in tzotzil. We’re mesmerized. Wabash students are primed to be drawn to the integrity of the man, the way he moves so easily between these cultures but always keeps his own identity.
“Chip gets off a bus in a native village and people come running up to greet him as a friend,” Warner says. “That’s not the usual experience you have as a North American in these places. He’s able to speak their language and, I think as much as possible, help us understand a little bit about those cultures.”
Morris, like Sergio Castro, has devoted his life to these people—working in a place of political struggle, extreme poverty, and heartbreaking circumstances.
“These men are determined to make a difference,” Rogers says. “They are men that embody our notion of living humanely in a difficult world. Having them with our students, having our students see how they do this, was an incredibly moving and unforgettable part of the trip.”
IF ENCOUNTERS with men like Chip and Sergio were our most moving moments, seeing the tomb of Pacal the Great was the moment we moved most.
The tomb is one of the most celebrated of ancient Mayan sites. Few people get a chance to see it, and it’s rarely open to a group as large as ours.
But thanks to behind-the-scenes work by David and Nancy Orr and Jack Nelson, and no dearth of pesos, we had our chance. The catch—we had only 30 minutes to get to the pyramid, climb it, enter the tomb, descend the stairs to the sarcophagus, and get out.
“We were in a part of Mexico where you wait and wait, but when it’s time to move, you better run like hell,” Warner remembers. “Suddenly we were cleared to see this place, and we rushd to the temple, climbed about 200 feet at a 45 degree angle, then descended these stairs that are like ice.”
“Slicker than snail snot,” Rogers adds.
Among the climbers was J.R. Ford, who’d struggled earlier in the trip with his fear of heights. With the clock ticking and park about to close, there wasn’t time for J.R. to work his way down the steps slowly. And somehow, with the good of the group on the line, he overcame his fear and kept on the move.
“Now that’s an experience I’ll never forget, seeing four or five Wabash guys coming at you at a run on those slippery stairs—like being the opposing quarterback and seeing the Little Giant defensive line coming at you.”
“We did it quickly, everyone helped those who needed help, and we did it as a team,” Warner says. “It was one of the great Wabash moments of the trip, this camaraderie we felt at doing this.” 2351a5e196
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