CITY IN THE MIST: San Cristobal de las Casas

by Rebecca Bruns

The driver said he'd taken this road literally 5,000 times before, but that was small comfort as the tires screeched around every curve and the asphalt in places crumbled away to nothing. We were on our way out of the mountains from San Cristobal de las Casas to the rainforest. The morning mist of the highlands, hovering over cornpatches as gilded as the inside of Santo Domingo Church, gradually sank into steam. Waterfalls frothed down fern-choked cliffs, and I began to sweat. Finally, four hours along, we turned into a parking lot on the edge of the most beautiful Mayan ruins in Mexico: Palenque.

Temples and palaces as sunbleached as bones, with the jungle clawing at their backs, towered toward a faint smudge of moon. Every stone felt as alive as the leaves. In this mystical sense, Palenque is the perfect ancient counterpart to San Cristobal, today's Mayan capital of Mexico.

Over the years, San Cristobal de las Casas has quietly become an offbeat colonial favorite, a best-kept-secret of sorts. Its cobblestones and austere cathedrals radiate a glow, a timeless, ethereal quality I attribute to the magic of the rainbow-garbed Maya still inhabiting these mountains. Mexico's two seed cultures -- indigenous and Hispanic -- share the streets here more than anywhere else south of the border.

The town hides in the remote highlands of Chiapas, the southernmost state in Mexico next door to Guatemala. In fact, it's a great introduction to Guatemala's Indian-rich society. The problem is, San Cristobal has no airport -- nor any five-star hotels. This may explain why far fewer Americans go there than Europeans, who don't demand convenience or luxury to eagerly soak up Mexico's history.

I went to San Cristobal for the fourth time recently, flying via Mexico City to Tuxtla Gutierrez, the booming, homely capital of Chiapas. In a rental car I drove east into the southern Sierra Madre. The dizzy 50-mile ascent took two hours as I crawled along, remembering a terrifying skid that almost spun me off the hairpin road five years before in rainy weather. As I climbed out of the valley where Tuxtla sits, the mountains rippled into lush panoramas splashed with wildflowers and pines, a foretaste of Mexico's only rainforest and the ruins of Palenque down in the Chiapas lowlands.

For all its beauty, Chiapas is the poorest, least developed state in Mexico. The country's highest Indian population, over one million, lives in pueblos around San Cristobal, their marketing center. I saw their shanties teetering on high ridges with million-dollar views. They trotted along the road doubled over under loads of sticks and babies bound to their backs. Stalls of their weavings blazed in scarlet and psychedelic pink against the greenery, steeped in a dense mist which swirled around me till I felt I was riding into the clouds.

San Cristobal almost touches heaven at 7,000 feet. From the highway, its 460-year-old lanes, barely wide enough for a car, zigzag through close-packed pastel houses. As I trundled past one where a man was painting the walls sunflower gold, I felt a rush of excitement. Everything seemed as familiar as an old friend: the steep sidewalks, the rubbleheap churches with weeds sprouting from crevices like hairs from a mole, the white-gloved cops tweeting sonatas on their whistles.

Yet everything was busier than I remembered. While San Cristobal had about 25,000 people when I first visited, it now has some 100,000. Big tour buses line the woodsy zocalo. Blue-shawled Indians wave clay dolls at tourists. There are now 20 some-odd hotels, none deluxe but nearly all charming. Having no reservation (rooms are seldom full except in summer, the balmiest season), I hunted for a good inn with a fireplace, a near necessity in the winter.

I prowled the oasis-like courtyards with their tinkling fountains at the Posada Diego de Mazariegos, considered the town's finest inn. I admired the decaying sixteenth-century facade and caged macaws at the Hotel Santa Clara, occupying the city's oldest building. I parted the big glass doors of the Hotel Ciudad Real, fondly remembering its leafy covered patio and cozy quarters where I'd stayed years ago. I missed the best room in town, an exotic upstairs chamber at Na-Bolom named Jatate, with a molded hearth and the estate's primeval garden gleaming wetly through its windows. But in the end I settled again into my old standby, the Hotel Espanol, and nursed a fire every night in my room.

As dusk fell that first day, the aroma of woodfires began to creep over the red-tile roofs. Crossing the square, I wandered through the red-and-white arcade of sweets where baskets of macaroons, sugar cones, peanut brittle and glazed fruit seethed with bees, which a vendor was plucking off with tongs and putting in a humming plastic bag.

In front of the hulking Cathedral built in 1528, elote vendors were roasting corn-on-the-cob over fires like holy offerings, and the popcorn vendors were setting up their machines to dispense palomitas (little doves). In the onset of moonlight, the cathedral's chipped, sun-bronzed face cooled to ghostly rust, blue, and albino-yellow. Its massive wooden doors, studded with medieval knobs, opened on a brilliant interior supported by immense lily-white columns: the antechamber of salvation. Outside, under the stars, I studied the statues on the facade, enduring eternity in their niches after four centuries of pigeon snow and the leprosy of time, which had eaten away their hands and eyes. Only one, a pious friar, still had both his hands clasped in prayer, always on the outside looking in.

San Cristobal still feels like the self-contained kingdom it once was. Founded in 1528 by Diego de Mazariegos, the only conquistador in Mexico with a statue raised in his honor, the town was first called Ciudad Real (Royal City). With its noble colonnades and frothy courtyards it must have lived up to its name. Until 1892 it reigned as capital of Chiapas, at that time a feisty empire under the umbrella of Guatemala. For its errant autonomy, Mexico punished the town in the late 1800s, wrestling Chiapas into its fold and transferring the capital to Tuxtla. Ciudad Real was renamed after its patron saint (Christopher) and the first bishop of Chiapas, Bartolome de las Casas. The bishop came on the scene in 1545, rattling the rafters of tradition. He was aghast at the abuse of the indigenas, whom the Spanish enslaved as a workforce and treated like subhumans. De las Casas fired off protests to Madrid and made the local politicos fume. Eventually, Spain drafted edicts of basic emancipation for the Indians.

After their long mistreatment, most highland Maya have avoided integration with the local populace. They've maintained their own costumes, crafts, festivals, style of worship, rites of courtship and language, nine dialects of Mayan. Tourists adore the Maya as a rare endangered species, rather like whales; if this seems condescending, it's more of a starry-eyed regard for their unique colorfulness rather than their hardships or humanity. Many mestizos of San Cristobal still scorn them as dirty primitives without education or domestic plumbing.

But the good bishop -- el padre de los indios -- has three modern-day successors who care about the Indians as much as he did. Gertrude Duby Blom, Sergio Castro and Mercedes Hernandez have all found a way into the Indians' closed society and their understandably cautious hearts, and have helped preserve their dignity, even their survival.

Long ago, as a young journalist just starting out, I interviewed Trudy Blom at Na-Bolom ("House of the Jaguar" in Mayan). That great walled hacienda on the east edge of town looked as forbidding as a monastery outside, but was a 22-room dream of bougainvillea, art and artifacts within (a tour of it is a must).

Trudy, a stately but short-tempered Swiss lady of 76 at the time, was (and still is) the expatriate grand-dame of Chiapas. As she led me to her room, I felt nervous and intimidated by her formidable reputation. Her black-and-white photos of local indigenas, especially the Lacandon Indians -- the only remaining pure jungle Maya in Mexico -- plastered the walls of the hacienda's library, museums, and four patios. The pictures had a classic, splendid look: mist rising around dugout canoes, stern long-haired leaders chomping hand-rolled cigars, an intimacy achieved because the Indians trusted her as a friend, not someone whose photos would steal their souls. In the early 1950s, she and her late husband, anthropologist Frans Blom, turned Na-Bolom into a Mayan study center. Both northern Europeans, they'd met in Chiapas and had fallen in love through their mutual love of the Indians.

Our interview went poorly. Trudy snapped at me and answered my bungled questions fussily. I escaped with embarrassment and relief.

When I met her again recently, she approached with a cane, now 90, and a fantastic collar of huge lavender crystals set in silver around her neck. I reminded her of our first interview long ago. She blinked behind thick glasses and smiled like a child, saying sweetly, "It must have been before you were born." Sitting down a moment, she got up for coffee. A staffer confided, "She can't relax, she's never calm."

Seeing her suddenly with admiration rather than self-conscious fear, I realized her edgy toughness came from an internal fire without which there can be no greatness. It's pushed her to help preserve the dwindling race of Lacandons (now numbering 400) and, in the last 10 years, to save the shrinking Chiapas rainforest. As she said in a new film on her work, La Reina de la Selva (Queen of the Jungle), "My life is full of lost battles, but the spirit of the fight is still in me."

One day during lunch at Na-Bolom, I found myself staring at a Lacandon family at the far end of the table; their mahogany faces, with tilted eyes and straight noses fused with their foreheads, were living Mayan sculptures. They'd come to town for medical attention and were staying at Na-Bolom. Trudy's doors are always open to the Lacandons, whom she visits, despite her age, several times a year in the jungle.

I saw others on a one-day sidetrip to Palenque, close to where the Lacandons live. They stood outside the 1500-year-old ceremonial site in the parking lot, wearing baggy white robes with shoulder-length hair, selling bows and arrows made with parrot feathers. I felt they should have been inside, among the glyphs and sculptures and stone galleries that ramble over a broad plateau. Off in the jungle came the muted shriek of howler monkeys, like dragon roars in the belly of a pyramid. In fact, after climbing to the tops of so many pyramids that my knees quivered and my eyes were drunk from scanning oceans of trees where many unexcavated ruins still lie buried, I descended into the Temple of the Inscriptions. Its tall, perspiring steps led deep down to the only known tomb in a Mayan pyramid, that of Lord Shield Pakal, ruler of Palenque, and his elaborately carved funeral chamber. I remembered a similar experience, wriggling through the long, claustrophobic passage in the pyramid of Cheops to get to the pharaoh's sarcophagus at its heart.

For all its majesty and wilderness, the acknowledgement of an afterlife is what, to me, sets Palenque apart from other Mayan ruins, where pyramids merely raised temples closer to heaven. Palenque, instead, symbolized the city of night, where the dead await rebirth. Wandering the grounds, I wondered if the Lacandons will have a rebirth or if they're doomed to die peddling souvenirs in the parking lot of past glory as the forest vanishes around them?

Logging has wiped out nearly 80 percent of the Indians' homeland. But, thanks in part to Trudy's efforts, a recent state law forbade the cutting down of any more tropical trees. Today Trudy focuses on reforestation, distributing up to 40,000 trees a year from her vivero (nursery). "Whenever I feel desperate," she said, "I plant a tree."

The same passion shines through in the private museum of Sergio Castro. Each night between six and seven, Sergio opens the plain metal door to his residence at No. 32, Avenida 16 de Septiembre. The receiving room mimics a little Mayan church, decked in Christmas lights and rows of stoic, coal-blackened statues with a vaguely sinister air, quickly dispelled by the animation and warmth of Senor Castro. Like a gamin cowboy, in boots and jeans and a red bandana tied pirate-style over his bald spot, Sergio welcomes guests who've heard, word-of-mouth, about his fine costume collection. It represents just a fraction of his work with the Indians for the last 30 years. The museum is free, though offerings of money, pens, even aspirin stuff the donation box.

After migrating from the rich northern city of Chihuahua, Sergio discovered his true calling in Chiapas -- "my work is not a devotion," he said, "it's my obligation to the Indians." Supported by grants from a French institute and occasional funds from his father, he has poured his life into helping the Indians grow crops, build schools and develop good sanitation; he treats epilepsy, burns, colds, does minor surgery and never charges a penny. Instead, the Indians thank him with their handiwork, mostly costumes which now fill three big rooms of his house. Some items you may see on Indians around town; others you'll find nowhere else: lavishly embroidered huipiles (overblouses), policemen's "uniforms" with lace-up sandals, carved staff and ribbon-strewn hats, an ingenious palm-leaf raincoat, "monkey man" carnival attire, a bachelor's robe with a discreet opening for the benefit of prospective brides ("No show, no buy," explained Sergio), everything arranged by village, and a dusty heap of violins, flutes, guitars, drums, and monkey-skull maracas. After toiling in the fields of San Juan Chamula all day, Sergio gives nightly tours of the costume museum in English, French, Italian or Spanish (he speaks three Mayan dialects, too). How he finds the time for all this, and his own family of six as well, is a lesson in the miraculous energy generated by a giving heart.

Over the years I'd visited the best-known Indian pueblos -- San Juan Chamula, Zinacantan and Tenejapa -- but I wanted to try a guide this time for more insights. Notices all over town for a "shamanistic tour" led by Mercedes caught my eye. Hoping it wouldn't be too hokey, I found myself in the zocalo one morning with a dozen other travelers. Mercedes, short and thirtyish, appeared in a pink-and-white huipil with a thousand-watt smile on her broad, brown face, pleased at the turnout.

Two vans sped us off to San Juan Chamula, just 20 minutes from town. On a hillside overlooking its famous church, Mercedes described some regional ironies ("Chiapas wins prizes for export-quality coffee, but here we drink Nescafe") and the complex politics and religion of this poor community of 100,000 Indians. "It is here," she pointed to her head, "that the Indians were destroyed by the Spanish, and we are still paying for it." That the Chamulans, despite their poverty, have kept their own identity after centuries of battering is amazing.

One of their slow-dying ways is a virulent sexism: two wives to every man, no shoes for the women (their feet are as coarse and hard as truck tires), and utter subservience (they must always walk behind the man). "Because of machismo, I don't move here and marry a Chamulan man," Mercedes explained. "Here the women call getting married 'committing suicide.' Many are delaying marriage these days because they make their own living with handicrafts. The men think I'm a pretty crazy woman," she grinned, "but they accept me."

Mercedes is that rare case: a liberated Latina. She understands the Indians, having faced prejudice herself as the city's top guide and as a woman. Married once, she had a son, then was abandoned by her husband. She hasn't remarried. "I can tell when men want to take advantage of me," she said. "Sometimes I get depressed to think I may be alone the rest of my life. Then I snap out of it and keep going."

As she sailed down into the village, leading with a red-and-white umbrella like a Mexican Mary Poppins, she smiled and waved, greeting everyone by name, gossiping with the ladies selling bananas and shawls. Their faces, normally flat and shut, lit up with a fondness and trust seldom attained between indigenas and mestizas. Mercedes has worked out a good deal: tours that earn her a living, bring profit to the Indians, and give outsiders an insider's view of a very private people.

We started at a town official's home with a leaf-ruffled doorway. Candles lit a crude altar inside, where copal incense burned in the backs of terracotta bulls and we were asked to leave a coin. The lady of the house opened a bottle of posh, a local cane liquor so potent that 14 of us could not finish the jigger of it passed among us.

That was just the appetizer. The real gut-busting drama lay inside the church on the square. Appearing innocently Catholic -- white stucco with carefree aqua trim -- it contains a world as pagan as voodoo, an excellent cash cow for the local coffers. After paying the town authorities, we timidly entered the dim church. Instead of pews the cement floor was scattered with pine needles and hundreds of glittering candles awash in the eerie drone of chanting. We sat in one corner like mute initiates into the otherworldly workings of the cosmos, stirred by the weird casting of spells over Cokes and chickens.

"Souls and churches are Spanish," Mercedes told us. "Shamans talk about invisible, cosmic energy." Shamans of both sexes ("God isn't macho in choosing curanderos") do ritual cleansings (limpias) to remove villagers' negative energy ("what we call depression," said Mercedes).

The limpias looked like a lot more fun than therapy. Near us a shaman in a murmuring trance was running eggs over a woman's arms and braids to absorb her bad energy. Next he sprayed posh from his mouth onto her head, passed a live chicken over the candles and ended by sharing a spiked Coke with her, the idea being to burp out the problem.

"Those nasty Indians drink in church," the Mexicans of San Cristobal have complained, not realizing that posh is to the shamans as wine is to the priest. The Indians take their rituals so seriously that if anyone dares shoot photos in their church, it's said they'll smash the camera and put the offender in jail. Rumor has it that two foreigners were once hanged for violating that rule.

This sensitivity to photography cropped up everywhere. I drove with some Europeans to Amatenango, a village of superb potters. At one home, a teenage Indian girl gave a lesson in molding a dove to a Swiss woman who fumbled bravely and hilariously with the clay. But warm as the villagers were, they allowed no photos. It's only respectful to ask permission. Some Indians will say yes if you ante up a dollar.

You can see Indians from every major village at San Cristobal's daily market. Every morning except Sundays, they bring in goods to sell and trade. The result is a feverish work of folk art. Squat ladies, nursing babies, grip turkeys by the legs. A father and son, two midgets in pink, lick tiny four-color ice cream cones. Stands glisten with yellow pepinos, huge pineapples, and tawny, chapped faces with gold teeth. Long-ribboned hats and butterflies flutter up a cobbled walk roofed in hanging clothes like stained glass.

I reeled through this kaleidoscope searching for the candle market, finally deciding to let myself get lost. A few minutes later I stumbled on a side-alley choked with dangling tapers, some as big as bludgeons. Nearby stalls were heaped with quartz-like copal incense, which captured the pungent scent of the whole town. When I bought a bag, the vendor called the crystals "tears of the copal tree. When the tree is cut, it cries sap."

The delights of the market spill into the surrounding streets. On Avenida Utrilla I found a surprising amber workshop (taller de amber) at Plaza Sivan. Its artists, using the crudest equipment, have sculpted amber from northern Chiapas into dainty, first-rate miniatures -- a jaguar devouring a woman, a spider featuring a tiny real spider frozen in the amber itself -- and honeytoned jewelry. On the street of artesanias, Real de Guadalupe, you can spruce up your ethnic look with garish blouses, patchwork vests, baggy skirts and woven sashes galore. Of all the city's bazaars, the plaza around Santo Domingo and La Caridad (Our Lady of Charity) dazzled me most. Weavings flood the stones with hues of berries and wine in the shadow of the old cracked churches. Indian women sit hopefully before their wares, calling "Que va a llevar?" (What'll you take?), and you feel like a heel unless you buy some of the incandescent goods so lovingly made by hand.

The mood changes utterly in the gloomy, sixteenth-century basilica of Santo Domingo. Its gaudy baroque interior and goldleaf-encrusted pulpit made me think of a decadent carousel, and its musty oils of martyrs made paradise seem a grim destination. Why do so many old Latin churches reek of such suffering? I far preferred the simple, sunlit interior of nearby La Caridad, where 34 bouquets of carnations and tuberoses exhaled a garden's fragrance. By contrast, a bloody Jesus laid out in a glass coffin in Santo Domingo reminded me of a macabre Prince Charming and sent me hurrying outside for fresh air.

Santo Domingo's decorative pink facade, as light as cake frosting, concealed within its curlicues the Hapsburg emblem of a two-headed eagle and the Imperial Coat of Arms of Carlos I, King of Spain. I also confess to liking the bronze statue of Captain Diego de Mazariegos outside Santo Domingo. The way this conquistador surveys the rooftops of town from his pedestal conveys a sense of real pride in his corner of heaven. I left San Cristobal in an icy, crystalline rain storm that evaporated about halfway to Tuxtla. A stunning rainbow out of a children's coloring book arched across the mountains. I drove through its prisms of pale Mayan pinks and blues, and as I dropped into the humid valley it faded like something divine in the higher distances.

HOW AND WHERE

GETTING THERE: Most major airlines fly to Mexico City. From there, Mexicana flies to Tuxtla Gutierrez. But beware: foggy weather often closes down Tuxtla's main airport, particularly between November and February. I got stuck in the town for two days on my way back, and finally managed to escape by small plane to Oaxaca and from there flew to Mexico City. For the Mexico City-Tuxtla connection, a reliable alternative to Mexicana is a local line called Aviacsa (Tel: 3-09-78 or Fax: 961-2-74-05; in Mexico City: 6-89-45-15); it operates out of the military airport in Tuxtla, a sterile setting with none of the usual airport amenities, but far from the blinding fog. To get to San Cristobal, go by first-class bus (about $3 round trip) or rent a car at either airport. Weekly rates run about $300 for a VW Jetta or comparable vehicle; insurance costs can wildly inflate the price, but you must have basic Mexican car insurance. Reserve a car early.

HOTELS: All of the following inns have colonial settings, lovely courtyards and comfortable rooms with private baths. Their rates start at $30 per night double. At Posada Diego de Mazariegos (5 de Febrero No. 1; Tel: 8-18-25; Fax: 967-8-08-27), many rooms have fireplaces, all have phones, TVs and carpets. Suites (about $50 double) are enormous. Hotel Santa Clara (Av. Insurgentes No. 1; Tel: 8-11-40; Fax: 967-8-10-41) faces the main square, with more modern rooms (TVs, phones), but far fewer gardens. Hotel Ciudad Real (Plaza 31 de Marzo No. 10; Tel: 8-01-87; Fax: 967-8-04-64), also on the square, boasts a dreamy interior courtyard-restaurant and giant hearth, but no fireplaces in the small rooms. Hotel Espanol (1 de Marzo No. 16; Tel: 8-00-45) has tiled fireplaces in every room, though the rugs and furnishings are a tad shabby. Na-Bolom (Av. Vicente Guerrero No. 33; Tel: 8-14-18) has 15 colorful guestrooms with fireplaces for $35 per night double.

WHERE TO EAT: Restaurants are plentiful, but don't expect to find any gourmet meals in San Cristobal. For the most part I lived on popcorn, huevos a la Mexicana (eggs with salsa) and cappuccinos. Meals run from $3 to $10 per person. My favorite breakfast spot was Los Arcos (Francisco Madero No. 6). Restaurant Tuluc (Insurgentes No. 5) is popular for soups and salads. I indulged in crepas con cajeta (crepes in caramel sauce) at Cafe Ululu (20 de Noviembre No. 4) and the upstairs Cafe del Teatro (1 de Marzo No. 8); both specialize in crepes. La Galeria (Hidalgo No. 3) served a tasty chicken baked in honey and soy sauce. At El Fogon de Jovel (16 de Septiembre No. 11), I tried regional dishes like tamales chiapaneco while a Zinacantecan combo squeaked out tunes on their fiddles.

NA-BOLOM: This classic hacienda-museum is located at Av. Vicente Guerrero No. 33; Tel. 8-14-18, a brisk walk from the zocalo. From Tuesday through Saturday at 4:00 p.m. there's a tour in English for about $1.50. For an additional sum you can see the film La Reina de la Selva about Trudy Blom's work in the Lacandon rainforest.

SAN CRISTOBAL TOURIST OFFICE AND VILLAGE TOURS: The tourist office, open daily, is right on the zocalo in the municipal palace. Information about village tours with Mercedes is posted on a board right outside. Most hotels post notices about her tours as well.

SIDETRIP TO PALENQUE: Several travel agencies in San Cristobal can arrange this day-trip by car to Agua Azul and the ruins of Palenque. There are no flights from San Cristobal. I don't recommend visitors driving this route alone since the road is in awful condition. Try Agencia de Viajes Pedrero Villanueva next door to the Hotel Santa Clara, where a driver costs between $35 and $140 for the trip, depending on the number of people involved (four maximum). It's a beautiful but circuitous four-to-five-hour drive to Palenque (dramamine recommended). You can see all the ruins in a few hours. If you want to stay in the nondescript town of Palenque overnight, the Hotel Mision Palenque (Rancho San Martin de Porres, Tel. 5-04-66; Fax: 5-04-99) has a tropical atmosphere and simple rooms for $60 a night double.

WHAT TO PACK: San Cristobal is cold in winter and cool at night even in summer. Pack warm clothes if you're going between October and March, sweaters for April through September (umbrella for any time).

PLAYING IT SAFE: As in most parts of Mexico, be sensible about what you eat and drink. Water in most restaurants is fine but buy some bottled water for your hotel. Do not drive at night and be especially careful on the winding, misty mountain roads around San Cristobal. Always ask before photographing the Indians, especially in their own villages (some villages do not allow photographs anywhere).

MONEY MATTERS: Be aware that Mexican money has changed: the government recently introduced the neuvo peso (new peso or NP): 1 NP = 1,000 old pesos. 3NP (3,000 old pesos) = $1.00. The changeover is still in transition, so your bills, coins and charges will be in both new and old forms.

While prices are rising in Mexico's big resorts, San Cristobal has remained very reasonable. Major credit cards are widely accepted all over town, but many establishments do not accept travelers checks; cash them at the town's various banks or a money exchange house.