Textiles and tortillas in Zinacantan

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We arrived at Zinacantan at around 10:30am. It was a small town with many greenhouses growing flowers surrounding the centre. Flowers are a large part of their industry, however they are famous for the textiles that they produce. Dan and I had already seen and bought a woven piece the day before at the indigenous markets in San Cristobal, but were keen to see what else they produced.

We visited a house on the main road, that had the first large room totally dedicated to a religious shrine (with a tv in the corner). No other furniture was in the room. The floor was covered in green pine needles, which represent good luck and the shrine, dedicated to various saints, was decorated with many flowers. In front of the shrine, 4 pagan animals were lined up. Paganism mixed with Catholicism is popular in the area, due to the Mayan pagan beliefs combining with the Catholic religion when it was first introduced.

The next room in the building was set up as a shop and had different textiles hung around all of the walls. One woman demonstrated the traditional way to weave using a loom strapped around her back. The loom was mobile, so that they could weave anywhere that they happened to be. The local women showed us their wares, which consisted of scarves, shirts, traditional clothes, belts and brightly coloured animal and nature designs in woven pieces, similar to the wall hanging that we bought.

The local people can be identified by the colour purple that they wear. Purple is an extremely difficult colour to manufacture naturally, so in the past it would have been a special colour that many other people couldn't reproduce. Now days, they can get the dye from artificial sources, but some still dye their threads using natural colours only.

A Mexican lady in our group volunteered to dress up in a special white dress that had a cross at the chest and feathers around the base for good luck. It was a traditional wedding garment for the bride. The cross is both a pagan and Christian symbol and so even though the cross looks Christian, the purpose may not have been. I was dressed in a traditional shirt, skirt, belt and over shirt or jacket. I was told that I could put the white dress on top, which is how the locals would have worn the wedding dress, but it would have been too many layers for me and it was way too big anyway. I would have been dragging it along on the dirt floor.

We were offered the local firewater, called Posh. It tasted like vodka, but it was made from fermented corn and sugar. Originally the people would have made a hole in the ground, fermenting the liquor inside for 3 weeks, where it would obtain gases from the earth. The people used it to become intoxicated, allowing them to communicate with the gods directly without an intermediary. The gas made them burp, which they believed upsurped bad spirits. In modern times, soft drinks are an important import due to the instant gas they provide. The people no longer have a need for the alcohol to contain gas and so they do not use the old distillation process. As the Posh no longer contains gas (and burping qualities), the people combine the liquor with soft drink (mainly Coca-Cola) to achieve the same purpose. This enables them to practice their worship every day if they so wish, instead of once every 3 weeks.

After our fun in the textiles room, we went into the back room, which was made of mud bricks and had an earthen floor. A traditinal open fire with a round steel plate mounted on top was used to cook fresh tortillas. The grandmother of the family along with the grand-daughter were making black corn tortillas by hand for us to eat. The tortillas looked blue once cooked and we ate them with large local beans, green salsa, cheese and ground pumpkin seeds. It was all quite tasty.

Different coloured corn is grown in the area - white, black, red and yellow. The people believed that the corn was very important and that each colour represented a different meaning. The white corn represented the brain, the yellow represented the skin, the red represented the blood, and the black represented the bones. It is all part of their pagan belief.

We left with our bellies full, ready for the next part of our tour to Chamula (see next blog).

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