And it happens that when one seeks perhaps he has no time to find.And it happens that suddenly Chiapas arrives.A proud region of mainland Mexico. A Zapatista region that until a few years ago claimed independence under the orders of the sub commander Marcos. A sub commander who commanded.Yes, because the people could remove it at the first mistake. The people were in charge. Ideologies that have had easy ground in Latin America, yet still latent under corrupt and usurpable governments.
Not infrequently riots still happen in this area as the day I decided to leave San Cristobal de Las Casas for Palenque and the peasants in revolt blocked the road.And so another day in this navel of the world.Yes, because San Cristobal is just that. A village that has literally bewitched me. Its music, its colors, its people, it's Buena Vibra. A country like many others, we have thousands of them in Italy. The problem is that young people no longer populate them.Wonderful countries with history and traditions lived only during the holidays a few months a year.San Cristobal is the same: only it is populated by young and old, coming from all over the world, every day of the year. From every angle.Each with its own story, each with its own vibration.Among the streets of the café, a center is a meeting place for poets and rioters, musicians and writers. A small stage and anyone can go up. To recite, to sing, to declaim, or to have his say.Jazz, rock, and electronic evenings.Live music concerts in the middle of the night inside a bakery.The energy of this place is simply crazy and exudes in its pastel-colored houses in the center of a lush valley.Tourism is present here, massive, but for the first time non-invasive, it seems respectful of the local culture like a shy spectator who limits himself to the final applause after an opera.All around nature is overwhelming as a force: canyons, woods, lakes, and waterfalls.History and culture, like the village of San Juan de Chamula where ancient Mayan rites are practiced inside its Christian church based on a religious syncretism that I had never been able to experience in my world tour. Indigenous groups that allow visits, but not photography, the latter steals the soul. Candles and pine needles on the ground instead of benches. Many saints lined up one after the other with a mirror in their hands. The Christ who is placed to the right of John the Baptist, much more important here under his benevolence towards the water, the true treasure of this area.The locals still dress traditionally, the men with hats, the women with a black fur skirt. Sitting on the ground they sing songs interspersed with burps to throw out all negative energies.I look into a corner, a shaman rotates a rooster on the candles before twisting its neck and sacrificing it.I am fascinated by these rituals and how people get involved in them. I do not understand why, on the other hand, they are rituals that appear meaningless, but living them live, being able to observe their participation, hits me hard in the soul.I thought I would stop only a few days instead of those afternoons, in which the clouds turned black and then poured rain to make the streets full rivers, before opening up to the setting sun, became different and I could no longer leave.When I did I headed to Palenque, not far away, in the jungle, to discover Mayan ruins of breathtaking beauty. The jungle, like Angkor Wat, has allowed the conservation of this site to this day.Real jungle with howler monkeys that in the middle of the night make it seem like a jaguar behind the hut.The Mexico I was looking for in the end I found, basically, in the south, on the border with Guatemala. A place I would like to return to one day.In Chiapas, a region I had time to find just when I stopped looking.
