Most of our Penland School of Crafts travelers continued on with me from Oaxaca to explore Chiapas. Our journey began at the ADO bus station where we boarded an overnight luxury bus called the Platino with twenty-five reclining seats, leaving at 8:30 p.m. and arriving in San Cristobal de Las Casas at 7:30 a.m. the next day. 
Our destination, La Joya Hotel, is our base for exploring the art and archeology of the region. It’s a long and winding road! I recommend taking ginger drops in water, eating some crystallized ginger and taking a sleep aid! Hosts Ann Conway and John Do prepare a spectacular first night Thai welcome dinner after we visit Sergio Castro and his museum. Next, bed!
Chiapas vies for the title of Mexico’s poorest state along with Oaxaca. It is a sorry competition. Both states are filled with isolated mountain communities that have little access to health care, education, nutrition and employment. Rural life is tied to the land where people cultivate corn, squash and beans and weave on backstrap looms. The result is the creation of magnificent textiles, a tourist draw. Isolation has preserved tradition at a huge cost and the politics are complex.
Chiapas is rich in Maya culture filled with pre-Hispanic, indigenous folk practices blended with Spanish-introduced Catholic beliefs. Known as syncretism, we can see this in every corner of life ranging from food to textiles to religious celebrations today. The Mayan world spans southern Mexico, Guatemala, Belize and Honduras and her political borders are artificial and seamless.
Our expert first day guide is Patrick, fluent in English, who studied archeology and history at University of California at Berkeley, son of a Mexican mother and Irish father. His uncle was the famed Bishop Samuel Ruiz Garcia, who mediated the peace treaty with the Zapatistas and the PRI.
We learned much from Patrick about Spanish colonialism, the cultural and political history and the life of indigenous people. One cannot visit Chiapas without putting the textiles into the context of the people who make them.
That’s why we include a visit to the Sergio Castro Museum as an introduction to Chiapas life on the first day, after a walking tour of the great pedestrian avenues of San Cristobal de Las Casas with Patrick. Much has been written about Sergio.
Sergio Castro is a hero, folk legend and medicine man who treats indigenous people who have suffered burn injuries at no cost. Donations from visitors like us help fund medicines and supplies. He has won many humanitarian awards.
We see everyday and ritual clothing. We see the skull rattle and string instrument made from gourds. We learn about the Maya language variations and the Lancandon tribe in the forest who escaped Spanish colonization.
The photos on this post include our walking tour around San Cristobal de Las Casas, and our visit with Sergio Castro to see his textile collection of the region and understand his work.
We are not guides but educators. Norma Hawthorne Shafer has spent over 35 years at major universities organizing and delivering award winning educational programs for adults. When you travel with us you can rely on getting an in-depth experience from local experts who are most knowledgeable in their fields. We can include hands-on workshops to enrich the learning experience. Our forte is developing customized programs for arts and cultural organizations like we did for Penland School of Crafts.
Madrid, Morocco and Mexico: Conquest, Empire, Power and Religion
Madrid was my gateway city to and from Morocco. I planned two full days there on the way back for arts immersion. (It wasn’t enough time!) What was quickly revealed were the inextricable links between Spain, Mexico and the Americas, and North Africa. This last stop on my journey tied it all together. Our histories are linked, intertwined, related.
Flanking the entrance to the Palacio Real in Madrid are greater than life-size marble statues of Moctezuma, Mexico’s Aztec ruler (above right), and Atahualpa, Peru’s Inka king. The conquest of Mexico and Peru provided Spain with extraordinary New World wealth and power including gold, silver, cochineal and labor.
These sculptures acknowledge the subjugated people of Mexico and Peru on whose backs the Spanish Empire was built during the reign of Holy Roman Emperor and King Charles (Carlos) V. The sculptures also represent Spanish religious will to convert the world to Catholicism through whatever means. The Baroque 18th Century palace built by Phillip (Felipe) IV honors the role his grandfather King Charles played in empire building and solidifying his succession.
At the beginning of the 16th Century, Spain defined herself as defender of orthodoxy. At the same time as Cortes and Pisarro were funded to plunder and convert the Americas, the Spanish kings were coalescing territory and power on the Iberian Peninsula. The Spanish Inquisition, started in 1492 by Ferdinand La Catolica and Isabel la Catolica (as they are known in Spain and Mexico), to purify Spain and purge her of Moslems and Jews, continued until 1834 and extended to Mexico and her territories in the American southwest. At the same time, the growing Protestant movement promised to threaten traditional faith.
As I walked the magnificent Palacio Real halls, grander than Versailles, surrounded by a collection of Renaissance art second only to Italy, handwoven Belgium tapestries, crystal chandeliers, sterling silver, gilded mirrors, and all the adornments of royalty, I could not stop thinking about the human cost to the indigenous peoples of the Americas to finance Habsburg Spain, European Machiavellian politics, and the Thirty Years War.
Velazquez, Titian, Botecelli, Rubens, Hieronymus Bosch, Goya, Rafael and Tintoretto are only of the few artists commissioned and collected by Spanish monarchs and on exhibit at the Museo el Prado. The collection in the Museo el Prado is extraordinary. At the Palacio Real, I was able to see an exhibition open to the public for the first time of paintings decorating the walls of El Escorial, the monastery and mausoleum constructed as a religious retreat center by Phillip IV, located 45 miles from Madrid.
When I returned to Hostal Don Juan — fabulous and affordable — I conveyed my experience to Juan Antonio. He replied wistfully that Spain was once the most powerful country in the world. Ah, yes, I said, things change, don’t they? America is on the wane and now China takes her turn. Then, I returned to my favorite tapas bar Mercado de la Reina, where locals sip great beer on tap and delicious red table wine starting at 11 a.m.
The Spanish may no longer be a world power, but they sure know how to live!
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Posted in Cultural Commentary, Travel & Tourism
Tagged conquest, kings, Madrid, Mexico, Morocco, Peru, politics, religion, Spain