Category: Chiapas

Rebeca Morimoto Hishikawa | Digital Illustration | Lima, 2021

Vulnerabilis Humanitas On the glimmers in the cracks of being

By Carlos Mendoza Álvarez

Last Thursday, the JobeLab collective —formed by friends and colleagues from the city to promote open conversations about issues that matter to the quality of life of diverse communities— brought us together at the La Madriguera bookstore, in the Guadalupe neighborhood of the city of Jobel, the indigenous name of San Cristóbal de Las Casas, to talk about Artificial Intelligence (AI).

The topic brought together nearly fifty people from diverse generations, backgrounds, and interests, drawn from the world of social activism, academia, the Church, and the arts. The pretext was to propose various interpretations of Pope Leo XIV's encyclical "Magnifica Humanitas," published on May 15th, the centenary of his predecessor Leo XIII's encyclical "Rerum Novarum," or "On New Things," written when the Roman Catholic Church was grappling with the challenges of industrialization.

The fundamental question, however, was not merely technical or pastoral: it was a question about the very soul of our time. How can we safeguard the magnificence and vulnerability of humanity when machines promise efficiency, calculation, and memory without wounds? How can we recognize, amidst the digital dazzle, that our greatness lies not in becoming invulnerable, but in learning to inhabit fragility (vulnerabilis humanitas) as a place of encounter, discernment, and human-divine communion?

Today, digitalization has brought about an unprecedented cultural transformation. Data, algorithms, and prompts —those instructive teachers designed on databases— exert an omnipresent influence through our cell phones, tablets and computers that, as Abraham Mena commented, are applied with increasing sophistication to all spheres of social life: the economy, science, technology, the arts, sexuality, education and religion.

It is a “machine” that is not intelligent, argued Kathia Loyzaga, but one whose mechanisms we must learn to understand and manage: exploring its possibilities, recognizing its limitations, and always maintaining, as Leo XIV emphasized, the primacy of the human, with its creativity and unique talents as the image of God. This irreplaceable core is the human heart, which João Almeida reminded us is the center of the religious message of Christianity and other spiritual traditions of humanity. This reality of being in relation to others is part of our path to humanization and liberation, as Paulo Freire observed.

In addition to recognizing the opportunities that AI offers for the development of science and technology, with an immediate impact on our lives, we must also consider the risks posed by the misuse of this technology when it falls into the hands of governments, militaries, and transnational corporations that profit from machine learning for their own benefit.

When addressing the ethical dimension of AI, the topic I was assigned to discuss in the talk, I wanted to recall Ivan Illich's warning about the age of systems: a time when humans have become replaceable subsystems, at any moment, by robots and algorithmic decisions under the command of a "handful of oligarchs," as Pope Leo said on his recent trip to Cameroon, referring to the masters of Silicon Valley.

Magnificent and vulnerable humanity before the warlords

Pope Leo XIV's theoretical framework allows him to move with ease within a vision of the human person as a relational being, exploring the intricacies of subjectivity masterfully narrated by Saint Augustine sixteen hundred years ago in his theological works and in his monastic rule of life. From this perspective, Leo XIV speaks of the Intimacy of Humanity to praise "magnificent humanity," which has received from God the indelible mark of his love, while at the same time recognizing the limits it cannot transgress under penalty of becoming a source of moral chaos. Leo therefore emphasizes that, while humanity is "magnificent" because it is the image of divinity, it is also "vulnerable" because it is a finite creature: a subjectivity that explores its limits, recognizes them, and discovers them as a place of encounter with others, with the cosmos, and with God.

Some voices within the global theological community propose continuing to critically examine how to approach AI, while still acknowledging its potential benefits for humanity and the planet. One provocative voice is that of Paolo Gamberini, an Italian Jesuit philosopher, who envisions a papal encyclical on this topic within the theoretical framework of Teilhard de Chardin's cosmic Christ, the great 20th-century scientist and mystic. In his cosmology, humanity appears intimately linked to the evolution of species and the cosmos from the Christic Alpha, including new creatures—such as AI—all assumed by Divine Wisdom in the movement toward the Omega, where the total Christ will be all in all.

The discussion yielded diverse perspectives. For example, a young sculptor distanced himself from AI because, in his view, it cannot replace the human genius of artistic creation. Another voice came from a leader defending the Jobel wetlands, a land of reeds and waterways now threatened by real estate development, urban chaos, and the apathy of a population that pollutes its waterways with garbage, while the municipal government proves incapable of regulating the urban disorder. How can AI be a useful tool for urban planning that doesn't displace residents as active participants in caring for Mother Earth?

New discussions about AI are being organized in various forums: in schools throughout the city and in communities in Zinacantán, the neighboring city, where younger generations live with AI daily and often use it naively or indiscriminately. The goal is to generate collective reflection on how to "disarm" AI of its serious risks and dangers, and how to "recover the human element" in this new digital age for Indigenous peoples, mestizo communities, and multicultural cities. This is a shared task that urges us to promote the dignity of all human beings, along with the species with which we share this "place," where life flourishes in diverse ways, in new and surprising forms of "the vernacular"—that connection to the land so dear to Illich as a place of conviviality because only there do we flourish as individuals and as a human species in harmony with the vital environment that sustains us.

But the recovery of our humanity isn't decreed from a room, nor is it exhausted by the analysis of an encyclical. It needs to be embodied in connections, territories, shared memories, and small fires that withstand the wind. That's why, upon leaving the discussion, the question of AI began to resonate with other names: wetland, volcano, cabin, breath, community. There, in those cracks where life persists, resisting so much violence, reflection became a path to learning how to be different.

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In honor of Ivan Illich's legacy, and as part of the numerous events commemorating the centenary of his death, the JobeLab collective is organizing the presentation of the book "Hosting the World: Thinking with Ivan Illich Under One Common Roof" by Elías González and Carlos Tornel, next Saturday, July 18th, at 5 pm, at Belil Restaurant in our city. The authors will be present, and Irene Ragzzini, Fabio Ceballos, and I will offer commentary. It will undoubtedly be an opportunity to share valuable insights and reflect together on our local context.

From the algorithm to the campfire: the triangle-volcano and the magma

After my trip to the land of the volcanoes in the Puebla-Tlaxcala Valley, which I recounted here last week, the echoes of my story resonated as far as Kerala, India, where Kochurani Abraham, a beloved feminist theologian, wrote to me with emotion about that shared yearning for a “Cosmic Home” where countless micro-planets and mini-stars can be lovingly cared for with the radiance of the divine Ruah. A hut-home that illuminates the path, like straw beginning to burn in the hollow of a fire already prepared by its inhabitants, who fan the flames with their breath and with the help of a “tlatecuinaltiani,” or palm-leaf blower in Nahuatl.

Echoes of mutual support also arrived from Oregon, with Juan Carlos and Carolina dreaming of a shared “place” where we can meet for periods of time, open to the embodied spirituality of the ancestral Peruvian Quechua in communion with the ancestral Mexican Andean highlands. And from Minnesota, in the Twin Cities, Laurel sent reminiscences of her time in Puebla and its northern highlands when she was an exchange student: a journey that later led her to El Salvador to walk with the Basic Ecclesial Communities of that sister Central American country. Other echoes also arrived from Soweto, Wallmapu, and Dakota, from friends with whom I have shared memorable moments of spirituality rooted in diverse sacred lands, with vernacular thought and artistic creation that allow us to always celebrate life on the borders of death.

For three decades, I have been weaving networks of thought, activism, and spirituality within the cracks of hegemonic worlds, alongside colleagues and comrades from diverse collectives and communities in resistance, where we learn to be. From this emerged processes such as Mutual Spiritual and Theological Accompaniment, which brings together around a hundred people each year in virtual homes facilitated by a chef, culminating in an annual retreat, either virtual or in person, visiting territories of resistance. Also born along this path are the Resiste/Re-existe festival-gatherings, with dozens of social movements from the epistemic South engaging in dialogue with academics and artists to strengthen our diverse spiritualities, our mutual solidarity, and our developing decolonial thought. And as the third vertex of the triangle, thought itself: the intersection of postmodern phenomenology, mimetic theory, decolonial thought and apophatic philosophy, enriched with new approaches thanks to an exciting generation of colleagues such as Cleusa Caldeira and Pedro Igor Leite da Silva in Brazil, Laurel Potter in the United States and El Salvador, Juan Carlos La Puente in Oregon and Peru, Juan Jesús Vázquez in Mexico, and Soledad del Villar, Valentina Nilo and Martín Aguilera in Chile.

As a collective of decolonial philosophical and theological thought, we will meet in March of next year in Cholula, Puebla, as the ancestral homeland of the volcano-triangle, to share intuitions, findings, and proposals for thought and life, with the aim of continuing to walk with our communities of belonging by choice in the construction of other possible worlds, encouraged by the incandescent magma of the divine Ruah in the cracks of being.

Jobel, July 11, 2026

July 12, 2026
Juan Fuentes | Critical Zionism Studies | 2025

The Zionisms that threaten us On the (ab)use of the Bible in times of the Great Nakba

By Carlos Mendoza Álvarez

In recent weeks, an alert was raised in Chiapas due to the presence of the Israeli group "Heroes for Life" in primary schools in Zinacantán. This group, comprised of young Israelis, offers activities such as English courses and school facility renovations, presenting itself as an "Israeli youth volunteer" experience with a smiling and friendly "humanitarian work" for vulnerable populations around the world. Apparently, many of them and their advisors are active or retired members of the Israeli army who have participated in various Zionist wars, as Herman Bellinghausen recently commented.

A few weeks earlier, the Israeli consul in Mexico, Hilla Burk, accompanied by Israeli security advisors, was received by the Secretary of "People's Security," Óscar Aparicio Avendaño, at his offices in the state government building in Tuxtla Gutiérrez. To this day, the public has not been fully informed about the agenda of that meeting, nor about the agreements reached. According to news reports, in other states such as Chihuahua and Querétaro, Israeli advisory contracts already exist with the current governments regarding strategic security, which include contracts for the sale of "state-of-the-art" technology and weaponry from the growing transnational military industry.

Adding to this Israeli activism in Mexico are the “healing retreats” organized by the Israeli organization Chabat in Cozumel and other Mexican Caribbean beaches, aimed at active and reserve members of the Israeli army who have participated in “the war to defend the State of Israel,” as reported by journalist Georgina Zerega. This is a euphemism to conceal their participation in the ongoing genocide against the Palestinian people in Gaza and the West Bank, as well as the invasion of southern Lebanon with the Greater Israel project, which, as analyzed by thinker Silvana Rabinovich, includes the construction of the Third Temple in Jerusalem as the supreme symbol of this religious war narrative. In some countries, such as Chile, Ireland, and Spain, campaigns have been launched to denounce crimes against humanity committed by Israeli soldiers who are identified passing through these countries, and whom organized civil society and some governments are seeking to bring before national and international courts.

There is a plan for Israeli territorial expansion in Latin America beyond the Middle East, as investigative journalists have documented in Patagonia and Yucatán, strategic locations due to their natural resources such as water, minerals, and rare earth elements.

Behind that humanitarian and tourism facade, Zionism deploys a perverse religious ideology based on a misnamed political theology of election and the promise of the land, making the Bible a weapon of war.

Given this scenario, Christianity faces one of its greatest challenges amidst the civilizational crisis we are experiencing today: discerning the idolatries that supplant the name of God to bring about the death of peoples and the control of strategic territories. Judaism and Islam—in the critical expressions of their own spiritual traditions—will also have to discern the challenge of the Great Nakba, or Great Catastrophe of our time, as the Puerto Rican philosopher Nelson Maldonado-Torres calls the civilizational crisis of the coloniality of techno-fascism.

Pope Leo XIV, for his part, has drawn attention to the “warlords” who control the war economy marked, from now on, by the abusive use of artificial intelligence for the benefit of an oligarchy of digital technocrats, among whom are the owners of the mega-companies of Silicon Valley in California.

But as pastor and teacher in the See of Peter, the transcultural Pope has also denounced the blasphemy of those who use God's name to wage war, without explicitly mentioning Zionism or Trumpism. Indeed, in his first Encyclical Letter, "Magnifica Humanitas," Leo XIV denounces "the ideologies of death" that cause suffering and wars due to the greed of the modern world in its "posthumanist" version, which prepares the way for a species superior to humankind, generated by algorithms, and "transhumanist" because it subordinates humanity to the system controlled by biotechnological devices. This is an apocalypse of humanity that Ivan Illich had already predicted six decades earlier.

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In this context, Christian communities throughout the world—in their diversity of traditions as collectives of believers, academics, and artists, together with social movements of prophetic and liberation inspiration—are called to understand and deactivate Zionism, both Jewish and evangelical, which lies at the root of Israeli territorial expansionism today, particularly in Latin America and the Caribbean, with the complicity of the extreme right that haunts political life in Argentina, Chile, Ecuador, El Salvador, Guatemala, Mexico, and the United States.

First and foremost, it is about honoring the name of God as divine Wisdom that guides our steps toward justice, peace, and mercy in a world at global war, or, as Silvana Rabinovich calls it, an ongoing “omnicide.” The name of God denotes both the unfathomable divine mystery and the inalienable dignity of creation as the work of His love, which no power in this world can supplant or control. Neither ancient demonology nor the hierarchies of today's necropower lords can replace the divine Glory that always transcends political power, as the Italian thinker Giorgio Agamben has so astutely analyzed.

Secondly, it is important to dismantle the political-religious ideology (not political theology in the strict sense) that today turns the Bible into a weapon of war, especially against the Palestinian people and the Semitic peoples of Palestine, both Christian and of other religious traditions. In this regard, Mitri Raheb and Munther Isaac—Palestinian Lutheran theologians resisting the genocide of their people—constantly emphasize the importance of dismantling the Zionist ideology that has manipulated the theology of the land promise and divine election for the exclusive benefit of the Jewish people.

It is important to remember, as the Mexican-Lebanese intellectual Alfredo Jalife-Rahme points out, that the Zionist lobby in the United States and Great Britain created the Zionist ideology in the 19th century as an expression of the colonialism of the Jews of the Diaspora, who are not Semites but descendants of the Jewish presence in the countries of Central and Eastern Europe in the 19th century. Zionism originated as a political ideology for the control of the territory of Palestine for the exclusive benefit of the Jewish people.

And third, we must remember that the Zionist expansionism that has reached Mexico, specifically Chiapas, requires critical monitoring by civil society, churches, and governments regarding its plans to control territories. This expansion is justified by the ideological narrative disseminated by the Israeli state under Netanyahu and his Minister of National Security, Itamar Ben-Gvir, with its brazenly promoted genocidal and expansionist logic of Greater Israel. The Zionist project is rooted in a powerful war industry that makes Jewish and Christian Zionism a threat to humanity and our common home.

Following the threads of decolonial theology, both Jewish and Christian, it is necessary to reread the Bible as the book of faith of the Semitic peoples in the promise of the living God, who is progressively opening himself to all nations of humanity as recipients of the messianic times that overcome fratricidal violence and establish a new humanity. This is a theology of “the meek who will inherit the earth” (Matthew 5:5), according to the poetic imagination of Jesus of Galilee, as Mitri Raheb reminds us, stemming from the God of life's preferential option for the poor and excluded of all times. It is a theology of the promise fulfilled in the event of the resurrection of Jesus, the Christ of God, which brings to its most radical expression the manifestation “not of a God of the dead, but of the living” (Matthew 22:32). Promise and choice that the Abba of Jesus always fulfills from those excluded from hegemonic systems of domination to summon all the peoples of the earth to the feast of desire, as proposed by the Mexican queer theologian Ángel Méndez.

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Once the civil society of Chiapas and Mexico discovers the threads woven today by Jewish and Christian Zionism, which is expanding throughout the world in complicity with techno-fascist companies and governments that promote discrimination against peoples and religions, it will be necessary to promote communities of encounter between diverse spiritual traditions, in mutual support, nurturing the resistance to evil with such diverse faces.

Caring for the children and youth of Chiapas in the face of the threat of Zionism today, together with the accountability of authorities at different levels of government in the financing and management of public security, will allow the creation of environments of unrestricted respect for human dignity, with special attention to the most marginalized and vulnerable people and communities.

Then we must promote the celebration of divine blessing for all nations, not only for the Jewish people who in their Zionist version are betraying their vocation to be witnesses of the Eternal, as described by André Neher, the great French Jewish thinker of the 20th century.

Let us not forget that messianic times come to all peoples - in the midst of the history of humanity threatened with death, but promised fullness by the God of Life - thanks to the righteous people of history who give their lives for the world that came from God, not from the powerful of this world.

San Cristóbal de Las Casas, June 20, 2026

June 20, 2026
Antún Kojtom | Mural 500 OP Chiapas | Detail: sketch of Friar Pedro Lorenzo de la Nada with Lacandon Sage | Sots´leb, 2026

The Feast of the Divine Ruah Reflections on the living memory of peoples on the move

By Carlos Mendoza-Álvarez

Fifty days after Easter, Christian communities around the world celebrate the overabundance of divine love, reaping the fruits of the messianic age, gathered with joy in the midst of suffering, as the Hebrew poet says: “Those who sow in tears will reap with songs of joy” (Psalm 126:5).

Two thousand years ago, after mourning the brutal execution of Jesus, the Galilean, by the Roman Empire—in collusion with the Temple authorities of Jerusalem and the enraged mob as part of the infernal mimetic cycle—a period of mourning was necessary for his community of friends and companions to grasp the senselessness of the innocent's death. This question still arises today in the grieving hearts of those who have survived lynchings, both ancient and modern. It is a questioning of the meaning of absence that also beats in the hearts of the Mothers Searching for their disappeared children in Mexico today, a cry that becomes a plea to find their offspring and help them "come home.".

Celebrate that Love is as strong as death and, even more, that Love conquers hate or that Life resists and re-exists At first glance, it seems like an evasion that ignores the suffering of the victims and the urgency of justice. On the contrary, it seems to me that precisely in that hopeful suffering The heart beats with the ethical, political, and spiritual indignation of survivors of so much violence. A cry that is expressed in the public squares of Gaza and Tehran, Beirut and Mexico, Kakuma and Dadaab in Kenya, by those who dedicate their bodies, hearts, and minds to the service of life in the midst of death.

The celebration of Pentecost is rooted in the joy of peoples who, after confronting horror, are able to go further in healing from trauma and quietly cultivating hope. Without denying the painful past, nor the undeniable need to hold the perpetrators accountable, what matters to those who survived is to stand up and live again with hope. This is what I have been learning, step by step, from the collectives queer/cuir who face gender phobias of various kinds, women facing abuse and femicide, as well as indigenous peoples who strengthen their resistance through processes of autonomy of bodies and territories, from the Inuit in Canada to the Mapuche in the far south of our continent.

How can we celebrate the harvest of the divine Ruah in these times of such profound uncertainty? We are witnessing alarming signs of a return to barbarism at the hands of genocidal governments in the Middle East and Africa, as well as in failed states trapped by the complicity of their rulers with transnational criminal organizations, as is the case in Mexico, El Salvador, and Nicaragua. This spiral of genocidal hatred is being transmitted in real time through the attacks of the Israeli Zionist state, which is committing crimes against humanity with the complicity of the United States and the European Union, and the indifference of the international community, against entire populations that stand in the way of its geopolitical power.

Strengthening resistance movements must also confront fundamental debates to find the path to utopia in times of dystopia. Collective memory, which lies at the heart of these processes, is now a battleground. Who tells the story and how they tell it are questions the Zapatistas in Chiapas, like the Sumud Global Flotilla, are asking themselves, attempting to give visibility to those who always remain in the shadows of the power that kills.

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We Dominicans are not exempt from these debates, especially now that we commemorate 500 years since the arrival of the friars to what we now call Veracruz in Mexico, on July 25, 1526. The great feat of evangelization—which undoubtedly brought missionaries inspired by Renaissance utopia and by the zeal for reform of the religious orders to return to their origins of following Christ—was also marked by the libido dominandi of the conquerors who followed that maxim of Western modernity so forcefully expressed by Enrique Dussel: conquiro, ergo sum, that is, "I conquer, therefore I am".

When recounting the history of the Dominican presence in this region of the continent—called Tierra Firme by Western navigators and Mesoamerica by later geographers—we cannot forget that a fundamental contradiction marked the evangelizing work of the Dominican friars in the 16th century, as rigorously studied by Friar Daniel Ulloa Herrero in his doctoral dissertation at El Colegio de México: an observant current led by Friar Domingo de Betanzos, and a prophetic tendency championed by Friar Bartolomé de Las Casas. Undoubtedly, there were many nuances between these two tendencies when it came to evangelizing the colonized lands that later gave rise to the golden age of New Spain, the era of the Baroque churches along the Dominican route from Mexico City to Guatemala, traversing the entire central and southern regions of the Viceroyalty of New Spain.

The splendor of the Baroque art of the convent churches of Puebla, Oaxaca, and Chiapas has shaped a worldview in which Mexico was the axis mundi From that early era of modernity, a meeting point between Asia and Europe, Mexico City was also a laboratory for cosmopolitan culture, as Friar Julián Pablo Fernández liked to say when he was prior of the ruins of the Imperial Convent of Santo Domingo in Mexico City. This era gave birth to a Creole and mestizo culture of universal value, as UNAM historian José Rubén Romero Galván recounts. However, we cannot forget that this Creole culture subjugated and rendered invisible the Indigenous peoples, as contemporary decolonial readings emphasize.

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These reflections come to mind when accompanying a great Tseltal Maya painter, the master Antún Kojtom, who is currently creating a mural commemorating the arrival of the Dominicans in Chiapas, on a wall located in the main square of Sots'leb, between the temple and the market, in the municipal capital of Zinacantán.

For the past six months we have been discussing the narrative of the emerging mural, emphasizing what we now call a "dialogue of knowledge" between the Mayan peoples of Chiapas and the Dominican friars.

We chose a tone conversational The mural depicts scenes that highlight the ancestral religion of the Tsotsil people, particularly their religious roles such as grandmothers, seers, and stewards, with their ritual prayers on the hills, ancestral blessings, and community responsibilities. Through this narrative, we seek to underscore the centuries-old legacy that remains alive today in the pastoral life of the parish of San Lorenzo Mártir in Zinacantán.

In the center of the mural appears the meeting between a Tsotsil steward and a Dominican friar, Fray Bartolomé de Las Casas, both standing with the same dignity, exchanging words, each with his symbol of authority, the staff of command for the first, the Bible for the second.

On the right, a third scene brings together the prophetic Church that has flourished in the Highlands of Chiapas and the Lacandon Jungle from the 16th century to the present day: a group of friars, with Friar Matías de Córdoba who promoted the independence of Chiapas in the 19th century and Friar Raúl Vera with jTotik Samuel beside him, bishops of the Church of the poor and excluded in the 20th century. Above their heads, like kites moved by the wind of the divine Ruah, are the martyrs of the San Cristóbal Church of recent decades: Ignacio Pérez López, pre-deacon of Chicomuselo, Father Marcelo Pérez, parish priest of Guadalupe in Jobel, Simón Pedro Pérez López, member of Las Abejas de Acteal, and Guadalupe Vázquez Luna, survivor of the Acteal massacre.

On the far right appears a highly symbolic scene for the recreation of the historical memory of the Dominican friars in Chiapas, recounting stories of creative rebellion: Friar Pedro Lorenzo de la Nada conversing with a Lacandon sage, both seated on rocks in the shade of a large ceiba tree, the sacred tree of the Maya, with the glyphs of the flowery word emerging from their mouths. The friar moves his hands, signifying eloquence, as he listens. The Lacandon sage touches his heart with one hand and points to Mother Earth with the other. One is dressed in his white habit and black cape; the other, adorned with a jade necklace and white loincloth. They are accompanied by a group of Lacandon women, young people, and children, attentive to the dialogue. This scene seeks to represent the apostolic adventure undertaken by a friar who wanted to go beyond the limits of Christian norms, as Jan de Vos masterfully recounts in his biography of Friar Pedro Lorenzo. What we felt was most important to highlight about the founder of modern Palenque was the audacity of the rebellious friar who "went into nowhere," as the prior of the Santo Domingo de San Cristóbal convent told him when Friar Pedro Lorenzo insisted on going into the jungle to find its inhabitants and announce the Good News. Escaping from the convent, he was lost for several years, later reappearing in the land of the Tsendal people, where he founded Palenque. During his apostolic journey, he reached Pochutla and Lake Lacam-Tum, now known as Miramar, a sacred center for the Lacandon people. From that time, some baptismal records are preserved in the diocesan archives, bearing his new name: Friar Pedro Lorenzo de la Nada (Friar Pedro Lorenzo of Nothingness).

When sharing the sketches of the mural in progress with friends, there has been no shortage of praise for the initiative, especially since it was the result of a long dialogue with civil and religious authorities in Zinacantán. Others have appreciated that the invited artist is a renowned master of contemporary Mayan art. Some critical voices have pointed out the underrepresentation of women, or the prominence of the friars in the images. For my part, once I had agreed with Maestro Antún on the tone From the narrative with the importance of the symbols of the two traditions to be represented in the mural, I received with respect and great admiration the visual proposal of the artist who, with his own genius, will undoubtedly leave us a pictorial legacy that is the gift of the Dominican friars to the people of Zinacantán in this commemoration.

In a couple of weeks we will be celebrating this event in San Cristóbal de Las Casas and Zinacantán.

I'll tell you about the new seeds being sown on this path of living memory.

Jobel, May 22, 2026

May 23, 2026

English