Category: Hope

JobeLab | San Cristóbal de las Casas, Chiapas | 2026

JobeLab An initiative of critical thinking and diverse spiritualities from San Cristóbal de Las Casas

By Carlos Mendoza Álvarez

From the second half of the 20th century, Chiapas became a laboratory of new ways of inhabiting and thinking about the world, with the creative confluence of important social, political, cultural and spiritual processes.

Among them, dynamism stands out synodal (or shared path by all the believing people with their diversity of ministries) of six decades, implemented by the Diocese of San Cristóbal de Las Casas with jTatik Samuel Ruiz as pastor walker And hundreds of local, regional, and international communities and groups, convened for justice and peace for the Indigenous peoples and other communities of this region of Chiapas. In an astonishing confluence of paths, the Indigenous Congress of 1974 marked the beginning of the public presence of Indigenous peoples with their own voice. Indigenous, mestizo, and international social and cultural movements also emerged, with research projects on the rich Mayan heritage, both ancient and modern, developed by teams of social anthropologists, archaeologists, and linguisticists. Waves of researchers arrived from Latin America, the United States, and Europe, and, with an academic model still largely based on extractive practices, made significant discoveries in the social sciences and humanities. The translation of the Bible into Mayan languages, initially promoted by the Summer School of Bible as part of a U.S. interventionist plan, evolved into intercultural dialogue, continued to this day by various Christian churches, including the Roman Catholic Church. Finally, the Zapatista movement, with its armed and media-driven uprising of 1994, became the watershed moment of a social, political, and cultural insurrection that continues to this day as one of the most radical critiques of the hegemonic system of the multi-headed capitalist hydra, including patriarchy and colonialism.

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The “San Cristóbal School” is a name proposed decades ago by Pablo Romo and others in academia and the arts to evoke the legacy of critical thought, resistance, and spirituality that emerged in Chiapas, as a counterpart to the Cuernavaca School, analyzed by Humberto Beck. In their connections and differences, both represent significant contributions to critical thought that arose in Mexico during the last century.

In this way, recognizing the individuals, groups, organizations, and initiatives of civil society that have been an active part of these processes, as a collective inspired by them, with JobeLab -apocope of Jobel which is the Tsotsil name of San Cristóbal de Las Casas and laboratory To designate this city as a laboratory, we seek to give continuity to such a legacy in a new context, focusing on critical thinking and the spiritualities that have sustained them, such as those of the native peoples, Catholic Christianity, and more recently Buddhism and Islam.

Through the initiative JobeLab. Ongoing dialogues and mutual support for re-existences We will continue to cultivate this heritage in the new scenario of the civilizational crisis that humanity faces in the second quarter of the 21st century, where peaceful coexistence between nations and the balance of planet Earth are at risk and call us to promote processes of resistance and re-existence.

We will nurture this initiative based on two inspiring attitudes that are, at the same time, transversal axes of the talks, meetings and festivals that we will organize in various spaces of the city: hospitality and commensality.

The hospitality It is one of the human gestures that most powerfully expresses our shared human condition, that is, our way of becoming individuals and communities as beings in relation to one another. This radical attitude of openness to otherness is a fundamental ethical and political act, where the religions and spiritualities of humanity celebrate a glimpse of divinity.

The commensality, Like the other side of the moon, it is the nourishing soil where we receive the otherness of Mother Earth, of other humans who become our neighbors, and of Divinity, through food and drink created by the unique genius of each people. We celebrate this gift as an inclusive banquet where Divine Sophia prepares a table for all nations and creatures of the cosmos.

Together with Carmen Reyes and Ricardo Hernández, Angélica Evangelista and Abraham Mena, I am enthusiastically participating in this project, drawing on the Dominican tradition of life and thought. In these exchanges, we seek to discover new expressions of the divine and human Word as a creative fire that redeems, animates, and shelters us in our present circumstances. times of hardship as a human species that puts itself and the Common Home at risk, leading us to the precipice of annihilation.

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This week two events will be the formal presentation of JobeLab, after the first event where the initiative germinated, on January 28, with a presentation on Gaza and Chiapas at the Charity temple in the city of San Cristóbal de Las Casas.

On Wednesday, March 25th at 5:30 pm, we will hold the discussion “The School of San Cristóbal,” with the participation of Pablo Romo, who was one of the key figures in the diocesan process of promoting human rights, paving the way for the creation of the Fray Bartolomé de Las Casas Human Rights Center. Martha Elena Welsh, choreographer who animates in Xitla House In Mexico City, workshops were held to support people in situations of extreme vulnerability, facing various forms of violence. And Juan Carlos La Puente, a Peruvian with extensive international experience in providing spiritual support to human rights defenders, has been developing a methodology for this purpose from his base in Oregon, USA. permanent discernment as a path of body for people and communities in re-existence.

And then, on Friday, March 27th at 5 p.m., we will explore another facet of re-existence: forgiveness as a path to reconciliation in contexts of violence. With the Muslim community of San Cristóbal de Las Casas, represented by Shaykh Yahya Rhodus and Shaykh Mudar Abudlghani, we will discuss forgiveness in Christian and Muslim traditions as a common path to peace, at a critical moment of violence in the Middle East. And we will do so accompanied by the extraordinary music and song of Nader Khan, a Canadian Sufi artist.

We invite you to be a part of JobeLab From wherever we may be, whether attending talks and meetings, or imagining and creating similar spaces where we can come together and flourish as individuals and communities in resistance and re-existence, going beyond the spiral of violence that surrounds us, towards a world another world of hospitality and commensality.

Jobel, March 23, 2026

March 23, 2026
Pilar Emitxin | Embodied poetics | 2019

The House of the Incarnate Word A commitment to social and cultural dialogue in Chiapas in the style of the Dominicans

By Carlos Mendoza Álvarez

A few days ago, we opened a new space for dialogue in the city of San Cristóbal de Las Casas on the feast day of Saint Thomas Aquinas. This was the first event in a year-long celebration of the fifth centenary of the arrival of the Dominican friars to Tierra Firme, as the American continent was then called. Abya Yala. Next June we will be holding various cultural and religious events, both in San Cristóbal and in Zinacantán, with the program 500-OP Chiapas which we will announce soon.

Together with Abraham and Angélica, dear friends from Ecosur with whom we worked in university ministry at CUC years ago in Mexico City, and with Carmen and Ricardo, friends involved in social and cultural activism in the city, we have been imagining together a project to continue cultivating the great legacy of the School of San Cristóbal, as it is called Pablo Romo to critical thinking and inculturated liberation theology that has developed in the Highlands of Chiapas for more than half a century, with the specific contribution of the Dominicans in these lands. There are many cultural forums that currently exist here—such as CIDECI and Dialectics in the Museum. jTatik Samuel, El Paliacate, Galería MUY and many more – where it is possible to talk about urgent and important issues for the cosmopolitan society that lives here – a microcosm of Mayan, mestizo and foreign peoples – with its many local, regional and global connections.

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Since the 1970s, San Cristóbal de Las Casas has been the scene of important meetings such as the First Indigenous Congress convened by Bishop Samuel Ruiz and leaders of indigenous communities in 1974, it proved to be a watershed moment in the indigenous consciousness of Mexico, as it refers Fabiola Ramírez in her Master of Arts thesis at Tulane University. She also highlights the First International Symposium of Lascasistas, The event, organized by Manuel Velasco Suárez, Agustín Yáñez, and the Dominican friar Enrique Ruiz, was held in 1974. Both events shared a common thread—starting with the fifth centenary of the birth of Fray Bartolomé de Las Casas—the search for paths to promote justice for the indigenous peoples of Chiapas, subjected for almost five hundred years to a racist system, marked by centuries of social injustice and the suppression of their collective imaginaries in their cultural and religious expressions. The spirit of liberation theology, as a creative reception of the Second Vatican Council, was mediated by the prophetic force of the Second General Assembly of the Latin American and Caribbean Bishops in Medellín in 1968, ecclesial events in which they participated. jTatik Samuel Ruiz, made their presence felt with vigor and creative imagination in these lands.

Two decades of sowing the Gospel in the diocese, with its message of liberation for oppressed peoples, allowed that seed to germinate into a diocesan synod, intimately connected with the indigenous cause, which found in the Zapatista movement one of its most relevant expressions for promoting the autonomy of native peoples. There were other fruitful fruits, such as indigenous theology, which, not without difficulty with Vatican authorities, also expressed the vitality of a profound ecclesial process that continues to this day.

But the old Royal City of the colonial era, inhabited by a mestizo and Creole population that called itself intercultural, He had become accustomed to living with the "Indians" in modern times with a normalized racism, which was expressed as paternalistic assistance from the caxlanes or Creole chieftains towards the Indians, as Rosario Castellanos masterfully recounted in her collection of short stories Ciudad Real.

The Zapatista uprising, in addition to its political effects—with the 1996 San Andrés Accords betrayed by the federal government and the creation of the Caracoles or Zapatista autonomous municipalities—had a cultural impact on the city, which suddenly became more cosmopolitan in its daily life, as they tell university students Immigrants in the Highlands of Chiapas since the years surrounding the uprising. As early as the 1950s, Harvard anthropologists and linguists from the Summer School of the Bible had arrived in the Jobel Valley to settle in the colonial city, turning it into a base for their research trips to the indigenous communities they studied, mostly using an extractive academic or religious model.

But over time, the gentrification of the city of traditional neighborhoods It grew in an unusual way as a result of the rebellion of the canyons that impacted the Highlands of Chiapas in the last three decades.

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Today, more than fifty years after that Indigenous Congress of 1974, and thirty-two years after the Zapatista uprising of 1994, much has changed in San Cristóbal de Las Casas. Indigenous communities have achieved diverse forms of autonomy in the political, social, and cultural spheres, including religious matters, surpassing the vision of their initial proponents. These communities are no longer under the tutelage of political parties, churches, universities, or civil society organizations. The cultural fusion of Indigenous peoples with hip-hop music, audiovisual culture, and contemporary art will surprise many. Indigenous identity now transcends even revolutionary movements.

And like a boomerang effect, the mixed-race and foreign population living in the city also blends into this landscape of identities. An event about Gaza primarily draws university students and members of civil society, but attracts few of the displaced Indigenous people who live in the northern part of the city. A hip-hop concert, on the other hand, fills plazas. And then there's the Sinaloan band invited to the Zinacantán festival, which will keep the Tsotsil youth on tenterhooks for hours, mesmerized by a professional stage that rivals any pop or ranchera music festival in any major city in the country—and, incidentally, managed by a young entrepreneur from Zinacantán.

How can we participate in these ongoing cultural changes using the Dominican word itself, not only from the past but also from the present, in its diverse forms of life with friars, sisters, and lay people inspired by the charism of preaching? What signs of the times... deglobalization It is necessary to interpret in order to scrutinize the passage of the God of Life, As the Dominican friar Gustavo Gutiérrez said in Peru, what is needed for a humanity bewildered by global violence?

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The roaming This is a vital attitude of the Dominicans since their founding by Dominic of Guzmán in the 13th century, a time of transition from feudal to urban society. "Holy preaching," the initial name of Dominic's apostolic project conceived with Bishop Diego de Osma, the layman Peter Seila of Toulouse, and Wilhelmina and Raymonda Claret, sisters from Prouille in southern France, expresses the original inspiration of a spiritual tradition that has dedicated itself for eight centuries to seeking truth in every age, trusting in the power of the Word made flesh. Therefore, it is not just any truth that is being sought, but the truth that liberates, saves, and redeems humankind, humanity, and the cosmos from the bonds of evil, as did the Galilean.

The Dominican-style study is, therefore, the spring of hope According to that beautiful reflection by Friar Timothy Radcliffe, former Master of the Order of Preachers, this spirit led the friars to disperse throughout Europe from the beginning, going to universities "to study and found monasteries," that is, communities of life centered on the Incarnate Word. This impetus took them as far as Mongolia in search of Genghis Khan. This itinerancy was described by Matthew of Paris, the staunch enemy of the new friars at the Sorbonne in the 13th century, who scornfully declared: "Their cloister is the oceans and their cell the world," thus defining for posterity the daemon or the genius of the religious order that was emerging in the medieval towns, as Father Chenu repeatedly reminded us doctoral students in Paris.

Centuries later, already in Chiapas, that same itinerant journey led Friar Pedro Lorenzo to the Jataté canyons and the Lacandon Jungle to search there, “in the middle of nowhere,” as the prior of Santo Domingo de Ciudad Real admonished him for his rebellion, for the people who lived there. That is why from then on he decided to call himself Friar Pedro Lorenzo de la Nada, according to Jan de Vos.

In our times of the Great Catastrophe—begun in Gaza and now spread throughout the world in the Trump era—itinerantness leads us to new territories to be created as places of conviviality of the Word. Here in the Highlands of Chiapas, we'll do it like new. itinerant space, where we can foster creative dialogues in search of the truth that saves.

San Cristóbal de Las Casas, February 7, 2026

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February 7, 2026
Carlos Mendoza Alvarez | San Sebastian | Sot'sleb, Chiapas | 2026

The arrows of Saint Sebastian Lights and shadows of a Zinacantecan festival

By Carlos Mendoza-Álvarez

One of the emblematic martyrs of the time of Roman persecution in the beginnings of Christianity, pierced by arrows in his naked and vulnerable body, has been venerated for seventeen hundred years by diverse peoples who recognize in Saint Sebastian humanity mortally wounded by empires that supplant divine glory.

In the Highlands of Chiapas, the saints are adorned with flowery cloaks, colorful ribbons, and mirrors that reflect alternate worlds where the Ch'ulel It dwells, with its avatars that protect or threaten those who approach its spheres of power. In Chamula, according to oral history, the saints can be punished for a time if they do not respond to the pleas of their faithful devotees: they are placed against a wall for a while, until their grace manifests itself. I have not found that custom in the lands of Sot'sleb, or place of bats, known as Zinacantán, a name documented by the famous anthropologist and linguist Robert Laughlin. But I have been surprised by the profusion of life in the garments with which they adorn the images of the saints: the Christ of Esquipulas, the Guadalupana, Saint Jude, Saint Lawrence and Saint Sebastian are the images that increase their clothing for their annual festival, in an overabundance of colors and textures that leave their faces and hands exposed, with their bodies imperceptible before such a profusion of life.

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What lies behind so much flowery beauty? How can I approach with devotion those images that transcend the ordinary in such an avalanche of flowers and decorations that sometimes seem to overwhelm those we reverently invoke?

I found the key in the arrows of San Sebastián during its three days of popular festival in the municipal capital of Zinacantán.

People from all the surrounding areas and neighboring towns flood the streets of the village and the plaza next to the church of the martyred saint in a lively festival that blends ancestral traditions like the jaguar tree with fleeting horse races. Asking the young catechists about the meaning of these traditions... performances Today, I heard different interpretations, more or less confused, which always concluded with the laconic phrase: “it is the custom”The jaguar climbs the trunk of a tree that was chosen a year in advance in the sacred hills The surrounding area. This tree is visited and venerated three times by those in charge of the tradition before being cut down and taken to the center of the plaza. During the festival, the trunk becomes the center of a ritual that commemorates the three days of darkness spent praying for rain and abundant harvests. From this trunk, standing upright in the ground, a man dressed as a jaguar—wearing a suit of Chinese fabrics crudely imitating the skin of the rain guardian—throws stuffed squirrels and eggs to the crowd gathered around, accompanied by young people dressed in black who play and dance as a troupe during the festival rituals. The horse race runs along the main avenue at the beginning of the day and again in the afternoon, recalling, according to some, the arrival of the Spanish—a memory that marks the time and space of the festival brought by the friars?

During those days, like stepping back in time, the popular festival blends traditional dance and music—performed with deliberate slowness before the Tsotsil green altar of the Three Crosses, where the image of Saint Sebastian is placed—with the deafening roar of the band in the bandstand, which overwhelms those present but provides the perfect soundtrack for the celebration. And at night, everyone eagerly awaits the Sinaloan band concert, when the thumping drums mingle with the firecrackers and fireworks displays prepared to light up the sky.

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Amidst that endless surge of color, sound, and movement, I pause to approach the saint who is the reason for the festivities. I look for him on the altar in the atrium and then inside the church at the main altar. In both places, I can barely make out his face. Through his vestments, an arrow pierces his arm. And there is no way to see his lacerated body.

Then I recall conversations I've had in past and recent years with young Indigenous people from diverse sexual orientations who have confided in me about their suffering from living in the shadows in their communities. It was unimaginable for them to be able to celebrate San Sebastián as their patron saint, to be part of the celebration, as so many Catholic communities around the world do. They celebrate it only in the silence of their hearts and their prayers. And I realize the arrows that continue to pierce the wounded body of the martyr. The vulnerable bodies of these young people today are adorned with floral fabrics, like everyone else in the community, but those bodies are not recognized in their difference by an ancestral culture to this day.

I wonder if those bodies that live in the shadows today will one day be able to come into the light, with the love and responsibility that calls us all, as other Indigenous cultures have done for centuries. Years ago, the same question arose in conversations with women from the Zapatista grassroots and civil society who were forging a path in their own personal and communal histories to be recognized as life partners, living together as mothers with their children, and with a clear community and political commitment to defend their peoples. Today, the Zapatista narrative speaks to us of others –as he masterfully recounts Sylvia Marcos by exploring gender fluidity in Mesoamerica - finally making visible the experience of different lives and bodies as valuable and essential voices in the human symphony and the world to come.

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With a burning heart I sow a candle in front of San Sebastián in the name of those young people so that they may soon emerge of the shadows of the shadows of the shadows and live their lives joyfully in the midst of the community.

The lights and shadows of the San Sebastián festival continue to be a revelation and a concealment that calls us to see with wide-open eyes the world around us where divine and human glory bursts forth as a promise of life for all.

Sots'leb, January 24, 2026

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January 24, 2026

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