Category: Indigenous peoples

Carlos Mendoza Álvarez | Altar with bat-jaguar-snake face | Old Church, Structure C-3 | Tonalá, Chiapas, 2026

Of mangroves, estuaries and other worlds

By Carlos Mendoza Álvarez

The tide is visible in the distance on the horizon that opens up at the back of the estuary, among the mangroves of Boca del Cielo. The poetic name of this secluded beach in Chiapas is a prelude to the much-desired rest for the small community of friars, exhausted after forty intense days of religious and cultural activities in the Highlands of Chiapas. This period culminated in the climax of Holy Week, experienced with profound devotion by diverse communities throughout these lands.

The Chiapas coast is still protected by mangroves and estuaries that stretch along its shoreline, from Oaxaca in the northwest to Guatemala in the southeast. Small-scale tourism has not yet disrupted the lives of its inhabitants, mostly Zoque people who have lost their language and customs, but retain a vibrant spirit in their eyes and open smiles. Mariana welcomes us to her palapa with seafood dishes from her coast, such as sea bass, shrimp, and tilapia, accompanied by refreshing drinks of mango, pineapple, melon, and tamarind. She is the heart of the business, along with her teenage son and their pet, Oso, a beautiful white puppy with curly fur and dark circles under his eyes that make him look like a panda in reverse.

Instead of a swimming pool, the small hotel has direct access via a short flight of steps to the estuary's warm, calm waters, occasionally enlivened by a strong current in the farther area, near the sandbar that protects the channel from the open sea. Further out, a few lizards hide, having fled to sparsely populated areas, where some communities—like the Madresal ecotourism complex—preserve them in breeding centers. It must be said, however, that these initiatives are modest compared to the urgent need to protect the estuaries and their endangered wildlife. The turtle hatchery on Boca del Cielo beach, for example, is only operational for a couple of months each year during the summer, neglected by the local population focused on tourism services, and left to languish due to the indifference of the local government.

Due to the melting of the polar ice caps caused by climate change, the scientific community predicts the disappearance of many of the planet's low-lying coastlines, such as mangroves and their estuaries, with the sea invading these areas of biodiversity at the boundary between salt and fresh water as tides rise.

∂

Two millennia ago, in the mountains bordering these beaches, the Mixe-Zoque culture flourished. The archaeological remains of the sacred site—today known as Old Church The crosses carved into some of the stones on the pyramid slopes are of impressive symbolic richness. A central pyramid represents the body of a turtle, its corners mimicking the flippers of the reptile of longevity. The giant head lies at the foot of the stairway, welcoming the pilgrim in a gesture of cosmic sacredness. Stelae of varying sizes, weathered by relentless time and broken in two by ceiba tree roots, are engraved with polymorphic faces that combine the ears of a bat with the snout of a jaguar and the eyes of a monkey and a snake.

And in the heart of one of the central plazas of the sacred site, which covers more than sixty hectares—located on the plateaus of Tepancuintla Hill, some 700 meters above sea level in what is now the municipality of Tonalá—lies a monumental stone of iconic power similar to the Aztec Sun Stone or the stele of Pakal's tomb in Palenque. The black granite monolith has four faces, each pointing to a cardinal direction: three are human (two men and one woman), and one is zoomorphic, a hallucinatory fusion of sacred animals from the mountains that shelter its inhabitants.

The local guide told us that this jet-black stone takes on blue hues at certain times of day, convinced that it's like a gateway to the world of the ancestors. To honor his word, I approach it with reverence, walk around it, caress it without touching it, and perceive an ancestral memory that dwells within it and welcomes us with force.

Two hundred kilometers to the south, the Mokaya culture sowed the seeds of Mesoamerican cultures four thousand years ago, even before the Olmecs, who are recognized as the cultural matrix of Mesoamerica. I already cherish in my heart a future trip to those lands, near the border with Guatemala, to let myself be touched by their wisdom made of stone and pottery, unknown to us today only in their music and oral traditions.

∂

I began this story by recounting tales of estuaries and mangroves. But upon rereading it, I realize they were merely a gateway to another world, one inhabited by the Mixe-Zoque and Mokaya peoples who lived in these mountains and navigated these waters millennia ago. Their ancestral memory became a cosmogony carved in stone, pyramids constructed with enormous monoliths of granite and volcanic rock, marked with cosmic and human symbols, such as the sun, the knot, the face, and the hand.

What memory will we leave for future generations two thousand years from now, when someone visits the ruins of our neighborhoods and cities, now dominated by steel and cement? Will they find technological ruins of algorithms and avatars on the internet that can be rescued from oblivion? Perhaps some holograms will be preserved in the cloud, concentrating the wisdom of humanity, lost today in its pursuit of power and money.

For now, the door to other worlds remains open.

Boca del Cielo, April 11, 2026

April 12, 2026
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.

∂

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.

∂

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
Carlos Mendoza Álvarez | Prayer in the hills with Jilol Pedro | Sot's Leb, 2026

We are earth, we are wind The teachings of Jilol Pedro

By Carlos Mendoza Álvarez

The rocky base of the mountain - through which the Ts'ajalsul or river of salt water - is the center of the world during the prayer of Peter, the young man Jilol or the healer of the Tsotsil people. Dressed in his black wool poncho, with two red crosses embroidered on the shoulders like the dalmatic of Saint Lawrence the Martyr, patron saint of Sots'leb -land of bats in Tsotsil, or Zinacantán- Pedro plants the candles and places the flowers already blessed before dawn.

In a long ceremony held in the parish hall, on the eve of Ash Wednesday, the six gathered Jiloletic With dozens of catechists and some of the friars who walk with them, we were preparing to accompany them to six sacred sites in the Zinacanteco region to bring offerings to the hills that protect us from wars and evils, invoking God and the saints at every spring, rock at the bottom of the ravine, or hilltop where we would stop to pray after an exhausting sacred walk.

Three times a year, according to ancestral tradition, prayers rise to the heavens from the hills of this region in the Chiapas Highlands, inhabited by the Tsotsil people of Zinacantán, to venerate Mother Earth in her sacred places and acknowledge the God of Life, who ceaselessly shelters all creatures that live here with the forests and springs. Jiloletic They are the ones who hold sacred power in these ceremonies. They have received the mandate—in dreams and through extraordinary signs throughout their lives, sometimes since childhood—to heal the community of its many ailments, illnesses, and the violence inflicted upon their bodies and crops. Healers of ancestral tradition, their spiritual authority is revered by the communities at pivotal moments, such as prayers on the hills to ask for bountiful harvests, abundant rains, and protection from war and other evils that threaten the people and creatures who inhabit these lands.

∂

Pedro is a young man from Jilol who led one of the six pilgrimage routes through the hills of Zinacantán earlier this year. His gentle nature, with a deep gaze and kind smile, becomes powerful when he begins to pray in Tsotsil, his voice strong and mantra-like, chanting invocations to the hills, the saints, and the... Ch'ul Spirit, with Jesus Christ and Mary as guides of protection and divine strength. We all kneel behind him, on the rushes carefully scattered by the catechists, to "plant the candles," already blessed, before the three Zinacanteco green crosses that mark this place as a sacred space, visited by other pilgrims throughout the year. The crosses are also venerated with white and yellow flowers that were also blessed and incensed before dawn.

At some of the Stations of the Cross, Peter tells us a story about the holy place. Like that one about Lachikin, On the rocky hill beside the river, a group of soldiers are summoned who remained there after a past attempt to attack a woman bathing in the river, a criminal impulse that led them to the current where they drowned. But the hills rescued them and transformed them into guardians of these lands, protecting their inhabitants from war. That is why every year we must come to remind them of this duty, because they still dwell here. Many creatures inhabit the hills, and Jiloletic They have received the gift of seeing them and communicating with them in order to ask for protection for the communities.

After hearing that brief story, the group continues along the path, advancing single file along a steep, rocky trail to climb the hillside and reach another ravine where another prayer will take place. But before setting off, the walkers each receive a small cup of soda, passed from mouth to mouth, like a ritual act of shared strength. Alejandro, the catechist coordinator, invites us to pick up the trash left behind by other careless pilgrims, especially bottles and plastic wrappers, as a sign of caring for the sacred place we have just venerated. A small symbol of the work of caring for Mother Earth that the diocese is painstakingly promoting as part of its spirituality and ecotheology.

∂

For several decades now, the Parish of Zinacantán—re-entrusted to the Dominican friars in 1975 after an absence of more than a century, in harmony with the Diocese of San Cristóbal de Las Casas in its commitment to the poor and indigenous peoples, along with the hundreds of catechists and lay ministers who support the communities—has been fostering the encounter between the ancestral spirituality of the Zinacantán people and the Christian spirituality of the Gospel of Christ, embodied in the life and culture of the Zinacantán communities. The prayer on the hills, for example, which they continue to practice, is a testament to this tradition. Jiloletic While celebrated independently, it is also an integral part of the parish's activities. Each of these key moments of the year culminates in a Eucharist where both traditions converge in a shared intention to care for the life of the community and venerate Mother Earth as the primordial gift of the God of Life, who nourishes us with his body that is earth and wind, water and fire, and in the height of love becomes the body of Christ to nourish the praying community.

∂

“We are earth, we are wind” was the mantra that arose in my heart as I silently accompanied the prayers of Jilol Pedro in each of the sacred sites we visited one cold morning with radiant sunshine in the hills of Zinacantán.

Land that is nourished by springs, streams and rivers that flow between its rocky canyons.

Wind that sways the treetops and carries in its chariot the birds that live there. Wind that fans the fire that humanized the ancestors.

“We are earth, we are wind,” according to the wisdom of the prayer of the hills. That full awareness, embodied in breath, prayer, and shared words these days with the Jiloletic of Zinacantán, will endure in my memory like a spark of life that other traditions also receive in their own language.

Perhaps not by chance, this week we received ashes on our heads, according to the symbolism of the Hebrew and later Christian people: we are earth prepared by God like an ancient potter. This gesture is accompanied by a call to conversion. But we are also the wind of God who breathes his own spirit into us. Ruah divine to make us living beings.

Sots'leb, February 22, 2026

Note: How do we connect today with our earth and wind selves?

February 22, 2026

English