By Carlos Mendoza Álvarez
The line of cars waiting to reach Apaz stretches for several kilometers along the narrow dirt road that winds through the hills. The sounds of the festival can be heard from afar, even from Navenchauc, with its polluted lagoon, once surrounded by wooded slopes and now overrun with unfinished brick houses. The hamlet is a specter of grayish desolation, like something you might see in the poor suburbs of any modern city.
More than 140 people, mostly young, accompanied by their families and communities, patiently await the bishop and the friars for the celebration of the sacrament of Confirmation. A crowd of more than 500 people, adorned for the occasion, solemnly celebrates the liturgy of anointing with holy chrism, while the monumental choir sings invocations to the Holy Spirit in Tsotsil. Don Rodrigo delegates the three friars present to perform the rite of Confirmation with him, divided into four groups of confirmands. It consists of the laying on of hands, the anointing with holy chrism, and the slap on the face to call them to live with audacity.parrhesia, (in Greek) proper to following Christ in the midst of an increasingly violent world. We reverently pronounce the words in Tsotsil following the liturgical phrase: Ich'bo li skélobil li'e + ja' matanal yu'un Ch'ul Spirit: Ta j'ch'un | Li jun o'onale teyuk ta ajotol: Xchi'uk vo'ot (Receive this symbol, which is the gift of the Holy Spirit. I believe it | Peace be with you. And with you.).
The Mass continues, and after the consecration of the bread and wine as the body and blood of Jesus, three traditional musicians sing the ancestral chant, which the congregation mostly accompanies with ritual dance. Unfortunately, some members of the community no longer include these traditional symbols in their celebrations. The parish's large choir and media team participate in the festivities with their youthful talent, dressed in traditional attire and singing in Tsotsil, but also embracing the technology that has transformed their minds and ways of life. Modernity Indiana —to paraphrase the expression of chroniclers from colonial Mexico in a new context— of a generation deeply rooted in tradition, yet simultaneously passionate about new lifestyles mediated by algorithms and artificial intelligence. Thus, today's youth explore their evolving identities.
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What has caused these changes in the Highlands of Chiapas, which I first visited almost half a century ago, a region then plagued by extreme poverty and now experiencing an economic boom reflected in concrete houses and all-terrain vehicles? That modernity of the counter-productivity -analyzed in its historical genesis by Ivan Illich and conceived by Jean Robert as a perversion of place– it forcefully entered the territory of the Tsotsil nation.
In recent decades, the Zinacanteco economy has experienced exponential growth, thanks to the hard work of the Tsotsil people in flower cultivation and the excellence of their textiles. In particular, greenhouses have transformed the landscape of the stately hills into a mosaic of metal and plastic, with greenhouses protecting the crops of the flowers of Zinacantán. Roses, gladiolas, anthuriums, birds of paradise, hibiscus, bromeliads, desert roses and wallflowers are the most popular in the local market, from where they are exported to the neighboring states of Tabasco, Campeche, Yucatán and Quintana Roo, also to Mexico City.
Similar effects are visible in the surrounding areas. The houses of Tsotsil families in Chamula express this economic boom through a new indigenous architecture that blends traditional colors with forms kitsch, similar to that of Freddy Mamani, The Bolivian creator of the so-called “neo-Andean architecture.” These houses reflect the new economic status of their inhabitants, generated by local commerce, remittances from fellow countrymen, and, according to studies from 2001 to the present, some criminal enterprises, among which the most prominent is… human trafficking.
Something similar regarding housing is happening in Zinacantán, with new forms of housing, foreign to vernacular architecture, that are developing in imitation of other municipalities that have recently experienced economic prosperity. This phenomenon has produced a fissure in the kuxlejal, or the integral way of life, which the Zinacanteca communities developed for centuries, but which is now collapsing due to the degraded management of the forests.
At first glance, the deforestation of the hills, which has given way to greenhouses, is readily apparent. This phenomenon is already producing devastating effects on the rainfall cycle and the impoverishment of the soil. The use of toxic fertilizers and pesticides, This phenomenon, already analyzed by scientific studies, persists despite agroecology promotion campaigns carried out by civil society organizations and the Catholic Church through its ministries. guardians of Mother Earth. The relentless logic of the market is dragging flower producers into that environmental hell already seen in other parts of the world.
These are some of the modernities Indianas which appear as mirages to the Tsotsil people of today, where the illusion of economic prosperity is hiding the devastating effects on Mother Earth.
There are other modernities to explore, following, among others, the model proposed by the political ecology of Víctor Toledo and his scientific colleagues around the world, proposing the bioculturality as a new way of understanding our relationship with our common home as a human species to avoid the Great Catastrophe. Other models emphasize the importance of returning to cultivating and inhabiting from the vernacular, without abandoning modern science and technology, but orienting them towards the sustainability of peoples' ways of life.
Perhaps in that path of alternative, other, moving modernities - and that's why trans-modernities As proposed by Enrique Dussel, the new generations of Zinacantecans will be able to find their new identity to become part of the regional economy and universal culture, preserving and promoting their own ways of life, of communality and of ancient and new spirituality.
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What are the best ways to accompany communities in their struggle for life from the heart of their spirituality? With this question in mind, we are moving forward in the mutual accompaniment between the Dominican friars and the people of the Chiapas Highlands.
“Let the people who welcomed the friars celebrate their arrival,” Elena Poniatowska told me in an interview last December at her home in Chimalistac, Mexico City. And she was right about remembering a five-hundred-year historical process, with its highs and lows, where the evangelization of these lands of Chiapas was initially marked by a profound respect for the indigenous nations on the part of friars like Bartolomé de Las Casas, renowned as a defender of the indigenous peoples, and Pedro Lorenzo de la Nada, who, defiantly confronting the closed-mindedness of his brethren, ventured into the jungle to encounter the Zendales, Pochutlas, and Lacandones peoples of the 16th century. Unfortunately, with the passage of time, that impetus for peaceful evangelization turned into greed, with the accumulation of wealth in the estates and haciendas of Dominican priories that controlled and subjugated entire communities in the following centuries.
Therefore, the commemorative narrative of these five hundred years that we are preparing in San Cristóbal de Las Casas and in Zinacantán will revolve around the mutual accompaniment between the Dominican friars and the peoples of the Highlands of Chiapas: remembering the apostolic zeal of the first missionaries, while recognizing the ancestral legacy that persists in the spiritual life of the native peoples who have inhabited these lands since ancient times.
Guided by a young Tsotsil poet and a renowned Tseltal master painter, the youth of Zinacanteco will weave this collective memory from their present perspective. Tsotsil poetry and Tseltal painting will be at the heart of the cultural celebrations commemorating the five hundredth anniversary of the Dominicans' arrival in Mexico, which we are preparing for this year in Chiapas. In this way, next June we can joyfully and gratefully celebrate this shared journey of half a millennium, with our gaze fixed on the legacy of our ancestors, both Maya and Christian, in the manner of the Dominican friars and the people of the Chiapas Highlands. We will soon share the 500 OP – Chiapas program that we are currently preparing to celebrate the life that flourishes in these lands.
San Cristóbal de Las Casas, January 31, 2026
Note: I hope we can continue the conversation with your comments.
