By Carlos Mendoza \u00c1lvarez<\/p>\n
A few days ago, we opened a new space for dialogue in the city of San Crist\u00f3bal 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<\/em>. Next June we will be holding various cultural and religious events, both in San Crist\u00f3bal and in Zinacant\u00e1n, with the program 500-OP Chiapas<\/em> which we will announce soon.<\/p>\n Together with Abraham and Ang\u00e9lica, 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 Crist\u00f3bal, as it is called Pablo Romo<\/a> 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\u2014such as CIDECI and Dialectics in the Museum. jTatik<\/em> Samuel, El Paliacate, Galer\u00eda MUY and many more \u2013 where it is possible to talk about urgent and important issues for the cosmopolitan society that lives here \u2013 a microcosm of Mayan, mestizo and foreign peoples \u2013 with its many local, regional and global connections.<\/p>\n \u2202<\/p>\n Since the 1970s, San Crist\u00f3bal de Las Casas has been the scene of important meetings such as the First Indigenous Congress<\/a> 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 Ram\u00edrez<\/a>\u00a0in her Master of Arts thesis at Tulane University. She also highlights the First International Symposium of Lascasistas<\/em>, The event, organized by Manuel Velasco Su\u00e1rez, Agust\u00edn Y\u00e1\u00f1ez, and the Dominican friar Enrique Ruiz, was held in 1974. Both events shared a common thread\u2014starting with the fifth centenary of the birth of Fray Bartolom\u00e9 de Las Casas\u2014the 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 Medell\u00edn in 1968, ecclesial events in which they participated. jTatik<\/em> Samuel Ruiz, made their presence felt with vigor and creative imagination in these lands.<\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n But the old Royal City of the colonial era, inhabited by a mestizo and Creole population that called itself intercultural<\/em>, 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<\/em> or Creole chieftains towards the Indians<\/em>, as Rosario Castellanos masterfully recounted in her collection of short stories Ciudad Real<\/a>.<\/p>\n The Zapatista uprising, in addition to its political effects\u2014with the 1996 San Andr\u00e9s Accords betrayed by the federal government and the creation of the Caracoles or Zapatista autonomous municipalities\u2014had a cultural impact on the city, which suddenly became more cosmopolitan in its daily life, as they tell university students<\/a> 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.<\/p>\n But over time, the gentrification of the city of traditional neighborhoods<\/a> 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.<\/p>\n \u2202<\/p>\n 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 Crist\u00f3bal 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.<\/p>\n 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 Zinacant\u00e1n 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\u2014and, incidentally, managed by a young entrepreneur from Zinacant\u00e1n.<\/p>\n 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<\/em> It is necessary to interpret in order to scrutinize the passage of the God of Life<\/a>, As the Dominican friar Gustavo Guti\u00e9rrez said in Peru, what is needed for a humanity bewildered by global violence?<\/p>\n \u2202<\/p>\n The roaming<\/a> This is a vital attitude of the Dominicans since their founding by Dominic of Guzm\u00e1n 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.<\/p>\n