Monday, April 30

Post-Script. Had some interesting experiences on my last day in Chiapas so why not share them?

I met Rivkah at 10 am at Tierra Dentro to look at the paintings by EZLN artists. Note the previous posting of the painting by Tomás that I bought. Rivkah will be thinking about how gender relations are portrayed in these paintings, in comparison to representations of Zapatistas by other artists like Gustavo Chávez Pavón, who did much of the work at Oventik, and Beatriz Aurora, who does the posters that have also become post cards. We also went to another store with similar material.

Later Sara B. joined us for a walk to the Museo de Medicina Maya (Museum of Maya Medicine). While Rivkah and Sarah sat in the orientation room reading the museum pamphlet, I went into the next room, a chapel, and watched a healing ceremony in progress. The healer or ilol was a man, and his patient was a woman facing an operation for colitis. The ilol insisted that her real problem was cancer and that it could have been caused by the sin of envy, at which she affirmed that she is a business-woman and this would apply.

By the time I had entered, the patient had already set up very slender candles in three rows on the floor, and soon after she lit them while the ilol prayed. He then took a raw egg in his hand with branches of what I think was sage, and rubbed it on all the saint statues in the room while praying to them. First was Christ on the cross, then St. Peter, St. Lawrence, St. John, and I forgot the last. He then had the patient stand and alternated brushing the saints and swatting the patient with the branches still held in his hand with the egg. Finally he cracked the egg on the edge of a glass holding clear liquid (either water or posh) and emptied the contents into it. He examined the configuration of the yoke and found an extrusion which he said corresponded to the woman's cancer. He explained this to her, she paid her 40 pesos, and it was over.

I rejoined Rivkah and Sarah and we walked through the rest of the museum and went into the medicinal garden, after which we returned the museum to watch their video on the method of parturition in the local Maya tradition.

The photographs above show the chapel and the diorama of childbirth in the museum and are taken from the web. Note that the kneeling figures in the chapel are also manequins.