Thursday, April 12

Tzajal Hemel




Tzajal Ch'en

Brent came last night about 11:40, tired after marking exams and long plane flights, but he was raring to go this morning to meet the class. I took him over to Jovel and then left.

Before noon, Rita and I set out for Chamula to make some decisions on where to hold the class tomorrow afternoon. Once we had done this, we decided to ask about visiting Tzajal Hemel, the paraje that figures so strongly in Castellanos' account of the 1869-70 caste war of Chiapas. We asked some officials gathered in front of the municipal hall or cabildo, but they had not heard of the location. We also asked taxi drivers and got the same response. So we went upstairs in the cabildo to talk to an officer. He showed us his map of the parajes (rural communities) of Chamula but Tzajal Hemel is not listed on it. We decided to xerox his map and then compare it back home with a published map that does show Tzajal Hemel. But when we finished the xerox a taxi driver came up to us and asked if we were still interested in visiting Tzajal Hemel, saying he came from near that area and knew where it was. So we went with him up the main highway towards Chenalho, taking a dirt road cutoff, and stopping in front of a cliff where a landslide revealed bare read earth. This is indeed the meaning of Tzajal (red) Jemel (landslide). We did not see the community: the driver was extremely vague about this, saying that we were on the appropriate land and there were a few houses below. We didn't know whether the community had largely moved or been deserted, whether he just didn't know, or whether he was being purposely evasive.

Our driver stopped some ladies on the road and talked to them in Tzotzil. He then told us that he had asked if there was a cave in Tzajal Hemel (since it figures so prominently in the novel) but that they had said thaey didn't know of any cave.

However, the driver mentioned that there is a cave called Tzajal Ch'en (red cave) near Chamula which is sacred, often visited, used by ilols for good or ill, and offered to take us to it. The cave is indeed very close to Chamula, perhaps a kilometer from the town centre, on the upper flank of a small, rocky hill. One can only walk into a cave for a couple of meters, and then it becomes so low that one would have to crouch, crawl, or kneel. Apparently it goes a good deal further into the hillside but we did not investigate it. We then returned to Chamula and caught a combi back to San Cristobal.