zinacantan indigenous village

weaving in traditional house

garden of traditional house

Zinacantan is an indigenous pueblo (village/town) near san Cristobal de las Casas.  There you can visit a local family and take photographs, something not possible in general as many indigenous people do not like to have their photographs taken, understandably.  You can see their amazing weaving and embroidery and learn a little of their lifestyle.  In Zinacantan 31,000 people speak Tzotzil only, no Spanish.  For the indigenous people here Spanish is a second language too, which is comforting for me to remember when shopping in the markets here with my stumbling rudimentary Spanish.

The dietary staples are corn, beans and pumpkin.  There are four colours of corn:
white representing the north
yellow representing the south
red representing the east
black representing the west

We  were given corn tortillas with some beans, powdered dried pumpkin and a little cheese.  They tasted amazing, very different to 'Mexican food' I had previously encountered.