San Juan Chamula

We spent three days in San Cristobal, a really beautiful small city in Chiapas where 11 Mayan languages are spoken. (advertisement: We stayed at Hostal Miramar, run by a warm lovely couple who treat each guest like a cared-for child, but without the loving nagging of a parent-- highly recommend it). One of those days, we took a tour of San Juan Chamula, a nearby town with a vibrant Mayan character. The church there, from the outside, looks like a brightly colored but basically traditional Catholic church. Step through the door, though, and that impression changes immediately. Pine needles cover the floor, on which hundreds of small candles are also burning (this doesn´t appear to worry locals nearly as much as it does tourists). 50 or more figures of saints line the walls, with candles in front of each, and toward the front a mariachi-type band serenades one saint or another, surrounded by a throng of people. Throughout the church, Mayan families have set up camp to erform specific rituals, or for weekly worship. We watched one shaman woman perform a healing ritual: standing in front of the hundred of candles (of a specific color, depending on the ceremony) that the family had stuck to the ground, the woman chanted for many minutes over the sick child; then she took by the feet a live chicken the mother had been holding and starting swinging the animal, sometimes passing its head over the boy to absorb the illness; then, quickly, she snapped the chicken`s neck-- later, the family will bury it`s head, and with it, they believe, the illness. Next the mother passed her small glasses of soda, which she drank one after another. Ever since the early 50s, when a Chamulan man was given a glass of Coke in the city to settle his stomach, soda has been considered a holy drink in the town, because burping is seen as a way to expel wicked spirits. Which is what the shaman did next. So what does the Catholic Church think of all this? It excommunicated San Juan Chamula over a decade ago.