Ceremonial Candles Used by Spirit Healers in Chiapas, Mexico #1

by Lorena Cassady

Title

Ceremonial Candles Used by Spirit Healers in Chiapas, Mexico #1

Artist

Lorena Cassady

Medium

Photograph - Photograph

Description

I bought these in the indigenous marketplace in the beautiful mountain city San Cristobal in the State of Chiapas, Mexico. The indigenous market is just down the street from the tourist market, and is where the local people go to by their food and supplies. The women wore (not sure how things have changed since 2008) the hides of black sheep wrapped around their waist as skirts, and the had piles of these thick hides piled everywhere for sale. It is very cold in the mountains, and the indigenous people lived in very primitive housing with a fire pit in the cooking area, open to the sky to let out the smoke. Everything smelled of smoke, their hair, their clothing, their textiles, which they wove while sitting around the fire. Health problems and eye problems including blindness were caused by a lifetime of breathing in this smoky air, much like the rampant blindness among the Nepalese people living similarly in the mountains. In the churches, built originally by the Spanish, native practitioners had removed the benches and groups sit around the floor each with a small, smoky fire burning, for individualized healing ceremonies. Thousands of these candles are stuck upright on the stone floor. Tourists are sometimes overcome by the heat and the smoke when they enter these places. It is an experience I will never forget.

I befriended a local woman who invited me to her remote dwelling where I met her husband and two grown daughters, so I had a chance to see the living conditions. It was like going back to times that preceded the arrival of the Spanish. People were farming with long sticks, Herbs hung to dry inside their huts, lining the walls and ceilings so thickly that there was barely any space. Privacy was maintained by hanging cascades of dried vegetable matter. I sat around the fire with Maria and her two daughters. One of them worked on her weaving, while the other combed out her long hair with a wooden comb by the heat of the burning wood. Her husband sat on an inverted bucket and smoked. I was given a small crock and inside was fermented cabbage. That was their offering of food, and I ate it with no repercussions. It was probably healthy since it was what sustained them!

My experience in Chiapas was the most challenging and eye opening of my life. I was there in a time of danger for the indigenous people. Massacres had happened, and were continuing to happen. Paramilitaries were roaming the remote villages and terrorizing people. Under the surface of the land in Chiapas are rare minerals, including uranium, that the government and private interests want very much to mine and control, and the people who have lived on this land for thousands of years are nothing more than an obstacle to "progress."

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September 10th, 2022

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