Indigenous Market: Color and Craft in San Cristóbal de las Casas, Chiapas

Hand made woolen animal toys at the San Cristóbal de las Casas, Chiapas, artisans’ market.

Mexico Cooks! is home again in Morelia, Michoacán.  We have just enough oomph left to give you a photo essay from San Cristóbal de las Casas.  You’ll have a brief but very colorful idea of what we saw during our stay with friends in Chiapas.  By next week we will have had enough respite from our vacation to write about local customs, incredible crafts, and, of course, the food.

Every day of the week, indigenous artesanía (crafts) makers and vendors gather to wait for the tourist trade in the plaza of  Templo Santo Domingo in San Cristóbal de las Casas.  Embroidery and other textiles, leather goods, beads, toys, and trinkets of every kind are on the sellers’ tables.  Mexico Cooks! was particularly taken with how many of the artisans’ goods march along in patterns of vertical and horizontal stripes.  Be sure to click on the individual photographs to appreciate the details. 

Come look:

Bright yellow-dyed corn and colored beans strung as necklaces.

Hamacas (hammocks) made of handmade string, lined up along a wall.

A stack of finely woven shawls.

Bolts of shiny tela de hule (oilcloth), the top roll featuring Day of the Dead figures.

Woven textile belts finished with leather.

Hand-embroidered zippered eyeglass holders.

Hand-woven bracelets.

Headbands, headbands, headbands!