Category: Art and Culture

The Maya used the cross as a religious symbol before the arrival of the Spanish Dominican priests. The Mayan interpretation is different from the Christian interpretation.  Mayans believe that the four points of the cross symbolize the sun, the earth, the moon and the people. The crosses usually appear in sets of three, symbolizing the three holy mountains of this area. Maya consider mountains to be gateways into Heaven.

The Maya believe that the First Father propped up the sky with huge ceiba (kapok) trees at its four corners (north, south, east and west) as well as in the center of the world. The crosses are normally green and are the symbol of the ceiba tree, the Mayan “World Tree”. They are decorated with carvings of bromeliads and pine boughs and are sometimes adorned with real flowers and pine boughs.  Crosses like the one above are also found inside churches.  The indoor crosses are often dressed in velvet casings.

Sunshine and shadow, San Cristóbal de las Casas.

Wrought iron roof crosses are traditional in San Cristóbal.  This cross includes two angels, two pitchers, and other elements.  More often, the crosses include the symbols of Christ’s passion: a ladder, a rooster, a lance, a pair of dice, the crown of thorns, and others.

Juegos pirotécnicos (fireworks) for sale at the market.  The tall ones are small cohetes, like bottle rockets.

Anti-US graffito spray-stenciled on a wall in San Cristóbal de las Casas.  Click on the photo to enlarge it.  Can you read it?

Beaded key chains from the Santo Domingo artisans’ market.  We brought back several for little gifts, and we’ve already given them all away!

Artisans from San Cristóbal de las Casas hand roll these glorious candles, available in the market.  The flowers as well as the candles themselves are made of wax.  They’re almost impossible to transport.  The last time Mexico Cooks! tried to bring some home to Michoacán, all of the flowers broke in transit despite their packing materials.

When I saw this tray of pastries in the market, I stopped dead in my tracks. Could they be cream puffs, here at the indigenous market?  Indeed they were.   Called mocas, these delicacies are prepared exactly as cream puffs are and are filled with a custard similar to creme patissiere.  The little cups with pink spoons contain just the custard, with a raisin on top.

Called xuti, shuti, or zoque, these large (2-3" long) freshwater snails come to market in San Cristóbal de las Casas during the first few weeks of Lent.  They’re purged and prepared as caldo de xuti (snail soup), seasoned during cooking with tomato, onion, garlic, and hoja santa.

The red spiky blossoms on the left are flores de colorín (flowers from the coral tree).  They’re prepared in pipián and seasoned with epazote.

Flores de Colorín en Pipián

Ingredients:

1/2 pound pumpkin seeds
3 chiles anchos
1/2 pound flores de colorín
Sea salt to taste
1 stem epazote

Preparation:

Over a low fire, toast the pumpkin seeds hull and all.  Remove the seeds and grind with the chiles until the mixture is like a paste.

Remove any seeds from the colorín flowers and bring them to a boil in enough water to cover.  Allow them to boil until the flowers are cooked.  Take them off the heat.

Heat the water again with a pinch of sea salt and add the flowers.  Incorporate the pumpkin seed/chile mixture until it is the consistency of a soup.  Allow the soup to rest for a bit so the flavors can marry.  Add sea salt to taste and flavor with the epazote.

Prepared blue and yellow corn masa.

Chicken heads!

The brilliant jade green and cream squash skin contrasts beautifully with the pale yellow interior.  These calabaza amarilla (yellow squash) are about five to seven inches in diameter.  When I asked the proprietor of the booth how he prepares them, he shrugged and said, "Se pelan y se ponen a cocer en agua.  Después se guisan, con cebolla, chile y jitomate." (‘Peel them, boil them, and just cook them, with onion, chile, and tomato.’)

Trenzas (braids) of recently harvested garlic.

I loved this market puesto (booth) for its colorful symmetry.  On the left are fresh strawberries.  At the middle on the bottom are containers of ground pumpkin seeds for pipián.  Fiery hot dried chiles de árbol are in the bowls in the upper right hand corner.  The tiny green balls are miltomate, small tomate verde  grown in the milpas (corn fields) and known in English as tomatillos.  On the right are bowls of zarzamora (fresh blackberries).  The yellow objects in the bottom right corner are chiles manzano.  To the right of the zarzamora are bowls of small chiles blanco.

A young woman’s booth offered small (5 pesos) and large (10 pesos) packets of soft, freshly made achiote.  The achiote is a tropical shrub or small tree (the word comes from the Nauhatl for bush). The inedible fruits are heart-shaped, brown or
reddish brown at maturity, and are covered with short stiff hairs. When
fully mature the fruits split open, exposing the numerous seeds.
Although the fruit is inedible, the achiote is widely
grown for the orange-red pulp that covers the seeds.  The pulp is prepared as a fresh or dried paste which is used as a coloring and flavoring condiment in southern Mexico and other parts of the Americas.

Black beans are a staple on the table all over southern Mexico.  Mexico Cooks! ate sopa de frijol negro (black bean soup) prepared with the following ingredients:

Sopa de Frijol Negro Estilo San Cristóbal de las Casas

Ingredients
Cooked black beans
Chicken broth
Garlic cloves
Fresh tomatoes
Onion
Oregano
Salt

Preparation:
Sauté the garlic, tomato, and onion together until the tomato gives up its juices.  Blend  until well puréed and strain.  Add oregano and salt to taste.

Heat the soup.  Serve in flat soup plates garnished with a swirl of crema mexicana or creme fraiche.

The person who gave me the recipe was unable to give the proportions of ingredients, but the soup is simple to prepare.

Guajes (Leucaena leucocephala) for sale in bunches.  Guaje pods contain tiny bean-like legumes which are prepared as tortitas (little fritters).

If you have not yet read Parts One and Two of Mexico Cooks! visit to San Lorenzo Zinacantán, Chiapas, please see the articles dated March 1 and March 8, 2008.

Restaurant J’Totik Lol, San Lorenzo Zinacantán, Chiapas

As we walked through the Templo San Lorenzo atrium to the main streets of Zinacantán, our stomachs grumbling for food, we noticed that the first three cocinas económicas (cheap-eats restaurants) were closed.  At three o’clock in the afternoon–time for the main meal of the day–we couldn’t understand what was (or better said, what wasn’t) cooking.  Then light dawned: it was a Lenten Friday.  In Mexico, many restaurants serving primarily meat or chicken close on Fridays in Lent.  It appeared that none of the restaurants around the plaza chose to offer a menú cuaresmeño (meat-free Lenten menu).  Even though we were considerably past ready for lunch, we weren’t ready to leave Zinacantán and head back to San Cristóbal de las Casas to find food.  What to do!

"Look!"  My partner pointed to a sign: Centro de Artesanía y Restaurantes.  An arrow directed us to a short flight of steps carved into the hillside.  We crossed our fingers and started up.  At the top of the steps was Restaurant J’Totik Lol, jam-packed with San Cristóbal secundaria (middle school) kids on a field trip.  We felt sure that unless the ravening teenage hordes had eaten all that there was to be had, we would soon have lunch. 

The school group filled every table inside the restaurant and overflowed into the yard.  We settled ourselves outside at the single remaining table and gratefully received menus from the wait staff.  Would it be the menú del día or something a la carta?  Our choice is usually the menú, and today was no exception.  The menú at a home-style restaurant in Mexico is nearly always a treat.  It normally includes a choice of two or three sopas aguadas (soups), choice of sopa seca (rice or pasta), choice of several guisados (main dishes), frijoles, tortillas, and dessert.  Judy picked asado de puerco estilo chiapaneco as her main course and, at the waitress’s recommendation, I asked for the menú con carne asada.   

Restaurant J’Totik Lol interior with clay and brick oven.

The asado de puerco estilo chiapaneco was definitely the pick of the day.  Fork-tender chunks of pork covered with a deep-brown sauce redolent of chiles filled Judy’s plate, the thick sauce running gently into her rice.  She tasted it and I knew from the ecstatic look on her face that I wasn’t going to finagle more than a nibble.  Yes, my carne asada was delicious.  But after I snagged a shred of her pork and a bit of sauce, it was obvious that she had bet on the winner. 

Both of us ate fresh tortilla after fresh tortilla as we enjoyed our meal.  We were joined at table by a middle-size dog which had apparently recently delivered a litter of pups.  Her beguilingly silent pleas for a snack resulted in a bone or two from Judy’s asado and the crusty ends of my carne asada.

We all ate well.  You will, too.

Asado de Puerco Estilo Chiapaneco

Ingredients
1/2 kilo (1 pound) fresh pork                    1 onion, quartered
1 kilo (2.2 pounds) small pork ribs             1 corn tortilla
2 cloves garlic                                          Thyme to taste
2 chiles cascabel                                      Oregano to taste
2 chiles pasilla                                         Salt and pepper to taste
1 large or two small tomatillos                  Oil

Procedure
Cut the meat into 2" cubes.  Cut the ribs into 2" sections.  Salt and pepper well.  Using a frying pan, sauté in hot oil until well-browned, adding the quartered onion to the meat.  Reserve the meat and onion in the frying pan.

In another pan, carefully toast the garlic, the chiles cascabel and pasilla.  Don’t let them become too dark or they will be bitter.  Reserve the mix in a separate bowl.  In the same frying pan, sauté the corn tortilla.  When all the ingredients are well-toasted, put them in the blender, add a bit of water, and blend until the ingredients are well blended.  Add the blended mixture to the meat in its frying pan.  Add the thyme and oregano to taste. 

Allow to cook over a very low flame for about an hour, adding water little by little as needed so that the meat and sauce do not dry out.

Serves 4-6, accompanied by arroz a la mexicana (Mexican-style rice), frijolitos negros (black beans), and plenty of freshly made hot tortillas.

Provecho!

The highlands of Chiapas, the southernmost state in Mexico, are unlike any region of the 27 other Mexican states I know.  The indigenous culture of the highlands is still fiercely Mayan, albeit with a veneer of Catholicism.  The Chiapanecan Maya are for the most part unwelcoming to outsiders, holding their customs and celebrations close to their chests as jealously guarded secrets.  Some regions forbid entry to both mestizos and foreigners, some forbid the taking of photographs, and some have essentially seceded from Mexico, allowing no access to services commonly accepted as essential everywhere else in the country.

There are a few small indigenous towns where outside visitors are at least superficially welcome, including the pueblo called San Lorenzo Zinacantán, located in a valley at 8500 feet above sea level, just six miles from the small but cosmopolitan city of San Cristóbal de las Casas.  In Zinacantán, where the women dress like flocks of exotically beautiful bluebirds, a prominent sign on the church door reads, "Se prohibe matar pollos durante sus rezos," (‘Killing chickens during your prayers is forbidden’), and the vernacular is Tzotzil, derived from Mayan.  The name Zinacantán means "place of the bats".  Mexico Cooks! missed seeing bats, but we lucked upon certain mystically Mayan Zinacantán ceremonies that left us wide-eyed and pensive.

Zinacantecas Juana Hernández de la Cruz, Josefa Victoria González, Juana Adriana Hernández Hernández, and Yolanda Julieta González Hernández laughed with delight when they saw their photographs.

Village residents wear ropa típica (native dress) made by their own hands.  Women use hand-woven long black wool skirts, hand-embroidered red or blue blouses embroidered in teal blue, deeper blue, and green thread, and stunning tassel-embellished shawls.  It’s possible to identify the families that men, boys, and young girls are from based on the style of weaving and embroidery in the garments their wives, mothers and aunts make for them.

For their weddings, Zinacantán women wear the k’uk’umal chilil, an elaborately woven huipil (long blouse).  White feathers are woven among the colored borders of these wedding dresses, which are  nearly long enough to reach the ground.  Under the huipil, the bride wears a finely hand woven and embroidered navy blue woolen skirt.  The bride’s white dress takes approximately five months to weave on a back strap loom.  The people of Zinacantán say that the hen is a domestic animal that has feathers but cannot fly, walks on two legs just like people, is dependent on them for its nourishment, and is always near the house even when it runs loose.  So the feathers that women weave into the bridal garment represent the attitude of the hen, which the bride is expected to adopt: she will not leave the household, even though she is capable of doing so, and she will shape a relationship of interdependence with her husband.   Hence the feathers are a symbol of good marriage, as are the three borders of multicolored embroidery.  In addition to the long blouse and the navy blue skirt, the bride wears a long white embroidered shawl which covers most of her head and face during the marriage ceremony.

Zinacantán men wear short pants and a knee-length cotón (a sleeveless garment made of one piece of hand-woven fabric sewn up the sides to the armpits, with a cut-out for inserting the head).  The cotón is fastened with a wide red cotton belt wrapped several times around the waist and knotted.  Over that, a man wears a hand-woven and embroidered pink fabric vest with long, elaborate tassels.  A large scarf wraps around the man’s head, either with or without multi-colored ribbons trailing down his back, and over the scarf the men wear a handmade hat woven of palm fronds, long colorful ribbons cascading from the peak of the sombrero.

Because many people in Zinacantán are reluctant to have their pictures taken, I took the photo of traditional wedding clothing in a women’s cooperative crafts store with the permission of the women in the second photograph, who staffed the store the day Mexico Cooks! visited.

Sra. Pascuala Pérez Pérez weaves using a back strap loom.

The loom with a portion of Doña Pascuala’s weaving lies neatly where she left it momentarily to tend the cooperative store.

Crafts work such as weaving traditional brides’ huipiles, rugs, tablecloths, blouses, shawls, and straw hats has become the major source of income for many zinacantecos (residents of Zinacantán).  Doña Pascuala told me, "We start as children, learning to separate the colored threads and put the same colors together.  Many learn how to embroider, but the bad thing is that no one helps us export our crafts to anywhere outside the area."

Next week, read Part Two as Mexico Cooks! continues its visit to San Lorenzo Zinacantán, Chiapas.

The feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe, 2007.

Before the guests arrived, Jalisco 2004.

A window frame in Pátzcuaro.

A picture frame in Zacatecas.

Our Lady of Guadalupe embroidered on the back of a shirt.

Archway in San Cristóbal de las Casas.

La Puerta, Ajijic, Jalisco, 2004.

Gold-leaf flowers in the Santuario de Guadalupe in Morelia.

Stairway in La Casa de los Once Patios, Pátzcuaro.

Mexico Cooks! is on vacation.  Coming soon: our adventures in Chiapas!

A late-19th Century image of Our Lady of Guadalupe, the Queen of Mexico and Empress of the Americas.

Collage by Rodolfo Morales, 20th Century Oaxacan artist.

Tortillando y comadreando (making tortillas and gossiping), Morelia, December 2007.

Sayaca (transvestite clown), Carnaval, Jalisco 2004.

Native dance costume, Chiapas 2003.

Berta Alicia Alejo, Michoacán 2007.

Lila Downs, Mexican-American singer, Guadalajara, November 2005.

Mexico Cooks! is on vacation.  Coming soon: our adventures in Chiapas.