Templo de Arcotete

We exchange vocabulary in Tzotil, English, and French with a local family while waiting for a small craft shop's owner returns to buy some goods.

Women are washing clothes in the nearby river, while many of the men are chopping down trees for lumber and firewood. Sheep, game hens, and cows wander around the humble houses blurring the lines between the farmland and homelife.

All of this is happening in the shadow of the Templo de Arcotete.

The church at Arcotete is in the center of a small community of weavers and farmers. A symbol of colonial Spanish rule assimilated to the Maya traditions.

The land was maintained as a traditional hasienda with a patron whom the indigenous people worked for until 1979.

The property was then converted to an ejito, a collectively held piece of a land where each member has rights to certain parcels and all decisions pertaining to the land must be collectively made.

The church on the property remains a place of sacred worship and practice as part of the Mexican Orthodox church.

During the days when there was a Patron, he would pay to have a priest visit the church semiannually. Since his death their have been no visitations.

Most of the Patron's property has been left to fall apart, except for the church which is well maintained.

The Mayas have adapted many of the Catholic practices and symbols into their own practices and ceremonies.

Everything from the number of crosses, to their arrangement, to the symbols carved into them, to their color has deep meaning.

Much of the Maya belief systems are based upon dualities. The east/west alignment of the cross along with its vertical post connect the sun and the moon, and heaven and earth. The color is half blue, the color of the sky, and half green, the color of the earth, symbolizing further connections. Carvings in the crosses depict offerings and tree branches.

We are in the middle of Semana Santa, Saint's Week, and it is a perfect example of this assimilation of Catholicism and Maya traditions.