Preparations for the Day of the Dead in the Indigeous Village of Chamula

Day of the Dead is celebrated on the first and second day of November. The souls of dead come back to visit relatives, the cemeteries overflow with flowers, and families make offerings and hold dances for their deceased loved ones. Several weeks before the festival of the dead, families visit the cemeteries to prepare, cleaning and decorating the graves with pine needles, flowers, food and drink.

Tours of Indigenous Villages are offered daily in San Cristobal by two experienced tour guides Raul and Cesear. The tours meet daily at 9:30AM at the plaza in front of the cathedral, next to the Zocalo, and the tour returns around 2:30PM (lunch time in Mexico). Cost is 180 pesos ($16 US).

Private tours to Chamula and Zinacantan as well as several of the other more remote Maya villages, including Tenejapa, San Andres Larrainzar and San Pedro Chenalhocan can arranged by Cielo y Tierra Tours, one of the top tour companies in San Cristobal.

Indigenous Women

A woman from the small village of Zinacantán shows us how she weaves her textiles. Making textiles is a lengthy, labor-intensive process. She can weave a textile in a day, but then may spend many more days embroidering it, for example, wedding feathered huipil (pronounced wē-pēl) can take up to five or six months to finish.

Feathered Huipil

The feathered huipil is decorated with white hen feathers and is used as a wedding dress by the women of Zinacantán. The feathers are woven into the hem in three or four lines interlaced with embroidered designs. The work to make the wedding huipil is intricate and very time intensive, each feather shaft must be tightened with a weft of thick cotton thread that is joined to the material, making this one of the most beautiful and expensive textiles in the region.