moldfarm

Greetings from the heart of zapatistaland, Ocosingo!

   It's amazingly beautiful here. We arrived here this afternoon, and took a look through the town. There is a big central market here where the people sell vegetables and random stuff. Little children yell Gringo Gringo! at us, but they are also smiling in a friendly way. Again we find ourselves in a very friendly town. We are staying in a hotel that costs about $20 a night; It's simple, but the toilet, or something neart the toilet leaks, but other than that, it seems fine.

  When we came into the town by bus, which was right on time, we saw an autonomous zapatista community called Paisasote nueva, so we decided to try and visit it. We found a cab that would take us there, and we started walking down the road. All of the children came out of their houses and were smiling at us and waving and saying hola! and buenas tardes, etc. We wandered down the road, which has murals of zapatistas and colorful building that are schools and medical places for them.  A family asked us to come and visit with them. They gave us some fresh bananas, just because they were being friendly.  Turns out the father was a subcomadante in the zapatista revolucion in 1994. He showed us his picture which was on a postcard. We talked for a long time with them. There are about 700 people that live in this community. They took over this rancho during the revolucion and created this autotonomous community.  They grow corn, squash, beans, and all of their food on their land there. They live very poorly; this family had a small shack, but running water. They fed us a sweet squash soup;  just squash sweetened with cane juice, and told us about how they live and their community and we asked lots of questions.  The father, Alberto, wanted to go to the united states and asked us many questions about the us and how to get there. We warned him about the immigration, etc.  It was a very fun talk and a very beautiful walk on the road there.  Anyway,  we were so honored to be invited into thier world and it was a fun conversation. We wished we could do more to help them. Seemed a bit innapropriate to give them money, though.. They were mostly interested in conversation.

  Aside from that, the food has been good. The serivce here is very intersting. They always expect you to be ready to order in like 30 seconds. Ususally we have been ordering rice, beans, tortillas, and sometimes guacamole, which they are often slightly confused about. They seem to give us like the smallest dab of beans you can imagine, and huge portion of guacamole, and like 20 tortillas, which are usually hand made. Then, oddly, they never give you the check until you ask, and they are often puzzled or surprised that you are asking for "la cuenta". And they often dont' have any change. We needed change for about $20 and the waiter went to like 4 different places to get change.. Anyway, just a weird thing that happened..

Anyway,  that's the excitement for today..

Tomorrow we are going to check out some more mayan ruins and then we are off to san cristobol de las casas..

 

hasta luego!

 

<Subcomadantes Cohenes>