Hobobiker Podcast #6 - Indigenous Healers in San Juan Chamula
By rfay - Posted on June 24th, 2007
San Juan Chamula church (View on flickr)
Here's the story of our visit to the Chiapas village of San Juan Chamula, where the church hasn't had a mass in 40 years, and it's used exclusively for the village's purposes. The main figure in the church is Saint John the Baptist, not Jesus, and the business inside is about indigenous healers, not about church services. The priests are allowed inside rarely, and only for baptisms.
We also bring you up to date on where we are and why we're not in Guatemala yet (We've been studying Spanish in the lovely city of San Cristóbal de las Casas, probably our last major stop in Mexico.)
- Artist: Randy Fay and Nancy Lewis - Hobobiker.com
- Title: Hobobiker.com Podcast #6 - Indigenous Healers in village of San Juan Chamula
- Genre: Other
- Year: 2007
- Length: 17:19 minutes (15.86 MB)
- Format: MP3 Mono 44kHz 128Kbps (CBR)
San Juan Church
By Gabriel Sierra (not verified) - Posted on July 3rd, 2007
Hi!
This thing about this church being used by the indigenous afairs and not by the catholic church is amazing, but not completely unknown to me. In the Afro-Caribean religions, catholic saints were commonly used as a disguise for african deities, hence the term "Santeria". It might seem that this fenomena is not unique to the afro-caribean but also to the strong indigenous sects in Central America, and this is new for me! One would have to go back to see what happened 40 years ago, and why the indigenous took control of the church. Interesting stuff! Keep it coming!
Gabriel
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