Los Altos de Santa Cruz Almolonga August 26, 2021
The forested hills of Santa Cruz Almolonga border the old city on the south side of valley, but the urban sprawl continues to spill, forming fingers of humanity, residences and shops climbing steep ravines, traversing green-wooded ridge lines, on pocked pavement and stoney tracks. The village of Santa Cruz sits at the top, 400-feet above downtown San Cristóbal, just out of view of La Iglesia de Guadalupe, and its principal reason for being is the white-stone escarpment that encircles the community. Santa Cruz is one giant quarry.
The big dump-trucks fly by the pine boughs on the narrow winding road, raising dust and rousing the dogs from their sunbath. These trucks are not seeking mortar today, however—they are making deliveries. Flat cement slabs of old walls and foundations are dumped at the quarry, as Chiapanecos employ an old industry of recycled raw materials, just like the Mexica learned from the Franciscan temple-builders.
We stumble upon the village only after an unlikely descent along a rough track that ends in a cornfield. The dogs meet us first, and I wish I had a pocket of kibble. Then a short man waves from in front of his cinderblock cottage, and soon a family of six are peering out the windows, confused but curious about the gringo who suddenly finds himself lost in their backyard. An impressive collection of hard-rock hammers leans against the box dwelling, I assume, for rent. The adults brandish their metal smiles and say, “Buen Dia,” pointing to the paved road below as the way back to El Centro.
This Santa Cruz community, a semi-rural satellite of the congested city, shares geographic similarities with the Santa Cruz outside Port of Spain. It also shares an urban crime problem, such that hikers are advised not to wander alone, as there have been armed holdups in the area, especially at a popular nearby nature park called Encuentro. We solve this crime problem by deciding not to be vulnerable “hikers” but, rather, amateur surveyors of the limestone quarry. Judging by the size of the gouge in the hillside, I should estimate that San Cristóbal de las Casas will never run out of stones or cement. How long these family farms survive on such brittle margins is dependent on how hungry the heavy excavators are.
Our final descent back to the valley is through San Nicolás, a wooded ravine that was once a ranch at the edge of the old city, perhaps a pasture for the horses of wealthy urbanites, but now it is subdivided into a growing neighborhood of shaded cabins and gated communities along the edge of the filthy Yellow River. Two men drag a downed oak tree out of the woods and across the narrow bridge, where some construction workers on Calle Francisco Leon await their cheap lumber. On second thought, these two guys look like the ones who deliver my firewood, so maybe I am complicit.
If only the deforestation afflicting these hills were so incremental—say, one-half tree per walking man—we might call it a harvest. But 90% of the old growth has disappeared in the last 40 years, meaning the loss of a fantastic assortment of subtropical hardwoods that has been replaced by fast-growing pines. This seems like a distinctly American idea. However, there are no Yanquis working on these forested hills today, only one amateur surveyor with questionable credentials.