Comitán de Domínguez July 11, 2021
“Libres por la Palabra Libre.”
Belisario Domínguez, 1913
To escape the gloomy rain and chill of the wet season in San Cristobal, I join my anonymous source for a 2-hour eastern descent on Route 190 to the small city of Comítan, elevation 5500 feet, to dry out my sweaters for a few days, hopefully in a posh setting. The Colectívo van is 60 pesos (3 USD), and is nonstop, although the return trip is searched briefly for illegal migrants, from which my blue eyes provide adequate protection. They are looking for Honduran thugs, a growing scourge in this southern border region, with Guatemala barely an hour away.
Like San Cristobal, but half the size, Comitán is filled with old churches. The narrow streets are steep, discouraging walkers from venturing too far, so we settle on the summit of Templo de Comitán, a mustardy Dominican edifice built in 1556. The main plaza here is a marvel of arboreal engineering, with large trees carved and shaved into geometric submission. The ample bench space is largely taken by midmorning, providing plenty of business for exceedingly young children wandering with shoe-shine kits and disgusting candies for sale.
The original Maya city was named Balún Canán, translated either as “place of nine stars” or “place of 9 guardians,” but the Mexicas renamed it Comitlán, Náhuatl for “place of pot makers”, in 1482, when the Aztec Empire was in full expansionist mode. Legend has it that the city was founded after Maya hunters observed a puma drinking from a gushing spring, which is preserved today outside the Neo-classical Templo de San Caralampio, a 19th-century church dedicated to a martyr of the 1852 colera epidemic.
Comitan’s favorite son is Dr. Belisario Dominguez, for whom the city was renamed in 1915. After completing college in San Cristóbal, he received his medical training in Paris, where he lived for ten years and was educated in the traditions of European radicalism. He returned home and was elected mayor in 1909. Shortly after, he became a Chiapas Senator, moving to Mexico City just as all hell was breaking loose. The popularly elected President Madero was assassinated, and General Huerta assumed control of government, whom Dominguez detested. There is no clear record of the speech he gave condemning the ersatz leader, but Belisario Dominguez’s words helped to ignite the Mexican Revolution. He was murdered by a cabal of conspirators in 1913, his eloquent tongue allegedly removed and sealed in a jar.
Absent the typical tourist flow due to Covid and border restrictions, La Casa del Marqués de Comillas is empty but for a quiet servant staff, who all seem to be named Maria. The master suite off the lush courtyard garden goes for 50 dollar per night, looking up reverently at the white Neo-gothic steeples of Templo de San Jose, erected in 1910. High plaster walls within the Casa are adorned with a suffering Jesus and numerous tranquil Mary’s, as well as wooden dressers the size of sarcophaguses. The suite’s giant wooden doors fasten with ancient latches and an iron key too large for any pocket, while the bathrooms are modernized with flush toilets and even a jacuzzi tub, although the city’s severe water shortage renders such luxurious bathing rather irresponsible. No matter, however, there is no hot water. There is, however, a bizarre cross-century fitness room containing 2 peloton bicycles and an iron carriage requiring actual horse power.
Outside the palatial Casa de Marquéz in the early morning hours, a line of indigenous families forms, waiting for the San Jose Clinica to open. Children in sandals and sneakers huddle under blankets, snacking on cups of corn and tamales, waiting for assistance, any at all, forever waiting. A friendly cop stands by. Relief has been a long time coming for Belisario Domínguez’s constituents, and the next revolution is nowhere in sight on the Plaza de Comitán. Meanwhile, word flies about that gangland violence has erupted just to the north, in the village of Chenalhó, causing hundreds of innocents to flee in terror. They are heading to the relative safety of these cities, places where municipal authorities and national guard protect the tourist businesses and beautiful old useless churches, whose bells toll relentlessly, eternally, for a salvation that never arrives.