Grutas de Mamut March 30, 2022
“The Zapatista Caracol 10 in Ocosingo has set up a road block calling for an end to the war in Ukraine!”
Eri Ebe, Brooklyn Journalist
Really? This is what it has come to? Perhaps. With five centuries of simmering resentments, there is certainly room for one more, particularly if it is in resistance to empire. Ukraine fits the bill. Unfortunately, closing yet another road, for yet more ill-defined reasons, only demonstrates the intractability of the civil discord in Chiapas. Grievance becomes an end. The Zapatistas have already announced their opposition to the Tren Maya route to Palenque, so the road closures will likely increase next year.
The solution for today is to avoid roads altogether.
Among the nature reserves in the hills surrounding San Cristobal, including Arcotete and Encuentro, Grutas de Mamut features the largest limestone cave explorable under light. The main chamber is impressive, as large as a high school gymnasium, while the string of electric bulbs that illuminates the interior makes clear why 20 pesos is required to enter—we are paying the power bill.
Other such caves may be guarded by docents to keep us from touching the flowstone, protecting the stalagmites and stalactites from destructive human oils, but visitors here are free to scramble over the formations. Indeed, the central travertine feature, and the namesake of the cave, looks like a mammoth that has had too many admirers. Everyone wants to touch the calcium fur, it seems, and their dirt shows on the coat. The grand illuminated alcove may resemble a fluted baroque cathedral, but this place has been used as a dancehall, one that offers cavernous echoes and mammoth rides.
Outside the cave, planting season is well underway along the river bottom. Peach trees are in blossom. Mockingbirds shout at us and each other. On the hillsides, families prepare agricultural terraces for the growing season ahead, fortifying trenches, slashing brush. The air has a slight whiff of woodsmoke, giving the sky a dreamlike gloss. The dry season here is short-lived, but already the deciduous trees are thirsting in the sun. Drought and flood are strange bedfellows in Mexico’s rainiest state.
A giant Coca Cola truck pulls into the picnic area, to the obvious relief of parched cave-visitors and the cantina that has been waiting to be re-stocked. There is no word yet as to how the truck made it through the road-blocks, but reasonable minds can speculate.