Thanksgiving Tour November 25, 2021
The little tour bus looks like a San Francisco cablecar with old tires. I have yet to board one of these, but I have, more than once, needed to duck to avoid decapitation from the extra-wide sideview mirrors. The rides only cost a couple of dollars, and they stop at all the major Catholic sites, but they are naturally conducted in Spanish, so I am not sure it is right for me. Besides, given the incessant gridlock of Centro Histórico, I am sure that a walking tour would save time. So let us begin. Please keep your arms inside my vehicle of prose.
To escape those predatory tour buses, I drop down from Guadalupe hill to the river. No bus will ever take its tourist passengers to this place, which circles the old city like a moat, its brown contents choked with brush and garbage. Strewn, matted trash covers the lower branches from the last flood. Shore birds such as herons and egrets stay away. Perhaps it is the toxicity, or perhaps it is the deference given to the hunters in the area.
In a park nearby, one Tzotzil boy sprinkles kibble on the ground to attract the pigeons, while his brother, posing as a statue, lunges to grab one, as the rest of the flock scatters. “Palomita!” shouts an approving mother from her bench. The boy has just caught thanksgiving dinner, I think, but, no, he raises his trophy and releases it. Today it is merely bloodless sport, although I doubt the pigeons have learned any lessons.
The kibble appears all around town. These people feed their street dogs, and consequently there are many street dogs in San Cristóbal. The menacing amount of sidewalk excrement in my neighborhood alone is worthy of Paris, a city I have never visited but imagine is full of it. The waste will eventually make its way to Rio Amarillo, repelling tour buses and shore birds alike, thus completing one of the more disgusting circles of life.
Following the river around to the north, we pass a number of very fine old hacienda estates, mostly vacant, in various states of disrepair. Until the middle of the last century, the owners of these haciendas were the powers of commerce in the city. Their large pastures on the other side of the river fed the priests and anyone else who could afford it. However, the Hacendados were always outnumbered, and, fearing the Other, took drastic steps to protect themselves and their assets. The Tzotzil Maya were treated like savages and were routinely brutalized and murdered. They were forbidden to patronize markets or even to walk on the sidewalks. Ritual gatherings were considered such a threat that laws were passed to permit arrests for sedition.
Diminutive Tzotzil people are the only ones I see today outside the haciendas, walking on the sidewalks, crossing the river to the grassy commons, to where the law now says they can be. I wonder if there will be new homeowners in this neighborhood anytime soon. The rise of the ejido system brought the fall of the haciendas, and the next buyer would be wise to recognize what these estates represent in history.
Our tour ends at the water treatment plant, which meets Rio Amarillo as it flows out of town. San Cris may be surrounded by its waste, but at least it does not export it. At least in theory. The facility looks eerily empty and untended. In the distance, I can barely make out what looks to be a white egret, keeping a healthy distance from the mess. At one point, I could swear that I smell roasted turkey, but, as David Byrne famously said, “It’s only the river. It’s only the river.”