Deep in the autonomous mountain region of Chiapas

Starting our journey in Mexico, Shiwen and I spent 2 weeks in the city of Mérida, Yucatan just pursuing some city activities like taking Spanish classes, doing sports and learning oil painting. Our day of departure coincided with the arrival of Hurricane Beryl, but luckily it had weakened so much by the time it got to Mérida that our 15 hour bus to San Cristóbal in Chiapas was not affected. So we made it in time, a day before we were going to get picked up for our first volunteering project in Latin America.

Within the depths of the Chiapas mountains Shiwen and I volunteered for a week on the land of Shanti and Matu, who are part of one of the many autonomous communities in the area. After an hour and half of a drive from San Cristóbal de las Casas, passing through 17 other communities along a dirt road, the pickup truck carrying vegetables and 4 volunteers arrived. Shanti and 4 dogs were welcoming us and after unloading bags and vegetables the daily afternoon rain started like clockwork. It was a Sunday, the day to settle in, get to know each other, before the work started the next day. Shanti had been on the road in Latin America for almost 20 years before buying land in Chiapas shortly after the Covid pandemic started. Matu had accompanied her for the most part of the journey traveling in a big, rustic motorhome. Their 16 year old daughter Zaina has been nomadic almost all of her live, she just moved out to live on her own in San Cristóbal. The land is mostly on hillsides and features an open-air kitchen/hang-out area at the bottom of the side to the road. This is where I spent most of my idle time and where we many times listened to Shanti telling us about their crazy experiences in Latin America over the past 20 years. She is also a great vegetarian cook, everyday she cooked delicious meals for us, with the whole range from very Mexican tortillas, quiche, to Pizza and Pasta.

Monday, the day after we arrived, our working week began and like every other working day we started after breakfast in the early morning and finished for lunch. Not much later it would begin to rain with an almost unfailing regularity. In terms of the work, every day was different. We cut grass and bushes with machetes, dug moats, oiled wooden walls, planted bush, fixed fences, collected firewood, dug out potatoes, planted vegetables. It couldn’t have been more diverse. Especially the physically harder work like digging and cutting was very satisfying, after a few days fatigue was definitely setting in. Actually by the end of Friday’s work all the 4 of us volunteers were quite dead and ready for a break. I am actually not sure how Shanti managed to coordinate all of us and the different work activities, at most 2 of us worked together at a time and we were spread around the place from the chicken pens below in the valley to the woods above the upmost cabin.

Their land is quite big and only one hillside of it is fully in use by now, this is where the few buildings are situated, one of which is a beautiful wooden house that’s still under construction. On one day I did even contribute a tiny part to it, the concrete foundation for the terrace piles, which I mixed and poured together with Matu. Much of the main rooms interiors were in an advanced state already, this is where Shiwen oiled much of the wooden walls. One can already imagine the finished building from which all the lower part of the land can be overseen. It’s the ultimate goal of Shanti and Matu to be fully self-sufficient in their food production, but for now the things they grow are not enough, not even for just themselves. And the bigger challenge is fodder for the chicken, which is quite a lot. Well, it’s a long-term goal and from our perspective the progress they have made in just 3 years or so is already incredible, no doubt that previous volunteers also contributed a good part to that. We did hear about the grueling work of carrying the many big stones that serve as wall material for some of the buildings.

It was a seriously entertaining week with Shanti, Matu and all their animals. Getting to understand some aspects of living in an autonomous, indigenous community was eye-opening, it may sound like a utopia, but there’s much about it that makes it tough. People are people and as foreigners it takes a long time (or forever) to be treated as equals by the locals. There are also conflicts in between the communities, we were astonished to hear the story of Zaina and a friend having to retrieve their stolen dog by marching into a neighboring community with machetes in their hands. We are keeping our fingers crossed that life in the mountains continues to be mostly harmonious and that Shanti and Matu get closer to the goal of self-sufficiency day by day!