Zinacantán

The combi from San Cristóbal to Zinacantán takes twenty minutes and gains several hundred meters of altitude, arriving at a village so dense with flowers that the first impression is not visual but olfactory — a cool, high-altitude sweetness that smells like carnations and chrysanthemums and something faintly medicinal that I later learned was the wild herbs growing along the road between the greenhouses. The Tzotzil Maya of Zinacantán have been growing flowers commercially for decades, supplying florists across southern Mexico, and the hillsides around the village are covered in greenhouse plastic that catches the light in the afternoon like a patchwork of mirrors.

The church on the main square is where I went first, as you should, because the interior is entirely different from what the colonial exterior suggests. There are no pews. The stone floor is covered in pine needles and flower petals in elaborate patterns. Candles of multiple colors burn in formations whose meanings are specific to Tzotzil cosmology and not immediately readable to an outsider. On the morning I visited, a curandera was conducting a cleansing ceremony for a woman seated on the floor, passing an egg over her body and speaking in a low continuous voice while the church filled with copal smoke and the smell of pine. Nobody stopped me from entering or watching, but I stood near the door.

The textiles in Zinacantán are the reason many people make the trip, and they are genuinely worth the journey. The embroidered huipiles — sleeveless blouses worn over a woven skirt — use a palette of vivid pinks, magentas, and mauves that manages to be simultaneously maximalist and coherent. The patterns are not decorative in any simple sense; they record cosmological relationships, family lineage indicators, and ceremonial calendars in their combinations. Women in the village weave on backstrap looms set up in the doorways of their houses, and several cooperative shops along the main street sell the work at prices that are modest given the hours involved. I bought a woven table runner that has moved with me across four countries since.

The men of Zinacantán wear something different and equally striking: knee-length pink shorts with embroidered trim, a short jacket with tassels, and sandals. The outfit is formal wear — you see it most clearly at fiestas — but some older men wear elements of it daily, and the combination of traditional dress against the backdrop of greenhouse plastic and mobile phone signals creates the particular visual complexity that Chiapas specializes in.

Lunch in Zinacantán involves sitting on a low bench in a family kitchen and eating what is placed in front of you, which is almost always black beans, handmade tortillas still warm from the comal, and some form of chicken in a thin sauce. The cost is usually whatever the family decides it is. Eat whatever is offered, drink the agua de Jamaica, and do not rush.

When to go: Year-round, though the flower season peaks in the dry months from November to April when the greenhouses are at full production. The Day of the Dead in late October and early November brings extraordinary floral arrangements to the village and the church, and the flower market runs at full intensity. The church floor is most elaborately decorated during the main fiestas, particularly the Feast of San Lorenzo in August.