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Nov. 24, 2006 Chiapas is a state in southern México on the Pacific Ocean, with its capital at Tuxtla-Gutiérrez. It lies on the border of México and Guatemala. Almost the size of Indiana in area, its population is a little over 4,000,000. Chiapas was in the news, at least in Spanish-language newspapers, like La Opinión of Los Angeles, during the early to mid-nineties. Chiapas is part of what once was the Maya Empire, and many of the inhabitants of that state are hereditarily Mayan. American Indians, it is no secret, always tend to be poor, and so is the case with the majority of the people of Chiapas. The Indians and their sympathizers staged a mini-revolution starting January 1, 1994, to express their discontent and to protest the adoption of NAFTA, the North American Free Trade Agreement. Although there were some riots and armed skirmishes for a few days, the revolution took the form of protests, rallies and demonstrations for the most part. Still, there was a good deal of anti-American rhetoric. I passed through Chiapas twice, in April and June, 2004, on my way by bus from Los Angeles to Lima, Perú, and, remembering a few of those anti-American slogans, I was a little nervous. But to tell the truth, I probably could pass for one of the locals a lot faster than I could for the typical bald, flabby, camera-toting American tourist. However, a Central American friend of mine had overstated the danger of the Mexican-Guatemalan border crossing, alerting me to pickpockets, robbers and the like. So I was very nervous when I arrived in Tapachula, Chiapas. I had taken a bus from México City, and, in Tapachula, I would connect with Ticabús, the Central American line that took me as far as Panamá City. I spent one day in Tapachula. When Ticabús arrived at the border, we had to alight and go through Mexican exit customs, then walk a quarter-mile to Guatemalan entrance customs, where the bus picked us up again two hours later. Surely enough, that quarter-mile was lined with beggars, vendors and hustlers, but it was not half as frightening as I’d been told it would be. Buses in Central America don’t run at night, because of terrorists and robbers, so leaving the border, and after a stop in Guatemala City, we continued to San Salvador, the capital of El Salvador, where we arrived just before nightfall. Of course, my buses both went along the Pan-American Highway. Now riots and demonstrations have broken out in Oaxaca, the state next east of Chiapas. The people of Chiapas have turned out in the hundreds of thousands to block the roads, in support of the movement in Oaxaca. This is the EZLN, the Ejército Zapatista de Liberación Nacional. It is named in honor of Emiliano Zapata, famous in the Mexican Revolution of 1910. I’ve received a few e-mail inquiries about my bus rides through Central and South America. At this point, I’d say that you should check out the situation in Chiapas before you plunk down your busfare, especially if you look like the stereotypical American tourist. ------------ About the author Thomas Keyes: I have written two books: A SOJOURN IN ASIA (non-fiction) and A TALE OF UNG (fiction), neither published so far. I have studied languages for years and traveled extensively on five continents. Email: udikeyes@yahoo.com Comment on this article here! ------------ All articles are EXCLUSIVE to Useless-Knowledge.com and are not allowed to be posted on other websites. ARTICLE THIEVES WILL BE PROSECUTED! |
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