How was your weekend?

La Virgen, outside Tenejapa

This weekend we went to a village called Tenejapa. Similar to the people in Zinacantán, the indigenous people in Tenejapa are known for their weaving and embroidery. The style of their clothing is very different from the florid purples and pinks in Zinacantán; in Tenejapa the women wear black wool skirts with one line of geometric shapes embroidered around the middle. They put their hair in two long braids and weave ribbons into the braids. The statue in the photo above was in a roadside shrine outside the village; La Virgen is done up in a bit of the Tenejapa style. (We don't have any photos of people in this traditional clothing; they don't want photos taken of them.)

San Cristóbal was next to La Virgen.

 The pace of things in Tenejapa was so...slow that we felt sufficiently at our leisure, over lunch, to listen to Oscar tell an entire story and to become friends with the very nice owners of the restaurant. (The food was great, too.)

The long version, director's cut.

Hector and Maria Eugenia.

 Back at home, Sean and I made a run to the market.

A chorus line! The man selling these
leggy lovelies told us that Sean could NOT
take a photo of him, but of the chickens,
well...sí.

We spent half our grocery money
on firecrackers. Oscar didn't mind.

 On Sunday, in yet another instance of we-don't-quite-know-what's-going-on, we showed up for the opening day of the soccer season. We knew there would be a ceremony and that afterward Oscar's age group would have a game. We didn't know that there would be hundreds of players, that Sean's team was also expected to participate (the coach made Sean go home to get his team shirt), and that the event would last a couple of hours.

The Mini Talentos marched in first. 

Some teams had cheerleaders. 

Oscar and his team. (Official uniforms arriving next week.)

Wilhelmina supplies the girl power here.

Totally no fair: this team's coach
had a REAL EAGLE mascot.

Peeps in Wilhelmina and Oscar's club (younger set).

The military police (armed) attended. 

Also this weekend: Wilhelmina has been asking about neo-liberalism. One of her teachers, Griselda ("who's pretty grim," according to Wilhelmina), has been talking about " economic policies where the rich get richer and the poor get poorer, and they try and globalize the world and erase cultures and lose borders." Wilhelmina thinks it could be happening, but she thinks that might be extreme because, as she  says, "people are pretty attached to things like their culture and their country, and it seems unlikely that people are making a special effort to stamp out cultures." So much to learn and talk about! (We've already commenced our internet research and kitchen roundtable discussion.) This weekend wasn't long enough.

One more Virgen. She is in our yard,
watching out for us and (hopefully)
battling neo-liberalism.