My visit with the Bishop of Chiapas.

• Author: Capellaro, Catherine
• Position: Bishop Samuel Ruiz Garcia - Interview

In January of this year, Bishop Samuel Ruiz Garcia of Chiapas resigned as the main negotiator between the Zapatistas and the Mexican government. He cited the government's "constant and growing aggression." The resignation of Ruiz, a 1998 Nobel Prize nominee, has upended a peace process that had already been faltering.

In July, I went to Chiapas to meet up with my sister, who was volunteering there on a project that gives cameras to indigenous people to document their lives. I also wanted to speak to Bishop Ruiz. As it happens, I had met Ruiz in my hometown of New Glarus, Wisconsin, in 1993, a few months before the Zapatistas rose up in arms. He was visiting the Reverend Tom Nielsen of the United Church of Christ. Nielsen had worked closely with the Catholic Diocese in San Cristobal to provide humanitarian aid to thousands of Guatemalans in refugee camps in Chiapas. Ruiz gave only hints of the conflict brewing in his native country.

Trying to look like a tourist, I fly into Cancun and take a twenty-hour bus trip to San Cristobal. The road, dotted with poor villages, army camps, and swatches of burned forest, twists and turns into the mountains surrounding San Cristobal. Many passengers become ill with motion sickness. Action movies such as Ninja Warrior dubbed into Spanish play repeatedly on small overhead TV sets. We pass a town where a group of villagers, all dressed in pink embroidered garments, gathers around a priest who holds a microphone.

On the brick streets of San Cristobal are markets crowded with Indian people wearing vibrant colors. Women from the surrounding villages--many with babies slung on their backs--gather in the market near the San Cristobal cathedral to ply their crafts to tourists. These include elaborate embroidery, weavings, and pottery--each village has its own patterns and colors. Other nearby markets feature mangoes, bananas, radishes, pork, chicken, beef, spices, peppers, roasted bugs, and beans. I find my sister, and we go to a cafe where two young girls climb into our laps. They kiss and hug us, hold our hands, introduce themselves. They point to the bakery goods lined up at the counter, priced for tourists. "Please," they say in English. After they eat the scones we buy for them, we have to ask them please to let us go.

Soldiers stand sentry outside banks, and military trucks roll through the streets.

Two young boys approach us for a shoeshine as we're walking down the street. When we refuse, they spit on us, and one of them scratches my arm.

We take a horseback ride to Chmula, a village just outside of San Cristobal. My sister warns me to eat beforehand because it's too heartbreaking to eat in front of so many hungry people. Young children cling to us as we arrive in the plaza. Some try to put bracelets on us, hoping that we will make a purchase. Others hold out their hands asking for pesos. Old people, wrapped in rags, and suffering from diseases that are peeling their skin, huddle against the shelter of the municipal building, their hands outstretched.

In the countryside, army posts line the roads.

Bishop Ruiz keeps an erratic schedule. I visited the Catholic Diocese office in San Cristobal several times in an attempt to arrange a meeting with him. Finally, I found the best way to track him down was to attend mass in the cathedral near the zocalo, or main square, of San Cristobal.

After the evening mass one Sunday, Don Samuel--as the locals call him--exits to the rear of the cathedral. In a tiny room behind the altar...