Chiapas - Mexico

On a high curb of a cobblestone street, a Chamula women sits to hike the blue blanket holding her baby higher on her back.

Three women with her wait as patiently as her shadow, each similarly dressed in a long skirt of black wool with fine red stripes, a headdress of the same material folded square on her black hair.

This mountain town, still so Mayan in spirit, is not a world of individualism but of the tribe, the strong sense of belonging that the alienated might envy.

For the Indian descendents living in the southern state of Chiapas, questions of identity are not answered with hours of solitary angst.

They're settled with a quick glance at the clothing that is different for each of the region's three main tribes, Chamulas, Huistechos, Zinacantechos, and at the small detail of ribbon or sleeve that marks a person's particular village.

Most of the people are no less firmly placed in the rich Mayan culture that connects their world view and values to the great ancient civilization that stretched from Honduras to Chiapas.

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