Since this seems to be a self expression day, I offer this old reminisce→[More:]
It is difficult for a visitor in any country not their own is to gain a
clear understanding of what is really going on. It is hard enough to
have that understanding about your home town, or even in your house
sometimes. However, the highland area around San Cristobal de las Casas
remains vivid and inscrutable in my mind, even after 8 years absence.

The memory most clearly imbedded got there, as is quite usual, during a trip
on one of the ubiquitous second-class busses by which most people, native
and visitor, must go in order to get around Chiapas.

I was on my way back to San Cristobal from Palenque, in the hot, misty
lowland jungle that becomes the Yucatan Peninsula if you continue on that
road. This is all part of the "Gringo Trail," from which I have never
strayed too far. Going back up to the highlands, you travel through
several distinct zones of climate, geology, and vegetation as you gain
elevation. There is some breathtaking scenery, if you can overlook the
garbage that is along all roads in Mexico.

Sitting next to me on this trip was a young woman probably in her
mid-teens. She was simply and immaculately dressed in what seemed like a
school uniform, white blouse and blue skirt. Scrupulously clean with
nary a black hair out of place. I could only imagine her displeasure of
sharing a seat on a long trip with a large, sweaty, dusty American man.

As the bus slowed to go through the town of Oxchuc, a crowd, which took
up the right half of the road, loomed ahead. It was mostly men yelling
at each other in this knot of people, and then I noticed that off to the
side was a woman, lying face-down in the road, with a stream of blood
flowing downhill from her head into the dirt of the road.

It went by so fast. I remember her single long grey braid, her
embroidered multicolored huipil, and the blood, still red and flowing.
Presumably, she was dead, and the men of the town were working an
assigning the responsibility, and not arriving at any quick consensus.
The body of this old woman seemed an afterthought there at the side of
this group of quarrelsome men.

Was this woman run over by a vehicle? Was she killed by human hands? I
still wonder about this.

The young woman beside me and I shared a quick glance of commiseration, our
only communication on the 5-hour trip, as the bus gained speed to climb the
next hill which waited on the other end of town.