Venustiano Carranza

For nearly four centuries this town was San Bartolomé de los Llanos, and many people still call it that. Dominican friars founded it in the 16th century below Yalench'en hill, in Tsotsil Maya country, and built a convent from which to evangelise the region; the name Venustiano Carranza was imposed by decree on 13 February 1934. The town lies at about 780 metres in the Central Depression of Chiapas, and had roughly 15,500 people in 2010. The Grijalva River runs along the municipality, backed up here into the reservoir of the Belisario Domínguez (La Angostura) dam, begun in 1968.

It has taken some blows. A fire in 1771 burned 719 houses; in October 1902 ash from Guatemala's Santa María volcano darkened the sky and most churches and homes were wrecked; the 2017 earthquake damaged the churches again. Still standing are the church of San Bartolomé on the main square, the churches of San Pedro, Señor del Pozo and El Carmen, the ruined church of San Sebastián and, best known, El Arco, the single surviving arch of a colonial aqueduct, the only one left in south-east Mexico, rebuilt after the town council approved the works in 1792.

The town itself is Tsotsil, while Aguacatenango, in the same municipality, speaks Tseltal. Tsotsil women weave sheer white cotton gauze on backstrap looms, brocaded in cotton and silk with diamonds, sun discs, corn plants and animals. On Holy Thursday about a hundred Tsotsil townspeople carry a century-old wooden figure of the dead Christ through the streets, guarded by custodians in purple hoods and accompanied by drums and whistles.