San Cristóbal de las Casas

There was no pre-Hispanic city here. Diego de Mazariegos founded the town in 1528 as a military post, Villa Real de Chiapa, in a valley the Nahuatl speakers called Hueyzacatlán, "pasture", after defeating the Zoque and the Chiapa people. The name changed several times — Ciudad Real from 1536, when it was declared a city — and "de las Casas" was added in 1848 to honour the friar Bartolomé de las Casas. In Tzotzil and Tzeltal the place is Jovel, "the place in the clouds". Through the colonial period it was governed under the Captaincy General of Guatemala, and Dominican, Franciscan, Mercedarian and Augustinian orders filled it with churches and convents.

In 1821 the town followed Comitán in declaring independence, and in 1824 it joined Mexico as capital of Chiapas. For the rest of the century the government moved back and forth between Conservative San Cristóbal and Liberal Tuxtla, until it left for Tuxtla for good in 1892; an attempt to bring it back in 1911 failed. The town was declared a national historic monument in 1974.

From the 1960s the diocese, under a bishop appointed in 1960, became a centre of Indigenous organising, and in 1974 it held a statewide Indian Congress of Tzeltal, Tzotzil, Tojolabal and Ch'ol communities. On 1 January 1994 forces of the Zapatista Army of National Liberation occupied San Cristóbal and six other communities. Negotiations, mediated in part by the bishop, led to the San Andrés Accords. The town was named a Pueblo Mágico in 2003.

San Cristóbal is called the cultural capital of Chiapas, and much of that culture comes from the Tzotzil and Tzeltal people of the town and the villages around it. Weaving is the best-known craft, alongside amber from the mines of Simojovel, jade, ceramics, wrought iron and filigree jewellery; the Santo Domingo complex holds a museum of highland textiles and a weavers' shop called Sna Jolobil, "house of weaving" in Tzotzil. An annual Amber Expo sells pieces from across the state.

The religious calendar is full, with the feasts of the Dulce Niño de Jesús, the Señor de Esquipulas, Saint Anthony, Corpus Christi and the town's patron, besides each barrio's own saint. Holy Week is the most elaborate, with hooded processions, passion plays and the burning of Judas figures that include politicians, conquistadors and celebrities, while the Spring and Peace Fair is held around Easter. The Festival Cervantino Barroco brings artistic and cultural events to the historic centre each year, and marimba music is played in the remodelled plaza of El Cerrillo.

Since 1994 the town has also drawn activists, NGOs and long-stay foreigners, and shops sell Zapatista-themed souvenirs — a trade nicknamed "Zapaturismo", a word first used as a jibe. In the evenings young people still promenade around the kiosk in front of the city hall, where protests are also frequent.

About 184,000 people lived in the city at the 2020 census, around 86 per cent of the municipality, which also takes in more than a hundred rural communities. The population is young and has grown quickly, and the Tzotzil and Tzeltal are the largest Indigenous groups. The town is made up of barrios, many with their own church and saint's day.

Commerce, services and tourism employ about two-thirds of the workforce, with more than 80 hotels in the municipality, and crafts — jade, textiles and amber — are the main manufactured goods. In the 20th century open-pit gravel and sand mines spread around the outskirts, and environmental and community groups have protested against them, saying the valley is a closed water basin and the mining affects its drinking water.

Many homes still burn firewood in the cold months, which gives the town a faintly smoky smell. Deforestation of the surrounding hills has dried up many of the springs, and two mountain wetlands in the city are now Ramsar sites. Milk is still delivered in churns carried on donkeys in places, and on Sundays the vendors of the Santo Domingo crafts market go out to sell at the village markets.

The town's traditional dishes are sold in the market comedores: saffron tamales, sopa de pan — a soup of bread in chicken broth — asado coleto and atole de granillo, a warm maize drink. San Cristóbal is known for its cured meats and sausages, a tradition traced back to Spanish and German settlers, which appear in dishes such as chalupas. Posh, or pox, a liquor made from maize, sugar cane and wheat, is drunk and used in ritual in the highlands.

Chiapas is Mexico's leading coffee producer, and San Cristóbal has many cafés serving local beans, including some run by growers' cooperatives; café de chiapaneca is a local variant of the spiced Mexican café de olla. Chocolate shops in the centre sell chocolate to drink.

Foreign residents have opened Italian, French, Thai, Indian, Chinese and vegetarian restaurants, many of them in the pedestrian streets of the centre, while the municipal market keeps the everyday food of the villages.