Hello everyone! My name is Hafsa Ahsan and I am one of the five Loewenstern fellows working with Cántaro Azul. Here’s a quick introduction to me: I’m an international student from Pakistan. As a rising senior, I am majoring in Anthropology and minoring in Asian Studies with the goal of researching and implementing effective, collaborative, and sustainable ideas to increase social justice. And I CANNOT describe how excited I am to spend 10 weeks this summer in San Cristobal de las Casas!!! I hope to use this blog to share, archive and reflect on our journey, what we see and learn, and how we relate our positionality to all of this.

On Friday, May 20th, Ana, Jayaker and I took an early morning flight from Houston to Mexico City and then another flight from Mexico City to Tuxtla Gutiérrez, Chiapas. Because of the early morning flight, we got to see a sweet sunrise.

Here’s a video of our plane landing at Tuxtla Gutiérrez International Airport:

From there, we took a 1.5 hour taxi ride to San Cristobal de las Casas! It was quite a breathtaking ride and we could see down the mountains, as you can see in the following picture.

Finally, we reached our house in San Cristobal. After unpacking for a bit, we went out to dinner and explore the centre of the city. The first place I recognised there was Catedral de San Cristobal de las Casas, thanks to my hundreds of Google searches about this city.

Right next to Catedral de San Cristobal is Plaza de la Paz. Here’ we saw many artisans selling clothes, jewellery, bags, and all kinds of crafts. On one side of the Plaza, there was a protest by indigenous people against their oppression. During my time here, I hope to learn more about this matter and write a blog post about it. To the south of the cathedral is Plaza 31 de Marzo. Here, we saw a live music performance and lots of people dancing to it. Standing there, I was in awe of this lively, colourful, and bustling city. It was a truly magical moment!

Over the next few posts, I will talk about our interaction with the amazing folks at Cántaro Azul, our trip to Parque Natural El Encuentro, and the projects we will be working on. Till then, enjoy some more pictures of the city!