In nearby Zinacantán, life moves at a far different pace. The town’s main industry is growing and exporting flowers, and driving there you’ll see large hothouses dispersed in hills and valleys. The Zinacatecans have been merchants since the early 1600s and still travel around the region selling their homegrown vegetables, fruit, and flowers. A growing tourism business also helps explain the town’s relative prosperity.
The traditional clothing worn by men is the most colorful in the area, and includes straw hats, short white pants, and pinkish tunics decorated with bright embroidered flowers and fuchsia tassels. The women, on the other hand, wear dark skirts and white blouses trimmed with a minimum of color, topped with a beautiful blue rebozo (shawl).
Zinacatecan textiles are noted for their colorful embroidery in flamboyant reds, pinks, purples, and blues. The work is done outdoors in the family yard with most of the women attached to a waist loom. They create tablecloths, bedspreads, place mats, and of course the men’s tunics. Most tours stop in a weaving family’s home for a chance to see (and of course buy) their wares.