They’ve said that they don’t smell the perfumes of the forest and don’t hear the sound of the birds no more.

La Ensenanza, San Cristobal de Las Casas, Chiapas, Mexico.

“When I handed them the paint the first time, the Lacandon children asked me, ‘Oh, but where is the green?’. But then they started mixing colours and they did all the colours themselves.
Once they realised what you could do with red, and with blue and yellow, they just thought it was magic you know, mixing colours.

You see the lake? The lake, the lagune is very important. The town of Naha gets its name from these two words, because Na means house and Ha means water.

It was made for a Lacandon exhibition in Mexico City. A painting of Naha, a map with every single house and every single inhabitant. Each child drew their own house and when they were done with their houses, they started to add the monuments they know from the visits they do with their parents, to all the Mayan sites like Palenque and Yaxchilán.

They painted the secrets of the forest. You can open the pyramids and you can see what’s inside.

We did other paintings too. I wanted them to draw from life. We went on a trip to the village elders’ place, where he keeps all his chicken and fowl and ducks and turkeys so they could draw the shape of the birds. They did some sketches on paper and when we came back we painted them.

…they started to add the monuments they know from the visits they do with their parents, to all the Mayan sites like Palenque and Yaxchilán.

And then all the animals… They began to invent the jungle animals. Animas fantasticas. They had fun doing that. The children would always paint on the floor, and all around, so some of the animals are the other way up.

They’d climb up the tree. And I had to give them some life drawing lessons. They decided to paint the magic forest in the night.

When the Lacandon children of the previous generation painted the jungle, they drew fantastic trees and they often drew the roots as well. For them, the roots of the trees were very important.
But now, the new generation, they don’t draw trees like that. They don’t look at them in the same way.

They’ve said that they don’t smell the perfumes of the forest and don’t hear the sound of the birds no more.”