Mexico: Country of beauty, culture of death

From the smog of the capital to the steam of the Lacandon rainforest, Eoin Bassett leaves Mexico with a heavy heart

"Hey guarito! Wan' some weed?" My first day in Mexico City and I'm looking at Saint Death, Santa Muerte. Venerated by the city's poorest and situated in one of Mexico's most dangerous slums, the life-size model of the Virgen de Guadalupe is a Skeleton in shrouds, a fusion of religions, and an indicator of the special place death has in Mexican culture.

Housed in a glass case on the side of the street, gold chains hang from its neck, offerings from the city's drug dealers. In one bony hand is the world, in the other a large wad of money. On every corner in the barrio, men with large tattoos keep watch.

Hundreds of green beetle taxis cruise the streets and the sky is clouded over. The high altitude affects people for the first few days and the air pollution can be bad. With basic Spanish and a lot of trepidation I'd arrived in Mexico City alone to travel south and then on to Cuba.

As a reward for surviving Santa Muerte, my Mexican friends take me for some "semen of the gods." An old ritual drink of the Aztecs made from cactus, Pulque is a white sticky drink that has a calm, hazy effect.

The following day we go to the ruins of Teotihuacan, not far from the capital, past the 'Belt of Misery' that every Mexican city is ringed by. Home to the third largest pyramid in the world, Teotihuacan is a sacred site for many Mexicans, but little is known about those who built it.

Butterflies flutter on the breeze as we look down at the Walmart being built in the valley. Several indigenous Shamen are on hunger strike at the entrance to the site in protest. They haven't eaten for eight days and one is very sick. We sit with them and I practice my Spanish. A biker from Bray turns up on a Harley, looking lost. They purify him with smoke and give him directions.

That night I am driven around the sprawling red light district. Pimps hide in the shadows and teenage prostitutes crowd the pavements. Their eyes, fearful, bored or desperate, tell me something more about why Santa Muerte exists.

Four hours north of Mexico City and its 27 million inhabitants is Guanajuato. Nestling in a narrow valley, it's reminiscent of many old Mediterranean towns, but unlike them, more than just tourists and ghosts inhabit its centre.

With a friendly community occupying the colonial town houses and lush plazas, and with the annual International Festival Cervantino in full swing, it's a good place to relax.

Heading south I arrive in the city of Oaxaca, famous for its hot chocolate and the old Zapotec capital of Monte Alban, built on a hilltop overlooking the city.

An aging guide explains the medicinal uses of the trees and flowers around the crumbling temples. He tells me how the language is dying and I tell him about the demise of the Irish language, which interests him greatly.

The mountains of southern Oaxaca state have a dubious reputation. A history of land agitation and the struggle for indigenous rights may explain the sullen stares of the children standing in the thatched-hut pueblos. These are the people on the margins of Mexico's boom. In Oaxaca's central square, indigenous activists are protesting the imprisonment of a number of their comrades, one only 15 years old.

I find myself lost with two French men in a one-litre car that struggles up the mountain tracks. With darkness descending we come to a roadblock manned by ragged men armed with shotguns. We pay a toll to pass and eventually find our way out onto the plain where mineral deposits glitter in the rocks.

Having been savaged by ants in my bed and itching like a dog, I escape Oaxaca to Mexico's southernmost State, Chiapas, and the colonial town of San Cristobal de Las Casas. Seized by the Zapatista guerrillas in their 1994 uprising, San Cristobal is high in the Sierra. The market is filled with textiles and Zapatista souvenirs. An aging hippy community, supplemented by young backpackers, fuels a vibrant music scene.

Near San Cristobal lies the Tzotzil village of Chamula. Witchcraft is a daily concern for the Tzotzil, descendants of the Maya. Black candles are burnt in the church to break spells carried in the wind and everyone from young to old is drinking from big bottles of Coca Cola. The burps it causes dispel witchcraft and the two men who sell it live in the biggest houses in the village.

It is midday and many of the men are drunk in the marketplace on strong local liquor, posh.

"Since the arrival of the Spanish these people have been discriminated against," says my guide. "But the conquest is not over, Protestant missionaries from the United States have come to convert people, they see their ways as works of the devil. They tell tourists not to come."

The scene at Zinacantan, a village near Chamula, is very different. Sandwiched in the hills I find some women making a wedding dress with chicken feather frills.

Out in the countryside, Mexican army checkpoints and heavily armed police are a common sight. Chiapas is rich in resources, producing half of the country's electricity and most of its oil, yet it suffers the worst poverty in Mexico.

The politics of the region are complex, with half a dozen languages and ethnic groups, ranchers, peasants groups, right wing paramilitaries, left wing Zapatistas and religion differing from village to village.

Travelling east down out of the mountains, I stop at the mist-shrouded Mayan ruins of Palenque where howler monkeys sit high in the trees. Conservationists believe that with the destruction of the Lacandon jungle continuing unabated, it's too late for much of the unique flora and fauna.

Developing a horrific cold, I spend two days lying in my hammock listening to a psychotic cat meow in the jungle undergrowth. My only companion is a humming bird that keeps attacking its reflection in a mirror.

I pull myself together and head for Merida on the Yucatan coast. A city with a French feel, it's a great base for those who want to tour the Yucatan ruins and ceynotes and avoid Cancun, usually overrun by sun-seeking tourists, on the opposite coast.

Prone to acts of great hospitality, Mexicans seem fond of the Irish. The St. Patrick's battalion of the Mexican army was made up of Irish deserters from the US army. They fought well and are remembered for it. That war saw a third of Mexican territory taken by the United States, an act still unforgiven 159 years later.

I went to step in the feet of Cortes, to find Zapata and Villa. I wanted to find out where the outlaw is escaping to in the Hollywood westerns, this blank map of 'the other'.

A magnificently beautiful and diverse country, Mexico is a land of fierce contradictions. Like Ireland, history weighs heavily and the Spanish conquest is a bleeding wound.

But it's the eyes that will stay with me. The looks and what they told me. A young prostitute caught in a downpour, an old hostel owner reciting the Odyssey, shoeless children selling bracelets, a white-smocked campesino in his maize patch, a breathless old woman in Oaxaca living out of bins and the boy soldiers in the rain amongst the chickens.