Brother Sun

What to do when you're stranded in a monsoon, waiting for a UPS package? I decided to track down a local character who Laura and I sighted early in our trip here.

We saw him first at dinner one night, when he brought his bongos to play along with the band. His attire was "old Mexican hippy": Shoulder length frizzy hair, a white tunic, and a rasta-colored knit hat like the ones that Jim Brown, the famous running back, always wears (does anyone know what I'm talking about with that?). Anyway, he was drumming along, his intense face looking a bit like a confused Will Ferrell.

Later, I bumped into a couple dudes with bongos on a cobblestone staircase toward the edge of downtown. They had bongos, and one was smoking something that was not a cigarette. I mentioned the guy I'd seen drumming at dinner.

"Oh, El Hermano Sol," one said. "He's a local character."

His name itself made me curious. I asked the American owner of a bookstore about him. "You're the second person this week whose asked about him," she said. She thought he made drums, hung out with the local hippy/gypsy/bohemian population, and hadn't been seen for a while.

But I'd seen him. When I asked about him at a restaurant, I was directed to the crafts market at Santo Domingo church, where El Hermano Sol appparently sold drums.

So I went there, strolling between stands of woven dresses, embroidered blouses, and brightly colored tapestries. Finally, I asked a long-haired dude selling necklaces if he knew El Hermano Sol.

"Alfredo!" he yelled, and El Hermano Sol himself emerged from behind a blue tarp protecting a vending stand from the rain.

So we chatted. Brother Sun told me he first came to San Cristobal because of a vision he had in the mountains of Oaxaca. It was so strong that he asked his wife to go back with him. She did, and the message was clear: the Holy Spirit had told El Hermano Sol to abandon his settled life in Puebla, not far from Mexico City, and move to remote San Cristobal de las Casas.

Here, Alfredo de la Montana (I'm not sure that was really his name) became El Hermano Sol. He opened a restaurant called La Familia, where everyone ate, and people paid as they were able. The community swirling around him gave him his nickname.

Eventually he got tired of runninga restaurant, though, and about that time he met a Greek man who'd spent 6 years in Africa. This man taught El Hermano Sol to make drums, and he's never looked back.

Alfredo and I talked for a while about politics, religion, the Zapatista rebellion, and various other topics. He was very nice, very tolerant of my questions, and knowledgeable about religion or politics. We even discussed liberation theology (a big topic in a place that's had a rebellion, with some church support), which he disliked because it contrasted with Jesus's message of peace. He liked Martin Luther King better.

Towards the end of the conversation, I asked him if he were sort of the hippy Godfather of San Cristobal de las Casas.

"No," he said, shaking his head. "I'm not a hippy."

"What would you call it, then?" I asked.

"A revolutionary!" said a friend next to him.

"No," said El Hermano Sol, mellow. "Simply that I am, that's it."