Chamula
municipal seat of Chamula, State of Chiapas, Mexico

San Juan Chamula is a municipality and township in the Mexican state of Chiapas. It is situated some 2.9 km (1.8 mi) from San Cristóbal de las Casas. As of 2010, the municipality had a total population of 76,941. Virtually the entire population of the municipality is indigenous and speaks an indigenous language. In 2010, the census reported that 99.5% of the population age 3 years or older speaks an indigenous language. The Tzotzil people and language dominate the municipality.
Geography
Location
Chamula is located in the Chiapas highlands, at an altitude of 2,200 meters (7,200 feet). It is inhabited by the indigenous Tzotzil Maya people, whose Tzotzil language is one of the Mayan languages.
The town enjoys unique autonomous status within Mexico. No outside police or military are allowed in the village.
“Chamula” enters the record as municipal seat of Chamula, State of Chiapas, Mexico. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Chamula, municipal and seat can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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“Chamula” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, Chamula, municipal and seat provides the most credible route into that argument.
Named sources, stable identifiers and responsible institutions provide the strongest route from overview to verifiable evidence. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 10, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q1061542. VIAF identifies the subject as 134905401. The Library of Congress control number is n83129040. Authority coordinates are 16.788, -92.689. 3 of 4 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 2010.
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This entry incorporates text from “Chamula” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.