Chiapas Ritual: The Chipotle Saga

A disgraced linguist is wrenched from a prestigious language institute in Oklahoma and thrown into a violent Mayan uprising in the jungles of Chiapas, Mexico. Setting out to rescue his kidnapped mother and sister, he also seeks personal and professional redemption. He plunges into a quagmire of social revolution, ancient bloodletting rituals, paramilitary massacres, kidnappings, bio-pirating, misdirected love, and chili-hot seduction.

David Greenwalt, the "black sheep" son of a Southern Baptist minister, is a Native American of the Citizen Potawatomi Nation of Shawnee, Oklahoma. His life is a checkered pattern that swings from heroic service in Vietnam to ten years behind bars in military, state, and federal prisons. Along the way, he earned a BA Degree in English and a Master's Degree in Public Administration. As a fugitive from the law, he fled to Mexico, where he spent sixteen years teaching English, rising to become the chairperson of the English Department in a prestigious, private university. He completed the writing of Chiapas Ritual while on parole in Rialto, California, while his wife, a university librarian, maintained their home in Tuxtla Gutiérrez, Chiapas, where he witnessed firsthand the Zapatista uprising in 1994.