La Antigua Guatemala Daily Photo

Guatemalan textiles are among the most look-after items in the folk-art markets. You have to be careful though, they come in two categories: cheap imitations and the expensive hand-woven originals. The Indigenous women only wear the original stuff, so if you want to buy a piece that will last for a long time, make sure you compare it against what these women wear. Another tip is that if what you buying is inexpensive, compare to other pieces in the market, then it is just a cheap imitation, probably from India or China. One more thing to remember is that their asking price is inflated about 200%, maybe more, so you have to negotiate their asking price. This is not a retail store, prices are not fixed.

This outdoor folk-art market sets on the street outside the El Carmen Ruins on the weekends only, located about two blocks from Central Park.

Here is the photo of the Chef salad I promised I would take for you on the entry of Pick your color #3, in which I showed you an overall view of Café Concepción.

This is what I wrote about the salad:
I normally have a chef salad which is made from 5 o 6 different kinds of lettuces, croutons, turkey ham, parmesan cheese, tomatoes, onions, balsamic vinegar and olive oil among other things. I truly consider this salad one of the best deals in town and it is one my favorite dishes. I promise I will take a picture of it next time, oh I meant to say next Thrusday.

Guatemalan textiles are world-famous. As a graphic designer, I have been intrigued for a long while now about the fact that the indigenous people use so many different colors, patterns and textures in their textiles and yet the whole pieces are always in harmony. How do they do it?

Just click the link to see many more samples of the native Guatemalan textiles.

Today’s entry is dedicated to Hisako, Meg’s mom, who is currently in a trip through Guatemala to learn about the textiles techniques from this part of the world. Good luck on your trip Hisako!

Many ruins and churches dress up with spot lights at dusk. Here you can see Antigua Guatemala’s Cathedral illuminated with spot lights at sunset. I have posted other photos of Cathedral before; if you care to look at the building from different angles and weather conditions click the following links:

1. Requiem for the Rain
2. Antigua Guatemala’s Cathedral
3. Taxis at Antigua’s Cathedral

Today is the International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women and nowhere is awareness, new legislation and law enforcing need it more than in Guatemala. No más is campaign by Amnesty International to stop the killings of women in Guatemala(1).

Director Giselle Portenier came to Guatemala to document the story of the brutal killings of Guatemalan women and the resulting film goes by the name of Killer’s Paradise. This is a powerful documentary and that you must see it, if you get the chance. I am hoping to be able to see this film as soon as they bring it to Guatemala. For those who can read Spanish, I leave you a small recommendation and description of the film that I made on March 18th, 2006 on my Crónicas efímeras site.

To me, it is unacceptable that the government and the police forces do so little or nothing to protect women. Last year over 665 women were killed and there was not a single arrest for them. I support the NO MÁS (no more) campaign and the new law project now in the Guatemalan Congress to protect women’s safety and integrity.

Since the pictures for the last two days had way too many colors, I decided to make today’s choice simple. If you look carefully, you can find at least 8 colors. With this simple photo we finish this series.

Tomorrow is the International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women we will have a photo to help raise awareness. Please, come back tomorrow and let us know your feeling about it.

The rules of the game are:
1. You look at the photo,
2. You pick one single color and
3. You leave a comment tell us what color you picked and why?

This is close-up view of the “undocumented alien” in my garden. I plan to have more strict rules for this migrant plants, including but not limited to, random searches, x-rays checks, striping, finger-printing the branches, photos (which I already do), background checks, et-cetera. You can never be “too careful” about your garden. Now, if this was money or merchandise, I just would do a free trade agreement and open both leaves of my doorway. But, you know, money does not grow on trees. Right?

There are not too many colors to choose from, nevertheless there are enough colors for you to choose one.

The rules of the game are:
1. You look at the photo,
2. You pick one single color and
3. You leave a comment tell us what color you picked and why?

On texture through color I introduced you to Café Concepción, a small and lovely bistro, located about half-block away from my office. I normally have a chef salad which is made from 5 o 6 different kinds of lettuces, croutons, turkey ham, parmesan cheese, tomatoes, onions, balsamic vinegar and olive oil among other things. I truly consider this salad one of the best deals in town and it is one my favorite dishes. I promise I will take a picture of it next time, oh I meant to say next Thrusday. The other option I like is their Tavo sandwich, a slow-baked sandwich with mozzarella cheese, ham, spaghetti sauce and other stuff.

I am glad I am the one that has to pick a color here… this is a though photo with so many different colors, do you go for the wall, or the candles, or the bar… really a difficult decision to make. I wish you luck in your mission.

The rules of the game are:
1. You look at the photo,
2. You pick one single color and
3. You leave a comment tell us what color you picked and why?

If you love the bougainvillea flowers as much as Pamela does, and you don’t want to move to a secret island called Tenerife, you better move to La Antigua where buganvilias blossom year-round, people are nice, the weather is fabolous, and the houses are so expensive that you will have to sell two houses in the U.S. so you can buy one here.

Just in case you missed yesterday’s entry.

The rules of the game are very simple:
1. You look at the photo,
2. You pick one single color and
3. You leave a comment tell us what color you picked and why?

Okay, welcome back from an ease going weekend. It is Monday and you want things to be mellow, so I am not going to complicate things.

The rules of the game are very simple:
1. You look at the photo,
2. You pick one single color and
3. You leave a comment tell us what color you picked and why?

Let the game begin!

To follow up the texture in yesterday’s sign and to get you prepare for this coming week series about color, here is a color-textured wall and four candles taken at one the my favorites bistros in Antigua: Café Concepción. I will come back to this bistro in the near future and show you what a beautiful place this is, but for now I just leave you with a peace of it.

Please, come back tomorrow for a new series in color throughout La Antigua Guatemala. This time around you get to pick your color!

Here is a little confession: I do like many of the business signs in Antigua. As much as I dislike billboard and over-the-top advertising, I have to admit I do have a soft spot for beautifully-made signs.

Here are some of my favorites, so far: Colibrí, Sabor Cubano, Mico and Doña María Gordillo.

Macaco is a jewel-of-a-store for Antigua. They sell decorative art pieces and functional art adornments made by an artist from Guatemala City. Here is an example of a metallic cat accent I posted long, long time ago on May 8th. I believe they do foreign deliveries; I will get their contact information and I will post it later.

Does anybody knows what macaco is?

This photo of a flor de pascua plant (Poinsettias) was taken in my garden, next to the driveway. I did not plant it, nor I have done anything to maintain it. We could just summarize the situation of the plant as this: An “undocumented alien” in my garden, which is very welcomed. Poinsettias bloom from October through February in this part of the world.

Some say it was Guatemala that gave the Flor de Pascua to the world, but others say it originated in Mexico, where it was named after U.S. Ambassador Joel Roberts Poinsett, who took it to the U.S. in the early 19th century. —Quoted from an article by Joy Houston in the December 2005 edition, page 16 of Revue Magazine (available as a PDF download).

So there you have it, flor de noche buena is another item that creates controversy about its origins and that is the reason I prefer the term Mesoamerica, which roughly extends from Tropic of Cancer in central Mexico down through Belize, Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras, Nicaragua and northern Costa Rica (click on Mesoamerica link to view a map of the area). This way we can obviate all the polemic assumptions of using modern political borders to an area that was historically and culturally divided differently in the past.

Nothing should create more controversy than the title of this post, which is the slogan for Guatemala, the land of the eternal spring. Why? Well, let’s see, the slogan refers to the fact that in Guatemala flowers are always blooming and flowers normally blossom in the Spring season; so far so good. The only problem here is that Guatemala does not have a spring season. Guatemala is the northern hemisphere, regardless of what our friends to the north of the Río Bravo may think, and therefore should have a spring season that starts in March 21st, a summer the starts on June 21, an autumn that begins on September 21st, and a winter commencing on December 21st. But Guatemala is also in the tropics and all seasons get blur here. So, Guatemala only has two seasons: summer and winter. Now to add to the confusion, many Guatemalans call the rainy season invierno (winter), even though the rain falls in the summer months, they call the dry season verano (summer), which begins at the end of October and ends in April; clearly these months belong to the autunm, winter and spring seasons. Have I confused you yet?

I wonder who came up with this slogan, can anybody help here?

I showed you these palm trees on August 28th as they reflect on the water tank at the public washbasins at Parque de la Unión (Union Park). Today’s photo is right across the street from yesterday’s Santa Clara Ruins photo. There are not many palm trees around Antigua, as a matter of fact, this is the only place I have seen them (correct me if I am wrong). La Antigua Guatemala is located at over 1500 meters/5000 feet above sea level; maybe this is the reason you don’t see many palm trees. What do you think?

El parque y tanque de la Unión has very colorful history and has gone through many name changes. First it was called the Plaza de San José, then Plaza de la Unión and later Parque y tanque de la Unión. (Source: Article in Spanish at Revista Recrearte and Google-translated into English)

The union part is in reference to the Central American Union, a reality the was only possible under the Spanish rule. Shortly after the Independence in 1821, Central America split into the nations the conformed it today: Belize, Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras, Nicaragua, Costa Rica and Panama. Several attempts have been made to unite it, but none have blossomed. In the last decade, many things have been enacted to make Central America a sort of loose union, kind of like the European Union. For instance, nowadays you can move freely in the 4 northern Central American countries with only your ID or Cédula as it is called here. Visas for foreigners for one country are now valid in any of the 4 countries (Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras & Nicaragua). Next, airport taxes will be removed if you fly into any of the aforementioned countries. Slowly but surely, the union is becoming a reality, but Central America will never again be one country.

Technical site note: My apologies to all the visitors that have received access errors in the last few days. It seems that my hosting company is having some problems with the machine that serves this site. I have made a few nasty reports in the hopes that they fix the problems asap. In the mean time, hang on, the sites does come on eventually.