Guatemalan mole is very similar to mole poblano, which is a chocolate and chili based sauce (over simplification of the ingredients). One big difference is that mole poblano is a meal with chicken or turkey, while Guatemalan mole is a dessert of plantains ladled with chocolate sauce or mole for short. Bon appetite!
This guy is the self-proclaimed King of the Buñuelos of La Antigua Guatemala. After making such claim, he turned towards the competition and asked, “Isn’t true that I am El Rey?” to which the other vendors just nodded. Last year on December 6th, 2006 there was a picture of his fair food stand.
Stay tune for tomorrow’s picture: Guatemalan Mole!
Buñuelos are also a fried bread served with syrup. If you need it put plainly, buñuelos would be the Guatemalan equivalent of French toast.
This dessert will also set you back Q10/US$1.25 and at this pace we will be gaining about two to three pounds per week. Go hurry, hide the scale. 
By the way, although I have not mentioned it yet, every night as I write the daily entry I can hear the bombas (bombs) firecracker, the cohetes (firecrackers) being burnt, the church bells tolling, the canchinflines (whistle) firecracker and all kinds of unknown (to me) firecracker being burnt and creating a loud bang which I can hear as echoes through the far away streets. In additions to the smells and scents, the Christmas season in Guatemala has a soundtrack of its own.
Guatemalan torrejas is what happens when you mix a good sampling of Guatemalan sweet bread known as molletes; stuff it with manjar (custard*); then wrap the whole thing with beaten eggs; fry it; and finally let it boil in a sweet sauce made from sugar, water, red wine and cinnamon until syrup is obtained.
One order of torrejas can set you back Q10/US$1.25, which includes one torreja with plenty of syrup.
Torrejas, molletes, buñuelos, mole, platanos fritos (fried platains) are among the dessert of the Christmas season in Guatemala.
Are you ready for the Guatemalan Christmas desserts?
In La Antigua Guatemala, religious celebrations draw together all kinds of heterogeneous people and the feast day of Virgin of Guadalupe is no exception. In the day of La Virgen de Guadalupe, Our Lady of Guadalupe, you can find gringa mamas, indigenous mamas, ladino mamas and white mamas all taking their children dressed with indigenous clothes to visit the altar of La Virgen Morena. In many cases you have grandmas and the whole family taking part of the visit to Virgin of Guadalupe inside Iglesia de la Merced.
Carmen and Monolo must’ve been thinking of the incredible power of the sense of smell to detonate nostalgic memories, quite possibly inspired or influenced by Patrick Süskind masterpiece Das Parfum (Perfume). I lived such an experience today while taking the shots that you can see below in the slide show, as I was bombarded with the scents of pine needles, firecracker’s polvora (powder), fruits, traditional Guatemalan Christmas foods (do you see a new series coming up?), incense, candles, on and on. My sense of smell was in shock and my memories were flowing incessantly. But before I bore you with such descriptions, I leave you with a slide show and a video clip of the Virgin of Guadalupe celebrations in La Antigua Guatemala so you can get an idea. You will be missing the smells though.
Please, let me know your impressions of the photos and video clip as well as how is The Day of Our Lady of Guadalupe celebrated in your neck of the woods?
Slide show of the Virgin of Guadalupe celebrations in La Antigua Guatemala
Video clip of the Virgin of Guadalupe celebrations in La Antigua Guatemala
No, this is not the Stairway to heaven; gosh I am so full of clichés. Honest to god, I am devoid of original thoughts. Everything in my head is a reference or quote to something else. For instance, I see the number 9 and I can only think of Revolution 9 from The Beatles.
One important aspect to highlight about this series about the library is the fact that the guts of the library are contemporary industrial furnishing inside a colonial 16th century building and yet there is harmony between the anachronistic elements.
So it took us about a week to finally enter the Multimedia zone at the Compañía de Jesús Library, as Lessie suggested. Now I would be extremely happy if the film section had the complete works of Woody Allen, Stanley Kubrick, Alfred Hitchcock and Emir Kusturica for starters. Or better yet, I would be in film-heaven if they only had the 1001 movies you must see before you die. Sometimes I wish I was a Slacker.
We resume the library tour right where we left off last Thursday.
This corridor reading area is a nice place to catch up with the recent events while reading a local newspaper from the newspaper rack available on this same hallway, while drinking a cup of the best coffee in the world and receiving a bath of the morning sunshine. Wow for a few moments you might even forget you are in third-world country.
Nacimientos are Nativity (Navidad in Spanish) scenes shrines made to celebrate during the December until Christmas or Navidad in Spanish. On December 8th, the Virgin of the Immaculate Conception is celebrated and with this the ‘Religious Christmas Season’ is officially started. Last year, I showed you the Nacimiento in the barrio de la Virgen Inmaculada de la Concepción.
Today, I rather show you the Nacimiento niche at the Capilla de Belén (Bethlehem chapel) located right across the house that belonged to Santo Hermano Pedro de Betancourt (Saint Brother Peter of Betancourt). You can see the Nacimiento shrine niche in context if you follow the white rabbit to Façade of Belén Church in Antigua Guatemala.
One important aspect of this particular Nacimiento is the fact that Santo Hermano Pedro de Betancourt managed to get himself in the picture of the Nativity shrine. For those who are not well verse in Catholic imagery, myself included, normally the Nativity scene shows Mary, Joseph, and Baby Jesus along with a few animals. No, Santo Hermano Pedro could not be present there since he was born about 1600 years later, give or take a few moons. Rather, the inclusion of his image, on the right, is to celebrate and to remember that it was Santo Hermano Pedro de Betancourt who introduced the Nacimiento and Posadas to the American Continent, to La Antigua Guatemala if you want to be precise, and from this old town, this celebration was taken to the rest of the continent. (Thanks to JM Magaña for pointing it out to me.)
The Burning of the Devil celebrations in La Antigua Guatemala are done differently than in the rest of Guatemala. (See, one more truth for the upcoming debate about how La Antigua Guatemala is not Guatemala.) If you follow the links above to the entry for December 7th, 2006, you will see that in La Antigua Guatemala, there is a single devil which is placed on podium between two antique, but working gas stations in the barrio of La Virgen de la Inmaculada Concepción (Virgin of the Immaculate Conception neighborhood) where a will or testament is read for the devil, which usually means all kinds of gossip about politicians, prominent and ordinary people alike. If you can read Spanish, you can visit my entry of Quema del diablo en La Antigua for December 7th, 2005 which shows the devil’s inferno before the burning.
On the other hand, or rather in the rest of the country, Guatemalans take out all their trash, or even go around the neighborhood collecting inflammable materials like tires, plastics and whatever can create the biggest bonfire. They also buy as much powder in the form of firecrackers to add the soundtrack to the burning of devil celebrations around 18 hours on December 7. Needless to say many people who have awaken to the realization of the damage this burning causes to the environment locally and globally have raised their voice and opinion against such celebrations, specifically the burning of all the toxic stuff.
So with this new epiphany came new ideas for celebrating the Burning of the Devil without actually burning anything. One such idea is to hold a piñata-breaking party with the family and friends. One more ecological approach was taken by Manolo on his Toronteco blog by translating an article by Ronald Flores entitled Al diablo con eso which deals with the symbolic burning all the negative stuff we carry around. Below you can read the first two teaser paragraph and if you like continue reading the rest of in English or Spanish with the links at the end of the quoted text.
I don’t know who came up with the parochial idea of taking the old mattresses out to the street, the piles of papers that were gathering dust and mold, and burn them as night falls. I’ve been told that it has been said that the devil hides in the corners of the houses, among old things, within the garbage that we accumulate throughout the year without knowing why we do.
I’ve been told that burning that pile of trinkets and useless printed material made the devil burn on his very own inferno, and that this custom was necessary to begin the Christmas season with a clean home. Within that context, I confess that I have practiced more than once this interesting purification ritual. I have thrown to the flames notebooks from subjects I detested during the year, letters from unsuccessful loves and reproaches that I have received or that I have written without sending, pictures where I didn’t come up as I wanted, manuscripts of novels that I will never touch again… (Continue reading in English at El Torenteco blog or in Spanish at the Ronald Flores web site.)
For those of you who are not pyromaniacs, but like reading and since we broke short the library tour, I recommend reading Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury. The number “451″ refers to the temperature (in Fahrenheit) at which a book or paper spontaneously combusts.
For those who would rather break a piñata than playing around with fire, I present to you the Lucky 7 Burning of the Devil Piñata for you to fill it with all your frustration and negative vibes and virtually burn it or break it with your mouse, trackball or tablet until your let it all out. Happy Burning of the Devil everyone!
Children also have a reading and play area at the Compañía de Jesús Library. This picture was taken early in the morning, before kids show up and fill the place with their happy noise and laughter.
I was glad to see a reading and play salon for the kids. Reading is a habit that should be acquired at the earliest age possible.
Computer stations are also available at the Compañía de Jesús Library in La Antigua Guatemala. Patsy mentioned that many people opt for the computer instead of grabbing the old-time-tested book. Well, the times are a-changing, you know and everyone needs help with a new system. If you don’t believe me, just take a look a the video clip below that show us how difficult it was for the book to get accepted as the new medium for holding texts.
See I am a geek at heart. I carry a Palm Tungsten with over 100 electronic books on it for all those times when I am forced to make the queues; and that happens often in Guatemala. So I carry all kinds of electronic books, many downloaded from the Proyect Gutenberg which I read with Palm Reader or Pluckr on the handy Palm. I have many more books on the computer in PDF and other formats. So I am not foreign to the new technologies. But I love real paperback books, hardcovers, off-white with rough border books. I especially like that no batteries are included for the book to work.
What is your opinion of books, electronic books, e-books, electronic book readers, the new Kindle reading device?
Post cards request update: Today a found several post cards sent by Ann from Montego Bay, Jamaica. Ann was kind enough to send several post cards to compensate for her tardiness, so she says. Ann maintains the very insightful and informative Montego Bay Daily Photo. Just like with books, as much as I take advantage of email, web sites, and blogs, I have a soft spot in may heart for actual really real post cards and letters, so please keep ‘em coming! If you don’t know what I am talking about, please do read the entry Postscript.
From the reception desk, we move to the reading area, immediately to the left, to check out all the recent magazines (mostly European and Spanish). This gray granite table with its bright illumination is the perfect work area to do your Spanish classes homework; even more so if you take into account the great dictionaries and thesaurus available there.
One more aspect which makes this library different from many libraries in Guatemala is the fact that it is self-served and thus you are free to walk around the whole library in search of the magnificent La casa de usted y otros viajes of Jorge Ibargüengoitia or the most recent novel by Javier Marías or better yet the most recently published Guatemalan literature book. The choice is yours once you are living your advertures inside this wonder-book-land.
Have I mentioned that the Christmas season just begun? If you feel like being Santa Claus this year, you can send your Christmas present by clicking the Amazon Wish List button below and picking something from the wish list. If you send something and you let me know who you are, I will send some printed 4×6 photos from this site back by regular mail. Whatever you send goes into a special kind of post office box in Miami and from there the package is shipped to Guatemala. I am still responsible for the shipping charges from Miami to Guatemala and the import duties and taxes.
We will begin a mini tour of the library at the Compañía de Jesús building under the care of Cooperación Española NGO or Agencia Española de Cooperación Internacional as it is called in Spanish.
But first the disclosure: I love libraries; even chicken bus libraries!
Back when I lived in the good old U.S. of A. I met many people who used to brag about the numerous credit cards they had in their wallets. I just told them I only carried one card because to me it was enough. You can guess what card that was, right?
I have said several times that the Compañía de Jesús building is my favorite building in the whole universe (boy, I am beginning to sound like Manolo, ) and the main reason for that is the library inside.
There are only two libraries in La Antigua Guatemala that allow check outs (to take books home for those not fluent in library-speak) and the library at the Compañía de Jesús building is one of them. It is the biggest library as well. We will begin the tour at the reception desk, if it’s fine with you.
Here are the other reasons why I love the Compañía de Jesús building: the coffee bush hedge; the atrium and the people I found there 1, 2, 3, 4; the history on the plaques, the windows, the doorways, the garden and fountain, the window frames, the arches and the Spanish-style roof tiles just to name some aspects.
Happy Birthday Chata! (I-heart-U) Go rent this movie and let me know your feelings about it.
The quality of the sunset light during the winter months in La Antigua Guatemala is the best of the year. Almost anything you photograph has this warm feel. If you are in Antigua now, click away like crazy. Even a simple shadow can be warmth, don’t you think so?
I'm missing LAG! My wife and I married in La Antigua Guatemala in December 1983 and have always wanted a colonial home there. I check into your site at least once every day without fail....it keeps my dreams alive! —Hugo (El Canche)
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