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Siesta time used to be sacred in Antigua Guatemala. Almost all business stop for lunch and siesta time between 12pm and 3pm or 1pm and 3pm. Nowadays, many businesses are owned by foreigners and the tradition of siesta is being lost. Heck, many businesses are not even closing for lunch anymore.

Even though it’s convenient to have everything open at lunch time, something very important is being lost, does anyone know what it is?

Soon the cloud-free dark blue skies will be nothing but a memory and gray skies and rainy days will be the norm until November. Ni modo, that’s what it is and we better get used to it.

Anyhow, Guatemala is the land of the eternal Spring because everything is so green and flowering year round. Guatemala is also in the northern hemisphere and thus we have the same seasons at the same time as the big countries up north. In other words, Guatemala entered the Spring season about a month ago and Summer will arrive on June 21. However, Guatemala is also located in the tropic region, and the seasons just get fuzzy and blurry. Thus people in Guatemala refer to the rainy season as Invierno (Winter) even though the rainy season falls during Spring, Summer and Autumn. The dry season is known as Verano (Summer) regardless of whether the weather is chilly and sometimes cold because of the winter wings that blow from the north.

So, are you confused yet Invierno and Verano?

In Guatemala there are public schools for girls, para niñas, for boys, para varones, and mix, mixtas. The same, of course, applies for private schools.

How about where you live, do you have public schools just for girls?

As published last year, these colorful Guatemalan cascarones [eggshells] filled with confetti are known as cascarones de carnaval [carnival] and they mark the arrival of carnaval and then Ash Wednesday (Miércoles de ceniza), which is the first day of Lent (Cuaresma). That’s right folks, on Wednesday we will begin the count down to The World Famous Holy Week in Antigua Guatemala, top city travel destination.

I believe the best way to explain cascarones, carnaval (carnival) and Mardi Gras (Fat Tuesday) is to quote some of the AntiguaDailyPhoto readers.

Manolo:
Cascarones are literally egg shells. So, as some have said, weeks in advance every egg cooked at home is carefully cracked so that most of the shape of the egg is kept intact and left to dry. Then, before Carnival Tuesday (the day previous Ash Wednesday which is the first day of Lent) the empty egg shells are filled with confetti (mainly very little pieces of tissue paper, but sometimes metallic paper and in olden times flour), and then are sealed with a piece of tissue paper and glue. I guess it depends on each person, but the egg shells are decorated before or after being filled using watercolours or tempera (some sort of finger paint) or even markers. Not quite like Easter Eggs because they mark the beginning of Lent, not the end of it, and they have no actual egg inside.

What do we do with cascarones? Well, young people (i.e. children and/or children at heart) smash them on the heads of unsuspected victims. Since there is usually a costume party involved with Carnival you don’t know who your victimizer is. The confetti gets inside the back of your shirt along with pieces of egg shell and your hair is also a mess (particularly if you have curly hair). Is the last day you are allowed to be a brat before the 40 days of behaving start.

Pues, I have learned something new since last year, “carnival Tuesday” is “Fat Tuesday”/”Mardi Gras”. Carnival comes from “Carne” (flesh/meat) and it is called that way because it is the last day you can eat meat before Lent.

Claudia:
Love carnaval. My mom would start saving eggshells weeks in advance and she would dry them out, we would usually decorate them ourselves in school. I used to get blisters on my fingers from the scissors since we tried to make our confetti as small and tiny as possible, to make it harder to wash out of your hair, of course.

Sompopo:
Head smashing fun.

Carmen:
Oh my! I’m getting flashbacks. We used to run after each other at school with these cascarones as ammunition. Of course, with all the commotion, we were also responsible for cleaning up afterward. I got such joy from smashing a cascaron on someone’s head. Heehee. The fun was not the same when someone smashed a cascaron on my head though. I remember some of the teachers got into the action as well.

Javier:
Wow!!!Memories!!!Cascarones haven’t seen those in 26 years. We use to make them ourselves as kids. And smash them on other kids heads. It was great.

Elvia:
I remember when I was a child, my mother, sisters and I would start saving the egg shells around 3 months in advance, we would wash them gently and let them dry. It was so much fun to paint each cascaron and put pica pica inside… I remember one of my best carnavales I was probably 7 and I was dressed as strawberry shortcake, it was just awesome my mother sew the costume for me. The carnival season is a very nice tradition in my country of origin, my linda Guatemala!

Life is short but there is always time for courtesy. —Ralph Waldo Emerson

Buenos días, buenos días, que le vaya bien, they said to each other.

Courtesy was one of things that affected me the most when I moved from a huge metropolis into a little town. I was not prepared for the kind of courtesy and politeness that people I pass by offer me every day. Buenos días, buenas trades, qué Dios lo bendiga, are among the most often heard. Reading Ralph Waldo Emerson quote and having lived with courtesy for over 10 years I have to agree him. Of course, when everybody you encounter on the street is polite and you have to be polite in response, then sometimes you end up being late for some appointments. So, if you ever move to La Antigua Guatemala, remember to pad your appointments with 15 minutes for courtesy.

In Guatemala Valentine’s Day has a much wider meaning since Día del cariño, Day of affection or caring, is about celebrating all the different manifestations of love and caring.

Let the Blues Brothers bring the message of Día del cariño on the eve of this special date in Guatemala because everybody needs somebody to love; don’t you agree?

On January 21, Under the name of Subida por la vida, there were over 8,000 people climbing Volcán de Agua (Water Volcano) to form the largest heart in the world at 12,335 feet as part of campaign to bring awareness and to reduce domestic violence. The event will also be a party with music and foot ball matches (the real McCoy) in different venues in Antigua Guatemala. Subida por la vida also stands as manifestation for Peace where Guatemalans want to demonstrate and let the world know that we want peace and we will not tolerate violence any longer. (more…)

I never realized how much people die every day until I lived in a town where almost each death is announced by the PA system installed on the church on the main plaza. Through these announcements and the funeral processions and motorcades I have encountered I also learned that the grieving is also a communal event. When I stop to pay attention to the PA announcements often the name of the passing person is giving and the address where the mourning will be held and everyone is invited to assist.

These expressions of the strong community relationships forged through constant interactivity are often foreign to me since I have lived most of my life in big cities where often these community relationships rarely happen. I don’t know if I’m making any sense because I don’t think I have been able to seized these feelings and emotions into words. Am I?

How are deaths, funerals and mourning treated where you live? (more…)

As I said before, it is impossible to think of the Guatemalan, Mexican and Mesoamerican diet without maize. From the Popul Vuh (Popol Wuj in modern spelling), the Mayan equivalent of the Bible, which states that humans were literally created from maize, to Miguel Ángel Asturias‘ novel Hombres de maíz (Men of Maize) which is one of the best novels to understand Mesoamerica and its people. Guatemala and Mexico share the birth place of maize, which was and is the most important crop in human history. The richest diversity of maize can be found in Mesoamerica!

Many of the dishes of the Guatemalan cuisine are based on the milpa crops. The term milpa refers normally to a maize field, but it is so much more. In a milpa field there a dozen crops at once: maize, avocados, multiple kinds of squash, chiles (hot pepper chilli), beans, tomatoes, tomatillos, camotes (sweet potatoes), jicama (a tuber also known as sengkwang, yam bean, singkamas, Mexican turnip), amaranth (also called pigweeds) and mucuma (a tropical legume). “Milpa crops are nutritionally and environmentally complementary.” said Charles C. Mann in his book 1491. H. Garrison Wilkes, a maize researcher at University of Massachusetts in Boston is quoted in the same book, “The milpa is one of the most successful human inventions ever created.”

Interested gender aside: I believe that every time I have made a reference to Hombres de maíz I have used pictures of women. So, that’s why I am entitling today’s entry as women of maize.

What better way to start the new year than with a brand new clay comal to cook the best tasting tortillas. A comal like the ones shown above will set you back Q30/$2.75 if I recall correctly. Sadly, clay comales are disappearing as most tortillerías now are using metal comales with gas instead of leña (logs) which was used with the traditional terra-cotta comal. On the post Making Guatemalan Tortillas you can see the new comal being used in many tortillerías versus the traditional comal as shown on the post How to make the perfect Guatemalan Tortilla.

If you have had the opportunity to try tortillas made with each kind of comal, which one do your prefer? Do you think there’s a difference in the taste?

Here’s a simple Nacimiento made from corn husks to celebrate Navidad. As I have described before, with the Feast for the Virgin of the Immaculate Conception on December 8th, people begin putting up their Nacimientos (Nativity Scenes); a tradition that was brought to Guatemala by Santo Hermano Pedro de Betancourt and then spread to the rest of America (the continent).

One important aspect of nacimientos is that baby Jesus is missing from the scene since his actual birthday is on December 25th. In the mean time, the quest of shelter by Marí­a and José begins; these celebrations are known in Guatemala as Posadas.

Feliz Navidad a tod@s!

Beginning on December 15, there are sightings of Joseph and Mary’s quest for shelter around the streets of La Antigua Guatemala. María and José figures are carried around Antigua Guatemala, knocking on people’s doors to ask for posada (shelter). Our eye witness reporter has been able to gather the following information regarding the quest for lodging:

Every home has a nativity scene and the hosts of the Posada act as the innkeepers. The neighborhood children and adults are the pilgrims (peregrinos), who have to request lodging by going house to house singing a traditional song about the pilgrims. All the pilgrims carry small lit candles in their hands, and four people carry small statues of Joseph leading a donkey, on which Mary is riding. The head of the procession will have a candle inside a paper lamp shade. At each house, the resident responds by refusing lodging (also in song), until the weary travelers reach the designated site for the party, where Mary and Joseph are finally recognized and allowed to enter. Once the “innkeepers” let them in, the group of guests come into the home and kneel around the Nativity scene to pray (typically, the Rosary)… This according to Mrs. Wikipedia Enciclopedia de Quiensabe.

We will update you with new information as soon as our on-site reporters finish their ponche and tamales…

I took over one hundred photos for the Feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe, but by and large the portrait of this tender Guatemalan Guadalupano is my favorite. Follow the white rabbit to look at the photographic slide show of Feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe.

La Antigua Guatemala remains as one of the few places where you can meet with hundreds of people willing to Burn the Devil and the bad spirits in a cleansing ceremony through the purifying power of fire. The idea of the La quema del diablo celebration was to get rid of the devil, the bad spirits, the bad vibes and anything negative that may interfere with the celebrations of Nacimientos (Nativity Scenes), Posadas (Quest for Shelter [Español/English verses]) and Christmas celebration which begin officially with the Feast for the Virgin of the Immaculate Conception on December 8th.

Photos by Leonel [nelo] Mijangos – EnAntigua.com

Here’s another day trip away from regular school day. Boy, when I was a kid anything to get me away from a regular school day, especially if it was for a theater play, concerto, or philharmonic recital, even visits to museums were good. So I guess a visit to a church is just as good when you’re a kid, even if it isn’t politically correct for the adults.