La Antigua Guatemala Daily Photo

I know I have a problem… what can I say, I like to photograph shadows. Shadow Casting Lamp and Before Sunset in La Antigua Guatemala are just two more samples of my addiction.

Should I look for help?

By the way, from this point forward, you can buy prints from any photo available at La Antigua Guatemala Daily Photo and in the process help support my efforts to keep and maintain this site. Thanks!

All kinds of textures are available at the tables in the patio of Quesos y Vinos Restaurant; from the ceramic table tops to the chairs cushions wrapped around Guatemalan textiles. Texture is everywhere you look.

As you can see, just because you are having a meal in an Italian restaurant in a nearly 500-year old town, doesn’t mean you can not have some hi-tech comforts like WIFI and wireless table command so you can alert the waiters that you need something else or the bill.

Can you guess what this is? Hint: it is not a weapon.

Cielo is the Spanish word for heaven and sky. Cielo is also the word used for the ceiling, normally referred as cielo falso (false heaven). So this beam is holding up the heavens, if you can “think” in Spanish or Sosteniendo el cielo.
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I think I should find a quiet and tranquil place to seat down and ponder these tough questions:

What is art and what is handicraft?

Am I the oppressor, the oppressed or both?

Why is Cubism not folk-art?

Does a painting become a handicraft if it is exhibited in restaurant and does a handicraft become art if it is exhibited in a museum?

When will sompopos de mayo arrive?

One of the benefits of living in a third world country is that you don’t need to read Cien años de soledad (One Hundred Years of Solitude), Pedro Páramo or El Señor Presidente (The President) to learn about magical realism. No, no, no, we don’t need literature to learn the subtleties of magical realism: we live it everyday!

Las week, in zone 6 in Guatemala City, a police station received a radio transmission by two police officers reporting that their patrol car was stolen. “Nos robaron la patrulla, cambio” (Our patrol vehicle was stolen, over). It seems like our two distinct police officers stopped in front of a cevichería (ceviche restaurant) to calm down the weekend hangover aftershocks and while they were enjoying a shrimp ceviche and a couple of beers during their shift, their patrol unit got stolen. They parked their police patrol vehicle with the windows down and the keys on the ignition switch. They figured who in their right mind or living in the “real” reality would steal a police patrol vehicle, right? Surely, their innocence can not be excuse since as police officers, they may experience magical realism quite frequently.

A famous Latin American writer, whose name I can not recall at this moment, said that if Kafka had lived in Latin America, he surely would had been a clerk all of his life. This was said in reference to Kafka’s fantastic imagination, which it would have been kept in checked by the ordinary magical realism events in Latin America.

What do you think?

Connecting the dots

Dot 1: A few weeks ago, I read an short note about how China will forbid the giving away of ultra fine plastic bags (below 0.025 millimeter of thickness) starting June 1st. The article appeared in the business supplement Pulso of the Guatemalan Siglo XXI newspaper. The article produced some scary numbers: The Chinese consume about 3 billion plastic bags daily; “… the plastic bags are convenient for the consumers, but they generate grave contamination, waste of energy and resources”, according to the press release by the Chinese government. The article ended with the suggestion by the Chinese government to go back to bags made from textiles and baskets.

Dot 2: The very same day, after reading the article above in my lunch hour, I walked back to the office and sure enough a plastic bag came dancing towards me, just like in the American Beauty film. So what was I to do, but to pull my camera and to start shooting this new enemy. This incident happened right in front of Doña Luisa Xicotencatl restaurant; one of LAG’s landmarks.

Dot 3: I don’t know if it was inspired by the muy loco Guatemalan photo shooting a plastic bag in front of their entrance (can you imagine what kind of show that must’ve been). Nevertheless, the owners of Doña Luisa Xicotencatl decided to stop giving away plastic bags in their business, beginning with their 30th anniversary, a couple days ago. So to celebrate their 30-year anniversary, they gave away reusable, recyclable vinyl bags to all their frequent customers. You can see the all different sides of the bags and learn about their campaign by clicking the thumbnails below to get a blowup image (No. We are not talking about Cortazar’s Blowup kind of images). According to the tag in the Doña Luisa Xicotencatl’s bag, plastic bags take about 450 years to be fully destroyed by nature alone.

Dot 4: What are your feelings about plastic bags?

Recycling is good.

In Guatemala we do a lot of recycling, not out of conscience, but rather out of necessity. We recycle retired school buses and turn them into colorful and powerful public transit buses known in derogatory terms as chicken buses. Some of these recycled buses have become mobile libraries or marimba orchestra buses. In other words, retired school buses from up north get to live a second life; a more productive life, down in the Guatemalan jungles and hi-lands.

The same goes for many retired vehicles from the rich north which are rodados (rolled) across the U.S., Mexico and Guatemala to live a second life. Rodados is the term used in Guatemala to designate old vehicles or crashed vehicles which were driven or towed all the way south into Guatemala.

The same goes for books, magazines, computers, and a very long et-cetera all the way to second or third hand clothes known as pacas for clothes that come in pallets.

If it wasn’t for all this recycling, sometimes, it feels like we are the big backyard dump for our neighbors from way up north; sort of a black hole where you can throw away all your trash, never to be seen again.

Out of sight, out of conscience!

Heck, sometimes we even do some local recycling too. For instance, all those empty hard liquor bottles can have a fulfilling second life as salt and pepper shakers.

What I like about the people of Café No Sé is that they know when they are onto something; at once they apply the Café No Sé branding, and just in case, they make sure it is registered. These are my kind of hippies!

For all those Guatemalan ex-pats out there in the world, what kind memories do you get from seeing these Venado bottles?

Cascarones are empty eggshells that are filled with pica-pica paper confetti and then covered up with another piece of papel china (tissue paper) and finally painted in colorful ways; like everything else in Guatemala. The final painted eggshells are reserved for the Carnaval as it is known carnival in Spanish which is the ‘Sad Tuesday’ before Ash Wednesday; why ‘Sad Tuesday’?, well carnival means “farewell to meat”, you can only be sad if you are going to keep a vegetarian lent.

Actually for an in-depth and more serious explanation, I believe it is better to read Manolo’s comment and the other comments in the entry Guatemalan Carnival Cascarones. The only thing I would add to the awesome explanations is the fact that you can also purchase cascarones in the tienda (your local convenience store) for about 25 centavos each. Twenty-five centavos is the equivalent of 3 cents from the U.S. Dollar. Centavos are the subdivision of the Quetzal, Guatemala’s currency, and there are 100 centavos in 1 Quetzal (about 12 cents).

Okay, I am taking orders, how many cascarones will you need to break into the head of the cascarrabias (grumpies)?

Okay, I will let you do the caption this time… just fill in with your comments.

The YO-YO: retratos y autoretratos the photo exhibit of some of the most prominent cultural figures in Guatemala now showing in the Sala Marco Augusto Quiroa of Paseo de los Museos in the Hotel-Museo Casa Santo Domingo in La Antigua Guatemala is the second venue for this successful photo display. The first time YO-YO: retratos y autoretratos was shown to the public was back in September 2007 in the Carlos Woods Gallery on zone 14 in Guatemala City under the frame of FOTO30; Guatemala’s name for the yearly celebration of photography in September.

YO-YO: retratos y autoretratos exhibit received so many accolades and magnificent reviews by the critics that it prompted Carlos Woods, owner of the gallery, and his curatorial team to pump even more oxygen by bringing the photo exhibition to one of the most important venues in La Antigua Guatemala and to create a catalog to record the fist YO-YO. This impressively beautiful catalog is printed on an European paper size (24 cm. x 36.5 cm or 9.5 in. x 14.5 in) and was designed by Paola Beverini. This is the second catalog that is put out by the Carlos Woods Gallery, but the first that will be on sale. I recommend its purchase as soon as it hits the shelves.

Under the name of YO-YO: retratos y autoretratos (portraits and self-portraits) the Carlos Woods Gallery is presenting its very successful photography exhibit in the Sala Marco Augusto Quiroa of Paseo de los Museos in the Hotel-Museo Casa Santo Domingo in La Antigua Guatemala.

The photo of the hanging yo-yos above is part of one of the teaser window displays to make you go visit the exhibit inside the Marco Augusto Quiroa gallery in Hotel-Museo Casa Santo Domingo. You can find this yo-yos window display in the hallway that connects the underground parking lot and the hotel.

With this simple image we will begin two mini series. The first one will be about the YO-YO: retratos y autoretratos photographic exhibit. The second will be about art galleries and museums in La Antigua Guatemala. I hope to have you along this cultural trip we are about to embark… please make sure you have your pasaje en mano (trip fare on hand).

Exactly one week ago, these cups were fill with light first, then happiness and finally with wine. These cups were used in the inauguration of the new Mayor of La Antigua Guatemala, Dr. Adolfo Vivar of Unión de Nacional de la Esperanza (UNE), and to wave goodbye forever and ever and never again to the former ‘mayor’ Antonio Siliezar; one the worst episodes in La Antigua Guatemala’s City Hall.

The photo above was taken at the reception ceremony in the second floor of the Muni, short for Municipalidad or City Hall of La Antigua Guatemala.

I will let you in a little secret: I was caught taking the photo of the watchers (the guard and the photographer) so I pretended I was not taking their photo, but rather they were actual visual noise on my attempt to capture the street lamp, the stop sign and the roof detail. It worked, they continued their voyeuristic activities and so did I. Boy oh boy, the things I do for you guys!

So yesterday and today’s photos are the resulting images of the pretense; I hope you like them a bit and not think less of them now.

Don Tulio, the owner of La Naranja Pelada, has an interesting taste for decoration; to say the least. Here we have an embossed snapshot of Guy sitting at the bar while waiting for his abulón ceviche (abalone lime-juiced soaked salad).

Perhaps next time Guy makes his way down to Guatemala, we could meet up for ceviches, beers and blogs at El Pelicano Dorado… What you say, Guy, are you up for it? Anybody?

Post cards request update: The first two post cards arrived today at my postal office box. Gerard’s post card from Hyde, England and Carolyn’s from sunny Southern California arrive today. Gerard’s post card was sent on September 29, it arrived to Guatemala City on October 8 and to La Antigua Guatemala on the 10th. Carolyn’s post card was sent on October 1st, it landed in GuateCity on October 6 and it made its way down to La Antigua Guatemala today. If you don’t know what I am talking about, please do read the entry Postscript.