AntiguaDailyPhoto.Com

If we are what we eat, then this is what Guatemalans are made of. The vegetables above the most often found in the Guatemalan diet.

How many of these vegetable are part of the diet where you live?

Si somos lo que comemos, entonces los guatemaltecos estamos hechos de estas verduras, las cuales son las encontradas con más frecuencia en al dieta chapina.

¿Cuántas de estas verduras están en tu dieta?

These news may come as total shock to some of you, but I figure today is as good day as any to let you know that because of Antigua Guatemala’s preservation and protection laws there can not be parking meters. Believe me that’s a good thing. However the municipal government may not agree with me since that means they lose yet another way to tax us. Well, that’s how it used to be until not too long ago when a mayor realized that the city could by law charge for parking without installing the parking meters. Nevertheless, the government officials knew that they could not pass the legislation needed if they tax the people who actually live here. I know city governments all over the world do charge for public parking to its own neighbors, but trust me when I say this could not be possible in Antigua Guatemala. Thus, they created these parking permit decals for antigüeños that go on your front windshield and pretty much exempts your from having to pay the Q10 per day for parking as everyone else. Once a year you have to go to the transit or treasure department and prove that you live here by way of showing your DPI (Guatemala’s national ID) or the title of your property, the circulation cards for your vehicles and show your boleto de ornato (decoration ticket) which is a variable obligatory tax that Guatemalans must pay every year to their local municipality. Ornato is Guatemalan Spanish for the aesthetic or beauty of town or place.

And with today’s entry we begin a mini series about the parking problems of Antigua Guatemala. Each day I will bring different issues regarding the parking situation of Antigua Guatemala.

Día de la Candelaria (Candlemas) Aside: Around Antigua Guatemala, many people keep their Nacimientos and Christmas decorations until February 2nd, Día de la Candelaria (Candlemas), which incidentally is Groundhog Day in the United States. The day after February 2nd the Christmas lights around Antigua’s Main Plaza will be pick up and put away.

Now it’s time to begin preparation for Carnival first, and then Lent which begins on Ash Wednesday.

Guatemala has taken the concept of convenience store to new levels. Tienda is the Spanish word we use in Guatemala to refer for convenience store. The original definition of Tienda is tent as I imagine the original stores were actually tents. Tienditas, are smaller tiendas, or little convenience stores, which sometimes get to be as small as a window, must of the time is just a tiny room with just a door counter. The best thing about tienditas is that they are everywhere, almost every block has at least one, but often you can find more than two. Obviously, the most often bought products at a tiendita are junk food, soda drinks, chewing gum, canned juices and cigarettes, but you can also find chocobananos and hellos (ice creams).

What do you think is the most bought item at a tiendita?

This niche and statue of San Francisco (Saint Francis) can be found at the entrance of the façade looking north of Iglesia de San Francisco El Grande, that’s the one on 7a calle poniente and 1a avenida, shown a few days ago on Details of San Francisco El Grande Church. Niches are among my favorite architectonic elements found through out Antigua Guatemala. As I mentioned in Casa Antigüeña: The Niches, a big part of the beauty of the Casa Antigüeña is found in its details, like the niches that can host angels, owls, figures of Santo Hermano Pedro, Jesus, Virgen Marí­a, et-cetera. It is nice to have a spot light to illuminate the niche at night, but during the day, the wonderful filtered sun light is more than enough.

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!

It looks like the Muni is almost ready to wave goodbye to 2011. The sign for 2012 is already in place and soon enough the lights and fireworks will be set as well.

Would you like to receive 2012 in La Antigua Guatemala?

I believe this is the second time I noticed these wooden rustic chairs hanging from a wall. In the post Hanging Chairs in La Antigua Guatemala I reported that I found the hanging chair unusual and intriguing; I still do.

What do you think the hanging chairs represent or mean?

Yes, perspective is everything!

If you don’t believe me compare the Tea Partiers and the Occupy Wall Street movement, since both share some similarities on the surface, but represent opposite world views as shown in this article from Aljazeera: Tea Partiers: The self-hating 99 per cent.

There may be surface similarities between the two uprisings, but they actually represent two opposing populist world views, whose only philosophical resemblance to one another is their belief that they speak for “the people” against the elites. While both movements are mainly concerned with economic issues, their beliefs about the causes and solutions they propose couldn’t be more different… continue reading at Aljazeera.

Huh, and you thought that we were sheltered against world events news in our beautiful, tranquil and enchanting little corner. We also heard about the recent rescue of the Belgian-French bank Dexia, which could be the first domino to fall in a replay of the 2008 recession.

Perhaps you should visit Guatemala and enjoy the end of the world as we know it.

See, perspective Is everything!

Always remember to look up, down, left and right. You’ll never know what you will by simple change of perspective.

Because I am a politically correct person I will say that Guatemala is one of major recycling centers for things discarded in the good old U.S.A. I will say that Guatemalans give a second life to things dumped by estadounidenses (Unitedstatians) and Canadians to a lesser degree.

I have talked about this “recycling” in the following entries:

• Haves and Have-Nots: Recycling the World Over
• Chicken Buses are The Second Life of School Buses
• From Blue Bird to Green Quetzal

By the way, Paca is the term used in Guatemala for bale or large package normally shipped in a palette, which is the way these second hand or discard clothes make their way into Guatemala and other countries in Central America. Paca is also the name used for stores that sell paca clothing.

Awakening

The morning of your first life:

You arise, awestruck by the dream.

The air is poignant with mystery and promise.

Golden Light floods your heart.

You are

Awakening.

Source: Poetry for Bubble Photographs by John Searles

As every year, on September 14, people from all over the Guatemala begin a marathon to go to another part of the country to get the flame for the Independence Torch back in their communities. There are many places the have a torch where other people from other towns can light their torch to bring back to their own communities. Of course, there are favorite destinations to get the Independence Flame and La Antigua Guatemala is one of them. All the different torches in different locations throughout Guatemala and their respective marathons build a web of people running in all different directions at the same time. It is traffic nightmare and it is better to stay home on that date, unless you are running for your community to fetch the light for your torch.

I was at Centro Histórico (Downtown) Guatemala City last night, past midnight with some friends and colleagues doing a tour through all the photo exhibit inaugurations when we saw people still running with the torches.

As in previous years, I have prepared a slide show of the things I saw around the torch set at the Municipalidad building. This time I also recorded a video clip of the beginning of some of the marathons.

I hope you enjoy them and let me know your thoughts.

This year FOTO»30, Guatemala’s Photo September, a month full of photographic exhibits has as the encompassing theme the concept Nation.

I remember what Manolo said last year when I entitled a post Perpetuating a Nation.

It [Guatemala] is a country, a republic… but a nation… I am not sure. —Manolo

Everyday I come across more Guatemalans who project a loss of identity. This is even true with the Maya people, especially the men, most of who have abandoned their traditional dress clothes in favor of a more Westernized look.

This alienation is also evident in the language where many young Mayas don’t speak the tongue of their parents. This is also true of mestizos (mixed) or ladinos who often use or mix English words into their every day talk without even realizing it or sometimes on purpose. All you have to do is look at the updates in Twitter, Facebook, Google+, et cetera to notice the abundance of English words, phrases or even entire thoughts being used for a peer audience who mostly speak Spanish.

For instance, once I came across a travel agent who handed me a brochure as he called it and when I questioned why he didn’t call it folleto (the Spanish word for brochure) he told me he didn’t know the word brochure was not Spanish. This is merely one example of the many I encounter almost everyday in Guatemala.

By the way, did you know that many Guatemalans now celebrate Halloween and Thanksgiving in Guatemala?

Well, I do agree that Guatemala is NOT a nation. Furthermore, I believe Guatemalans are alienated. There are SO many examples of this alienation for sure. However, I would like to read some of your samples of Guatemalan alienation.

You’re welcome to submit as many examples of alienation in Guatemala as you can remember.

Did you know that Guatemala is the birthplace for chocolate? If not, read on.

Cocoa bean (also cacao bean,[1] often simply cocoa and cacao; Mayan: kakaw; Nahuatl: cacaua) is the dried and fully fermented fatty seed of Theobroma cacao, from which cocoa solids and cocoa butter are extracted. They are the basis of chocolate, as well as many Mesoamerican foods such as mole sauce and tejate.

A cocoa pod (fruit) has a rough leathery rind about 3 cm thick (this varies with the origin and variety of pod). It is filled with sweet, mucilaginous pulp (called ‘baba de cacao’ in South America) enclosing 30 to 50 large seeds that are fairly soft and white to pale lavender in color. While seeds are usually white, they become violet or reddish brown during the drying process.

The cocoa bean was a common currency throughout Mesoamerica before the Spanish conquest.

The cacao plant was first given its botanical name by Swedish natural scientist Carl Linnaeus in his original classification of the plant kingdom, who called it Theobroma (“food of the gods”) cacao. (Source: Wikipedia)

In La Antigua Guatemala we now have some very good chocolaterías (chocolate shops); don’t leave town without paying a visit to Fernando’s Kaffee and Chocolatería Sabe Rico.