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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.

Not much to say about the marimba except it’s Guatemala’s national instrument. But, did you know the chromatic marimba was developed in Guatemala? If not, read on…

The marimba is a musical instrument in the percussion family. It consists of a set of wooden keys or bars with resonators. The bars are struck with mallets to produce musical tones. The keys are arranged as those of a piano, with the accidentals raised vertically and overlapping the natural keys (similar to a piano) to aid the performer both visually and physically. This instrument is a type of xylophone, but with broader and lower tonal range and resonators.

The chromatic marimba was developed in Guatemala[1] from the diatonic marimba, an instrument whose ancestor was a type of balafon that African slaves built in Central America… continue reading at Wikipedia.

Today’s entry is a follow up to Camouflaging Cellular Towers where I mentioned how fortunate we are in La Antigua Guatemala where efforts are being made to reduce the visual pollution found elsewhere in Guatemala.

Here’s what posted before:

Sometimes we don’t realized how lucky we are for living La Antigua Guatemala until we take a little trip beyond the municipal boundaries and we are assaulted by all kinds of visual pollution. Yes, outside the Antigua Guatemala municipal borders capitalism is violent. Billboards everywhere, ugly banners on doorways and windows, huge advertising painted on walls, cellular towers along the roads, et cetera.

So, as we drive back to La Antigua and we see all the efforts that are made to reduce the visual pollution within the municipal boundaries, we are thankful, or at least we should.

Simple things like painting cellular towers, adding fake branches, disguising them as colonial street lighting poles, et cetera, goes a long way to reducing the visual ugliness inherent in the telecommunication era. We are not completely free of visual noise, but we are getting closer, poco a poco.

What efforts are being made in your municipal district to reduce visual pollution?

I am a lucky guy!

As I shared with you before, I am so lucky to have among my friends and acquaintances, movers and shakers of the Guatemalan society. Last year I introduced to Christian Van Der Henst, @cvander as his world-famously known, a Guatemalan who fourteen years ago decided to create a website, a resource really, to help others learn about the web and the Internet in general in in Latin America and Spain. MaestrosDelWeb has become a must-see reference in in the Spanish-speaking world.

Today they celebrate their 14th anniversary and I congratulate Christian and his team for helping and sharing everything they know. Believe or not, AntiguaDailyPhoto is what it is today in part to the ton of advice I have receive from MaestrosDelWeb through the many talks I have had with Christian over the years. Today’s picture serves as my public acknowledgment of @cvander supports for AntiguaDailyPhoto. By the way, that’s my iPhone case which was designed by another good friend, Norman Ávila from ClimaYa.

Let’s all thank Christian for his invaluable support and constant advice to always keep improving AntiguaDailyPhoto!