La Antigua Guatemala Daily Photo

JennyStar DVD Rentals is the Netflix of La Antigua Guatemala. JennyStar DVD Rentals is what happens when you think through a good business model and apply intelligent solutions to what’s missing in your community. La Antigua Guatemala can be one of the smallest cities in the American Continent with only a geographic grid of 10 blocks by 10 blocks (about 1.5 square miles) and less than 30,000 inhabitants, but it has a home-delivered dvd rental with over 2,314 films, from old classics up to the latest releases, most of which can not be found anywhere else in Guatemala.

JennyStar DVD Rentals has a web site from which you can pick your selection and have it delivered, if you choose so, along with a dvd player, pop corn and candies. From the web site you can also reserve movies for a later pick up. JennyStar DVD Rentals is located on Alameda Santa Lucía norte #12 (7832-0813).

On top all the great features of their DVD rental service, JennyStar DVD Rentals is an NGO (Non Government Organization) which aside from giving employment to Jenny and her staff (Enrique and Helen), donates all profits to support disable and poor children in villages around La Antigua Guatemala. Thus, by renting a DVD, you are yourself donating toward this worthy cause. See this is an example of Sí se puede (Yes we can) at a local level.

So if you find yourself in La Antigua Guatemala and need a dvd player to watch El Norte or No Country for Old Men, please give JennyStar DVD Rentals a call at 7832-0813.

Disclaimer Side Note: I am receiving no money or benefits for this review of JennyStar DVD Rentals, but I do hope that once they find out about it, they will give me at least a couple of dvd rentals for free (just kidding!).

Through our mothers’ safety zone we learn to crawl, walk, run, swim and fly! It is only fair that we assign one day out of the year to celebrate their unconditional support and the safety zone they provide for us.

In Guatemala, it is on May 10th that Mother’s Day is celebrated as “Día de la Madre.”

I wish a very happy Mother’s Day to all the mommies out there and a very special Gracias to my own mother for teaching me how to be a fairly decent human being (I think! ) most of the time.

What’s so special about the Esquisuchil trees around La Antigua Guatemala?

For starters, the esquisuchil trees (bourreria huanita) are very old and very few. Quite possibly, the oldest specimen is located in San Miguel Escobar where it was planted by Guatemala’s first bishop Francisco Marroquin in the 16th century. From the esquishuchil tree in San Miguel Escobar, the Santo Hermano Pedro de Betancourt (1626-1667) took pods and planted several trees around La Antigua Guatemala, being the most famous located inside the San Francisco El Grande Church; his burial grounds.

Most, if not all, of the esquisuchil trees around La Antigua Guatemala have plaques to highlight their importance and give out background information. The specimen of esquisuchil tree in the park of San Pedro Las Huertas is not an exception. If you can read Spanish, you can click the thumbnail below to read the plaque.

Tomorrow is Mother’s Day in Guatemala, let’s hope I can get a shot of all the mamas!

I caught these would-be High School teachers learning Guatemalan history on Sunday in front of the Church of San Pedro Las Huertas. I learnt that these future teachers were taking tours around the churches of Departamento of Sacatepéquez to learn mass movements in Colonial times as part of their history class. For sure, this history classroom beats my thick-n-boring-n-outdated-book-based High School history classroom.

Don’t we all? ¡Sí se puede! (Yes we can!)

Day one of year three. Are you ready for the new tour of 365 days around La Antigua Guatemala? If you do please, bring your pasaje en mano, dónde caben tres caben más.

Every time humans arrive at a milestone, we tend to review what we have traveled thus far. Two years of consecutive blogging is not much or even important in the big scale of things. Nonetheless, it is a big achievement for me since I have never done anything like this before. I am very happy to have reached this time mark and to have helped others in the process. I thank all my regular visitors for your support, comments, feedback and donations.

Now let see the La Antigua Guatemala Daily Photo in numbers (like Edgar would put it): In the last 731 consecutive days, there have been 744 entries, 6 pages, 13 drafts, 5037 comments, over 1,000 emails with feedback or questions, 624,604 visits (80,099 in 2006, 371,172 in 2007 and 173,333 so far in 2008), 120,616 spam comments. The website began its life with Blogger under a sub-domain and in less than three months moved to its present home of antiguadailyphoto.com and platform of Wordpress 1.2 (now version 2.5.1). All in all there have been over a thousand photos published here in the last two years.

More Numbers Updates: About 1,300 sites linking to antiguadailyphoto.com according to Google, 1,442 blog reactions according to Technorati, over 1600 hours invested in maintaining this website, 4 plagiarized photos that I know of, over 100 photos used with permission or proper photo credit by other websites, 2 newspaper articles, several photos found its way into magazines and 1 photo found its way as a book cover. Not too bad, don’t you think so?

What other numbers do you guys think I should shared with you?

If I had been told when I was a little kid that they would “grow” and “harvest” fish in a farm around La Antigua Guatemala, I would have said, “Get out of here!”

Surely enough, in the picture above you can see the fish farmer’s harvest being sold at the Farmers’ Fair in La Antigua Guatemala.

Now, I still wonder though, what do the fish trees look like, do you know?

Second Anniversary Side Note: By the way, I forgot to tell you that La Antigua Guatemala Daily Photo (LAGDP) will be celebrating its second anniversary (731 consecutive days of entries) on May 1st.

Can you guess what’s in the big bag?

The fresh produce available at the Farmers’ Fair and at the market are so irresistible. As you can see in the picture above, many people took advantage of the produce available at the fair instead of going all the way to el mercado.

On my way to work I came across this small farmers’ fair at the Alameda of El Calvario Church. This fair is promoted by the Ministerio de Agricultura, Ganaderia y Alimentación (The Department of Agriculture, Livestock and Alimentation). Come back tomorrow for a closer look at the offerings.

It is so good to have friends who are artists; they keep you cultivated and entertained. Such is the case of Rodolfo de León, alias “Fofo” to his friends, whom I met many years ago. Along those years, I have witnessed many of his artistic manifestations; always something new and fresh.

This season, Fofo and his girlfriend Larraitz have put together a body puppet show with a set of characters that are amazing. By just using their hands, feet and knees plus a harmonious wardrobe, they were able to create a body puppets performance which is innovative, stimulating and fun.

I thank Fofo, Larraitz, Manuel Morillo and Casa del Mango for the invitation to see a pre-screening of the body puppets presentation, now being shown in several venues in La Antigua Guatemala.

Can you make out the details of the picture above, can you come up with story for the photo?

L-R: Ronald Flores, Ana María Rodas, Javier Payeras, Julio Serrano, Francisco Alejandro Méndez

As I have shared with you, last Saturday I went to listen to the Guatemalan writers of the post-war in a dialogue they held about Contemporary Central American Literature. Those of us who attended were lucky enough to listen to the opinions and positions of Francisco Alejandro Méndez, Julio Serrano, Javier Payeras, Ana María Rodas, Ronald Flores, Allan Mills and Juan Pablo Dardón. Except for Ana María Rodas (the lady in the picture above) who belong to writers’ generation of 1960-1970, all the other Guatemalan writers and poets belong to the post-war period.

The Guatemalan civil war began after a successful overthrow of the freely-elected Guatemalan government by the CIA coup “Operantion PBSUCCESS” in 1954. The Peace Accords were signed by the end of December 1996, after the death and disappearance of more 200,000 people.

So, in the forum on Saturday there were two generations of Guatemalan writers, each with its own style and specific issues to write about. Ana María Rodas and Mario Roberto Morales belong to the war years and thus they find it very difficult to understand the very prolific post-war generation and the subject-matter the choose to write about.

I like reading both generations of writers, but I most definitely identify with the post-war writers and their disenchantment with the right and left wings and the war and its aftermath as a whole. Anyway, I do not want to bore you with all the details of the dialogue between the writers. Suffice it to say, it was a great evening and the dialogue continue afterwards in a local restaurant in Central Park. As to not bore you with all this dry writing, I prepared a mini photographic chronicle. If you click at the photos below, you can get more details and background information from the titles of the photos.

If you guys want me to write a little review about some of the Guatemalan writers of the post-war period and all their incredible novels and poetry, please, let me know. I will be more than happy to comply. In the mean time, if you can read Spanish, please visit the blog of Allan Mills to get an literary overview of the night.

Photographic Chronicle of the Diálogo sobre Literatura Centroamericana Contemporánea

Since Manolo needs to improve his tortilla making skills, I am posting this image to help him in the process. Even Carmen may benefit from these lessons!

Bohemian Literary Side Note:
Since I talking about Manolo, might as well invite him for a bohemian night with the writers that will appear in the 17:30 hrs activity by the name of Diálogo sobre Literatura Centroamericana Contemporánea as shown in the activity program below. For those who can read Spanish you can click the thumbnail below to see an enlarge version of the activity program for the Día Internacional del Libro y los Derechos de Autor (International Book Day and Copyrights).

It looks like today will be a very busy day and night with a heavy workload, literature, writers, friends, bohemian talks, mixtas (both kinds!) and book buying. If Manolo and Carmen can make on time, it will be my pleasure to invite them both the first round of mixtas. Oh how I wish you were here!

Like always click the thumbnail to see an enlarge version.

Last year I showed you one of the Surf Shops in La Antigua Guatemala and talked about surfing in Guatemala in general. Here’s the the quote from the August 28th, 2007 entry:

Actually, you can get straight down to the Pacific Ocean in about 45 to 60 minutes (depends on your safety level while driving) through one of the most beautiful stretches of road in Guatemala, known simply as Carretera 14 (road #14) and then the highway in Escuintla. Two prime beaches for surfing are Monterrico and Sipacate, both of them about two hours from La Antigua Guatemala.

It looks like more surfers are finding out about these prime surfing jewels in the Guatemalan Pacific Coast.

Surf’s up dudes!

Wow, that’s what I call a ‘reading area’.

“… Nothing became Something. For many in the community this Something is the realization that their kids, who barely had touched a book, can read something because they like it. The biggest change we see it in the problematic children, those who can hardly stay put. We let them read laying down on a carpet, aloud or in silence, right-reading or backwards, or we give them audio books, and little by little they end up reading all of them…” —Kyle Passarelli (fragment freely translated from the article Biblioteca Caldo de Piedra as it appeared in Spanish in the latest issue of Revista Recrearte)

Whatever Kyle and Cassandra are doing, it is working and working just fine. I leave you with other shots taken at the Caldo de Piedra Library Project. I hope that you guys find a way to support this commendable initiative; even some kinds word will do.