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Sometimes bad things turn good. Guatemala’s postal service is so slow, expensive and unreliable that in Guatemala the concept of junk mail is non-existent. El Correo, Guatemala’s postal service, is a Canadian private company with the support of the Canadian Postal Service. El Correo is the result of the infamous recipe prescribed forced onto poor countries: Privatize everything! For better or worse that’s what we got.

El Correo is slow: to receive our telephone invoices printed and mailed in Guatemala City (La Nueva Guatemala) to our P.O. Box in the postal office of El Correo in La Antigua Guatemala can take up to three weeks or more.

El Correo is expensive: to mail a Revue magazine (about the size of the Readers’ Digest) to the U.S. or Canada can cost about Q70/US$9. Post cards about $1 and letters depends on the weight.

El Correo is unreliable: Once I sent myself some post cards from the postal office to our house, which is about 2 miles away, and they never arrived. El cartero, the postman, only delivers once a week or once every two weeks in the communities surrounding La Antigua Guatemala. Because of this we have now a post office box.

But, we get no junk mail. That alone is a fortune. Furthermore, El Correo is reliable for sending and receiving mail and post cards from abroad as long as you have a P.O. Box; even if it is expensive and slow. To send a letter to the U.S. or Canada can take up to three weeks; almost the same time it takes for the invoice mailed in GuateCity to reach La Antigua. El Correo can be inexpensive too, mostly inside Guatemala, since sending a normal letter or post card (20 grams or less) can cost only 20 centavos (Q.0.20/US$0.025). You can download their price list as a PDF file here. But please, don’t expect the tracking service to work, especially in Guatemala.

The Post Card Request Side Note: With the excuse of an experiment and that I would like to know about you and your home town I am requesting a post card from you. I would like to receive a simple hand-written note on a post card, with stamps if at all possible, showing a landmark from your city in my p.o. box. My mailing address is on the Contact the author page. Once you have mailed the post card, please come back the Contact the author page and let me know you have sent it. I will write back to you the moment I receive it and, perhaps, I will send you a hand-written post card in return (it all depends on the how many I receive and how expensive is to send it to you). Come on people, let me know you really like the work I put in this web site through a simple hand-written note on a post card. I will be waiting for your post card!

Credits: This photograph was my wife’s idea and it will appear in the Homenaje (tribute) column of Revista Recrearte in the October edition. Posdata (postscript) was written by Beatriz Zamora as a tribute to the postal service and the hand-written correspondence. It is a great read if you can understand Spanish.

Even the alleys get dressed up with pine-needle and flower carpets for the town’s fair processions. Pine-needle element adds the value of pine scent to the whole festive occasion. Pine-needle carpets are also used for parties and special celebrations.

I could go as far as saying that the scent of pine-needle, along with the scents of tamales, ponche (fresh fruit punch), hot chocolate (not cocoa), firecrackers, new clothes and shoes (estrenos), are what makes the scent-memory of the Navidad season (Christmas). These scents, colors and its flavors are what pain Guatemalans abroad in their nostalgic moments (otherwise known as every day!).

The making of these processional carpets is such a community-forming and bonding activity since in the process participate many, if not all, of the neighbors and family members. These traditions, festive calendar dates and special celebrations mark very strongly what makes a normal human being into a hard-core Guatemalan. You break the link or access to these experiences and you only have a person that was born in Guatemala; a fact as worthless as the fact of having had a pair of boots once.

Well, with this image we wave farewell to the Guatemalan Fair series. It’s been the longest running series I have done about Guatemala yet; with sixteen photographs, descriptive captions and video clips, and I feel I barely touched the surface of the Guatemalan town fair.

Could you guys tell me if you enjoyed the series and point out where the coverage was weak or non-existent (special call to Guatemalans and long-time residents).

Update: La Antigua Guatemala is not the only place where these carpets are made. Check out Tenerife Daily Photo for a sample of their carpet-making abilities.

The People of La Antigua Guatemala and surrounding villages simply love to make processional carpets and the town fair provides the perfect excuse to make sawdust and flower carpets throughout the year; really why wait for Semana Santa (Holy Week).

Along with the processional carpets, white and yellow plastic decorations mark the route of the town’s procession. Nobody is allowed to step on the carpets before the procession.

The Royal Street Side Note: By the way, the name of this street is Calle Real (Royal street) which is the name given to the main street or avenue in small towns in rural Guatemala. This was done to mark the streets where the king and queen could walk by. It’s been 186 years since Guatemala obtained its independence from Spain in September 15, 1821; yet the streets are still called Calle Real, just in case The Kings ever show up—and they did in San Pedro Las Huertas. Check out the full coverage of the Kings of Spain visit to San Pedro Las Huertas earlier this year.

The charcoal-grilled meat stall has gotten so hip that you now find it not only in fairs, but around La Antigua Guatemala in parks, markets and sidewalks. Back in February 20th, 2007, I showed you an extremely popular stall of grilled meats in Tanque de la Unión park from a bird’s eye point of view. In the picture above, chicken and beef steak were being offered along broiled potatoes. Q10 ($1.25) for a portion of the meat of your choice, chirmol (read the link’s side note), guacamol and potatoes; definitely, not too bad of a deal.

The Barbecuing Side Note: Legend has it that when Columbus first touched American lands in the Caribbean, he was greeted with a banquet of char-broiled meats, as he and his crew were starving. Mister Christopher Columbus, Cristobal Colón as he’s known in Spanish, loved the flavor of the meats, the style of cooking and the sauces the meats were served with; quite possible a type of chirmol (chili mole). Not being to shy, he asked of his guest to name the sauce and the ingredients, but since he was not very fluent in the languages spoken by the indigenous (this was first contact, after all), there was a miscommunication problem and the friendly tribe people believed he was asking how they cook the meat, so they told him in good faith that the process was call barbacoa (barbecue); they even pronounced it by syllabus bar-ba-coa is the open-fire or charcoal way of cooking meats. So mister totally-confused-Italian-Spanish-captain-in-the-wrong-continent wrote it his travel blog (well, maybe just a captain’s log) as barbacoa is the sauce which these Indians (from India) used to accompanied their meats. He had heard the Indians used heavily-spiced sauces with their meals (curries they call them); so he was sure he had landed in India. From this encounter two confusions arose, which are still used today: the aborigine peoples of the American continent were called “Indians” and the rich sauce for the meats is called “barbecue”. (Source: as heard in one of KPFK radio programs many years ago)

I don’t know if you have noticed this, but seeds are very popular in Guatemala. If you recall the entries Name the seeds! or Guatemalan sweets; so it is obvious that seeds had to present in a fair booth. Okay, what do we have here? Peanuts in their shell, Guatemalan pumpkin in melcocha syrup, sesame seeds with melcocha, salty fried or roasted habas (broad beans); that’s as far as I can distinguish. Read the entry on Guatemalan sweets if you want to know what is melcocha.

I’ve lost my marbles! Yes indeed. Guatemalan fair games are about competing against the odds, against your friends and family, against yourself. There are mechanical games like the ferris wheel and such, there electronic arcade machines, there are table foot ball machine which required no electricity, there are loterí­a or lottery rooms; sort of like bingo.

The Latin American lottery is played with cardboards of nine images, each cardboard is different, bean or maize counts, and a person calling out aloud the name of the images: La Chalupa, El Borracho, El Catrí­n, La Campana, El Cantaro, et-cetera. Whoever gets all nine images called out and accounted for with beans or maize seeds wins the lottery, if, and only if they scream with all their lungs LO-TE-RIIIIAAAAA.

At the fair, there are of course, games which required less adrenaline, like the one pictured above. You play this game with marbles, huge marbles which you throw with the spring action of your thumb and fingers in the direction of the little holes, which are marked with numbers. Depending how much you add up per set, so it’s your prize.

The Guatemalan psyche, traditions and culture fabrics are made from having experienced friends and family at the fair with its food, smells and sounds from the loud firecrackers, the sweet sounds of marimba, the hot rhythms of cumbia and salsa music, games, religious rituals such as processions, the rain, lots of rain and the smell of earth after the rain. Gosh, how I wish I had the power and the ability to seize in coherent words the experiences that make up Guatemalans. Perhaps the images do a better job.

After all the pounds we have gained this week at the San Pedro Las Huertas Fair, it is nice to come across some healthy food. For Q5 ($0.65) we can take any fresh fruit bags and we will need the savings since we already lost quite a few Quetzales at the others fair stands. Now, even though I have shown all these Guatemalan fair food and even describe it as tasteful and delicious, I don’t want to pass it as healthy. Fair food is junk food. I am so glad these fair food vendors have not come across the Super Size Me concept!

A question for you guys. I still have 5 for more photos related to the Guatemalan town fair, but maybe you already had enough of the Guatemalan fair series. Would you like me to continue or to turn onto something else tomorrow… maybe some nice touristic shots of La Antigua Guatemala? It is to you.

Papas fritas is the Guatemalan Spanish name for French fries. Here is the abbreviated history that gave us the Guatemalan french fries stall: first the Quechuas or Incas domesticated the potato (Solanum tuberosum) into a crop in southern Peru and northern Bolivia; the Spanish conquistadors took it to Europe where it was an instant hit and along with maize turned a famine-prone population into a healthy society; somewhere in one of the northern European states, quite possibly Germany, the potato lost its skin and got deep-fried; This Eurpean recipe crossed the Atlantic with the new immigrants that came to U.S. and since it was a foreign-looking recipe, they called it French fries (remember Coneheads); so the French fries came to Guatemala along one of the many incursions from the United Stateians (Americans they seem to call themselves ) as a side dish for the hamburger or the hot dog. Guatemalans (Chapines they seem to call themselves) thought that French fries were too good to be side dish and turned it into a meal by itself. That is how the papas fritas cart came to be.

Two more aspects worth mentioning are the Pollo Campero logotype and the name La Huasteca. The French fries are the perfect side dish for fried chicken, so it made us believe the Campero chain. La Huasteca is a region in Mexico which has given the world flavor-rich recipes and Huapango.

The omnipresent catsup is ready to turn simple papas fritas into crazy papas fritas along with mayonnaise and the green chile pepper sauce.

We are almost over with the typical Guatemalan town fair and we will go back to those nice touristic photographs of La Antigua Guatemala; I promise.

New 7 Wonders side note: The Mayan Pyramid of Chichén Itzá, in southern Mexico has been elected as one of the seven new wonders of the world. The Mayan Ruins of Chichén Itza are very close to Guatemala and it is one of the many Mayan city states of the great Mayan empire. By electing Chichén Itzá as one of the new 7 wonders of the world, the world is recognizing the importance of the Mayan Architecture, Culture and Civilization. Let’s hope soon they will unite Tikal(Yax Mutal), the largest ancient Mayan city and Chichén Itzá with a brand-new paved road as well as Uxmal to create the great Mayan Triangle.

A recent addition to the Guatemalan Fair zoo is the pizza kiosk. Just like many other aspect of modern Guatemala idiosyncrasy, pizza has come to stay, but it must evolve, just like chinese food. So the typical Guatemalan town fair pizza is made from a less tasteful dough, only a light tomato sauce, mozzarella cheese and ham; nothing more. You get your slice and normally ad ketchup to it. The Guatemalan town fair pizza stand is, almost invariable, managed by one or two young indigenous teenagers or young adults with a taste for extremely heavy rock metal music which they blast from a portable boom box. The pizza booth may have posters describing their pepperoni or salami pizza even though they only sell ham pizza. Go figures!

A town fair is not a fair without the churros. A churreria is the place where they make churros; [CHOOR-roh] Similiar to a cruller, this Spanish, Mexican and Guatemalan specialty consists of a sweet-dough spiral that is deep-fried and eaten like a doughnut. Churros are usually coated with a mixture of cinnamon and confectioners’ (or granulated) sugar (source Answers.com). Just about now after looking the Guatemalan churrerí­a, I got the cravings for a cinnamon-covered bag of churros, would you like an order too? If you don’t have a sweet tooth, you can always have plataninas, poporopos, chicharrines, and anillos frescos y calientes; your choice.

If you are interested I will describe what all those things are. Boy how difficult it is to describe something that has to be experienced and tasted first hand.

We continue the photographic tour of a Guatemalan town fair with a typical booth. Since the inflated toys and balloons are very obvious, we will play the game of naming everything else that you see on the table. I will get you started with the bags of peanuts on the left. Now it is your turn, name as many things as you can recognize. Let the game begin!

Ferris wheels are another element of the Guatemalan fair. There is at least one Ferris wheel, but more often two or three of different sizes. The Ferris wheel is known here by these names rueda de Chicago(Chicago Wheel), rueda de la fortuna (wheel of fortune) and vuelta al mundo (around the world). Fairs are made up by all kinds of ambulant stands. Fairs are like accordions, they grow or shrink depending of the size of the community or town. All these photos belong to the San Pedro Las Huertas, a small village just outside and belonging to La Antigua Guatemala. At the end of July, La Antigua Guatemala will have its massive fair in honor of Saint James or Santiago.

The whole atmosphere is festive with many different games, food stands, marimba music and the omnipresent loud firecracker bombs. Below, you can view a tiny video clip of the burning the firecracker bombs. For a walk-thru video clip of the fair, check my entry Is it fair? Really it’s a fair.

Even though we began a tour through San Pedro Las Huertas town’s fair on Friday, June 29th, 2007; it didn’t cross my mind, until yesterday, that we could actually try to document some aspects of a typical Guatemalan town’s fair with all of its stands, games, fire crackers, sawdust, pine-needle and flowers processional carpets. We had to break the coverage of San Pedro Las Huertas fair to participate in the theme day of the Daily Photo community, which La Antigua Guatemala is part of.

The tour of the fair began with an overview of some of the food stands and the church in the background, then we saw the altar inside the San Pedro Las Huertas church. So far we have an overview of the elements necessary to recreate a typical Guatemalan fair.

Almost all town fairs and festivities are around the town’s patron, in this case is San Pedro Las Huertas, which by the way, means Saint Peter of the vegetable gardens. Since Guatemala was a catholic country for the last 500 years or so and the Mesoamerican indigenous people absorbed and mixed the catholic rituals and traditions with their own religious beliefs and traditions, most Guatemalan towns have a Spanish catholic first name and often an indigenous last name (otherwise known as the original name). For example, Santo Domingo Xenacoj, which means the original name of the town was Xenacoj, and the town was re-christen with Santo Domingo. Now with the above information, we now know that a town’s fair happens once-a-year on the town’s catholic patron. For San Pedro Las Huertas the date is June 29th and for La Antigua Guatemala is July 25th because the city used to be called The Very Noble and Very Loyal City of Saint James of the Lords of Guatemala, as mentioned by Manolo a few days ago. And some of you thought La Antigua Guatemala was already a very long name; try explaining to your friends and relatives that you are planning a vacation to The Very Noble and Very Loyal City of Saint James of the Lords of Guatemala.

So after all this rambling, I present to you the main element which spawns the San Pedro Las Huertas town fair: The Church. You already saw the altar inside last Saturday. Below, there should be a small 360° view video clip of the church from the main plaza. Come back tomorrow and all this week for more elements of a typical Guatemalan fair.

One characteristic which I enjoy about processions is the sorrowful tunes that are played by the mournful marching bands that follow the floats. Come back tomorrow to hear a sample piece; in the mean time I can only advance to you that they sound like the Godfather Soundtrack.

Tags: Antigua Guatemala Daily Photo / Antigua / Guatemala / Antigua’s Procession / Musicians