Holy Week Precessional Music
The Holy Week in Guatemala is a full five senses overwhelming experience. As you follow the processions all five senses are bombarded …
The Holy Week in Guatemala is a full five senses overwhelming experience. As you follow the processions all five senses are bombarded …
Some people have traveled the world over just to be present for the world-famous Holy Week in La Antigua Guatemala. Some people …
Okay, we will finish the Zapote and other exotic tropical fruits from Guatemala week with the Chico Zapote or simply chico which …
Even though most people are familiar with cashew nuts (I think), I am almost sure many people do not have the slightest …
Many were the contributions of Meso-America to the world in terms of brand-new dietary crops; so long is the list that one …
Okay everyone, I solemnly declare this week as the Zapotes (sapotes) and other such exotic tropical fruits week. Sapote or tzapotl is …
Yesterday I showed you a close-up of the coffee fruit being dry by the warm rays of the sun in the eternal …
The easiest way to get authentic traditional Guatemalan cuisine is to get a daily menu special at your local diner. For instance, …
Ignacio Ochoa has published a recent article about the history of kite making in Santiago Sacatepéquez under the name of Messenges in …
Jocotes (/hoe-ko-tes/) or red mombin are often eaten raw, but you can find them as often in tasty preserves. Jocotes en miel …
There’s no coming back. I was surprise to see a computer being used among all the fresh produce in the mercado (market) …
You can go every day to el mercado (market) of La Antigua Guatemala, but if you go Monday, Thursday or Saturday, you …
Here’s yet another gift for those Guatemalans living abroad, the jocotes de corona wallpaper that you can download from here at 1200×900 …
WANTED: Blenders are needed to process all the tropical fruits in the market stand above into licuados, smoothies and milkshakes. Experience is …
Your comments and feedback are very important and often show me the way for future posts or follow ups. Such was the …
There are some Guatemalan fruits that are impossible to translate into English; jocotes is one of them. Jocotes is the little round …
Granizadas is the Guatemalan Spanish word for shaved ice snacks. Basically, you take shaved or crushed ice and add any combination of …
Gringos are now an integral part of La Antigua Guatemala and therefore many of them participate of the preparations of the world …
Just like the Christmas Season comes with its own set of smells, flavors and color palette, so does the Holy Week celebrations. I can bring to you still photos, slide shows, video clips and sounds. But I can not bring you the smells. Like I said back in the Virgin of Guadalupe Day, … the incredible power of the sense of smell can detonate nostalgic memories… if only the smells could be seized like Patrick Süskind suggested in his masterpiece Das Parfum (Perfume). How could one go about imprisoning the mixture of the smells of copal incense, corozo palms, fireworks, pine needles, moisten saw dust, fresh tropical fruits, palm flower arrangements and sweat into a digital format readily available to download onto your own computer?
So what makes La Antigua Guatemala the best coffee in the world? To get the best cup of coffee of the world, one must start with the right altitude; somewhere above 1,500 meters above the sea level; add lots of fertile volcanic soil; mix in plenty of rain (about six months); stable temperate weather (about 75˚ F / 25˚ C); once you have the above, make sure you plant the best possible Arabica coffee.
Well, you may be wondering what SAT office means. Behind this placid view of this government building hides one of the reason why Guatemala is so poor; a beggar really if we consider that Guatemala begs money for road repairing, road building, new modern national identification card, fertilizers, schools, libraries and the list goes on and on. The picture above is the local office of the Superintendencia de Administración Tributaria, SAT for short and the equivalent of the IRS.
In La Antigua Guatemala, religious celebrations draw together all kinds of heterogeneous people and the feast day of Virgin of Guadalupe is no exception. In the day of La Virgen de Guadalupe, Our Lady of Guadalupe, you can find gringa mamas, indigenous mamas, ladino mamas and white mamas all taking their children dressed with indigenous clothes to visit the altar of La Virgen Morena. In many cases you have grandmas and the whole family taking part of the visit to Virgin of Guadalupe inside Iglesia de la Merced.
The tree of knowledge was an apple tree and Newton took a bite from a fallen apple. The rest is history they say, but history is being rewritten as we speak.
The transnational Spanish cell phone company Movistar enters the humble Guatemalan market; following the example set by Domino’s Pizza. So now, you can go to el mercado (market) of La Antigua Guatemala for your vegetables, fruits, spices, flowers, dishes, charcoal and cell phones. These two girls, with Telefónica Movistar t-shirts, were selling the cell phones for Q130/USD$18 with Q100 of airtime and your own cellphone number; not bad all.
The Guatemalan Writers Side Note:
For being such a tiny banana/coffee writers republic, Guatemala does produce and export quite a few good writers. I have mentioned some of them in this site like Luis Cardoza y Aragón, Miguel Ángel Asturias, Enrique Gómez Carrillo, Pepe Milla, Ronald Flores. But, I have not done enough to talk about the great Guatemalan Literature written by its many excellent writers. Thanks to a comment by Coltrane_Lives about the possibility of his adopted Guatemalan daughter becoming a writer, I can point out a great Guatemalan novel written in English by Francisco Goldman, a respected journalist whose work appears often in The New Yorker, The New York Times Magazine, The New York Review of Books and Harper’s (source: literaturaguatemalteca.org [ES]). “Francisco Goldman won accolades and international recognition with his extraordinary first novel, The Long Night of White Chickens, the winner of the Sue Kaufman Prize for First Fiction from the American Academy of Arts… ” (source: amazon.com). Another great contemporary novel is Ruido de fondo (background noise) by my dear friend Javier Payeras. Javier Payeras is one of the clearest and loudest voices of this generation and his poetry and prose has won the recognition in and outside Guatemala. Ruido de fondo has been reissued by the Guatemala’s Government Editorial Cultura to be required reading for High School students in Guatemala. For those who are fluent in Spanish, I leave the link to one of my favorites poems by Payeras: Soledadbrother.
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!
Boy oh boy, bagels, English muffins, exotic pastries, all the cookies in the rainbow, the best coffee and Wi-Fi internet access can almost make you forget you are in a Spanish colonial town embedded between coffee plantations, flower farms and volcanoes in the central mountain range of this tiny banana baby-exporting republic known as Guatemala.
Please, do not attack this fruit and vegetable stand with your liquidiser. Your blender would probably work better at this tropical fruit …
The making of carpets from sawdust, pine-needles, flowers, vegetables is a community-forming tradition. People get together by block or near-by neighbors to create the carpets on which the processions will pass by. Sometimes the making of the carpets is done at night, all night so they are ready for next day’s procession.
The making of sawdust carpets (alfombras de aserrín) with its vivid colors and eye-catching patterns are among the most prominent elements of the Holy Week celebrations. You can come back all this week to see other samples of carpets made with flowers and fruits and vegetables.
No, this is not the bust of Lenin. This is the sculpture of Francisco Marroquin, Bishop to Guatemala in 16th century, and …
One of the things that caught by viewfinder at the artisans fair was sweets and pickles in the jars. Although this photo …
Sometimes when you start a series you don’t know where to begin. I have colors, rich saturated colors for you. But, I …
The informal economy is the basis for making a living for most Guatemalans. That is why you have shoe-shining boys, orchids sellers, …
Red is the most prominent color around Christmas time. You can see it in the many people who dress up like Santa …
… Equal opportunity. Related entries: Selling folk-art on the park Where are the Maya women going to? Let’s go mija, we’re are …
Guatemalan traditional candies and sweets are still made with fruits and seeds (they are so behind!). At front we have sweets made …
It is very common to see plants above the walls and doors in Antigua. The Land of the Eternal Spring is Guatemala’s …
Wood Window works, originally uploaded by rudygiron. The wall’s zapote color takes its name from the fruit Mammea americana, known here as …
Veggies and Lucky, originally uploaded by rudygiron. Antigua’s market days are Monday, Thursday and Saturday. Although, you can go to the market …
Veggie stands, originally uploaded by rudygiron. Although this is not a very good shot, it shows of one the areas of the …