Fotos de Guatemala

photos by Heather!

Fotos de Mexico

photos by heather!

Guatemala, parte 2

source: The Chicken Bus Blog

Chicken Buses Don’t Carry Chickens (and other shocking realizations)

Reading: Rigoberta Menchu: An Indian Woman in Guatemala

The chicken buses, so the story goes, was owned by one family—a patriarch—who apparently bought a number of American school buses (from New Jersey Public Schools) to convert into public transportation. Much has changed since the patriarch’s death. After he died, he divided the business among all of his children. The fragmented company is now competing against its other parts, and are now individually decorated (owned, I’m not sure, I could not find any evidence to support this.) in colorful paints, often paired with a metallic color, a woman’s name stenciled across the top of the tinted windshield, decorative hubcab rims, and, in my case, a disco ball and sound system in the bus. Most of the bus was full of indigenous, which is why I thought nothing of riding public transportation in the first place. The « chicken buses, » sly devious names that do not describe the reality at hand are known for driving fast, drag racing, and constantly being held at gunpoint, these chicken buses are clearly not the most prudent of transportation choices. Heather and I heard huge thumps on the top of the car, because tires, hay and other market goods were secured and hauled to towns outside of Guatemala Ciudad. After a two-hour ride of stopping and starting, filling on and filing off, in the front and in the back, we arrived en el centro del ciudad de Tecpán our final stop.

Heather and I were strangers even to ourselves when we entered the city cold, wet and abandoned city. Businesses were open but were perplexing because each sold the same thing: las dulces. Our homestay father even attempted to speak with us, and we were very rude (as we thought he had no good reason to speak with us) and turned our backs. I am not sad about this, because I actually don’t remember doing that all I remember is that I was in a completely overwhelming scenario. Pedro, our homestay father, forgave us and even asked his wife Mercedes to take us to the mercado a jueves an la manana (a las seis). We went to the market at 6 in the morning—go there later and you have come too late. Better luck next week. Among an array of Mayan handicrafts (aprons, skirts, embroidered camisetas—every Mayan group has a different style of clothing for its women. One with aves (birds), one flores (flowers) y hay muchas colores différentes y tradicionales. Among the tomates y naranjas, we purchased manzanilla, jocote, guayaba, zaramoras, vanilla, coco y queso especial, wrapped in platano leaves.

Guatemala, parte 1

Guatemala City at Christmas. source: Britannica online

Guatemala City: Adventures Backpacking Through Guatemala

Reading: El Senor Presidente

La Ciudad de Guatemala shuts down at 6:30pm. There are no lights to light the streets and no people on the sidewalks. The only people I saw were within invisible tunnels, created from one bus to another, one car to another, one car into a home so that no one could see them. Heather and I were scared. If not for Che (I couldn’t really remember his name because I was so scared), the nice married man we met on the bus, who promised us that taxis were a bad idea to take and that we would be much safer in a car with his father, Rosales. After nearly being attacked by desperate taxi drivers, we pummeled our way into the 1984 Volkswagen and headed for Hotel (Posada) Belin, hoping it existed at all. We were thrilled to be on our way, but noticed that all the businesses were closed. We didn’t see any hotels, much less open ones. When we pulled up to the hotel. There were bars on all windows and doors, completely shut up with not one ounce of light, only a small tile on the wall with ‘Posada Belin’ inscribed on the wall, which indicated that the hotel was not just a fabricated oasis only located online. We knocked twice and a small homely-looking old man came to the door, displaying warm light that poured out into the street. Inside, we saw a partially covered courtyard and salon combination displaying old world dark wooden furniture and carved stone fountains and sculpture. Half museum and half hotel, it was a lushly comfortable atmosphere with old artifacts and collected crafts on the shelves. Heather and I collapsed on the antique armchairs next to two white haired women who were sitting at the front of the parlor on their laptops elegantly, discussing their travels and health work in Guatemala (they were nurses). After café and warm stories from three additional older couples with fascinating international backgrounds, Heather and I went back to our room and put ourselves under lock and key (just in case), but felt remarkably safe just to be in la posada. Guatemala City completely transformed by day, although I was scared to go outside because of the scene last night, Texas Jane assured me that we had nothing to be scared of and that, in fact, la ciudad- durante el dia- es marvelloso. Central Market near the Catedral, the Postage Museum, Art School in Guatemala City held 30-foot kites that were flown on the Dia de Santos. These kites were intricately woven tapestries created out of colored tissue paper– dozens and dozens of colors and intricate details. Photos from the event showed them flying two hundred feet in the sky and at a dozen people handling them during the flight. After the museum, we then began walking towards the chicken bus, which would take us to rural Guatemala.

Mexico, parte 3

Zócalo, circa 1950

promotional poster for 1968 Olympic Games, Mexico City

“To the United States, Mexico is more than a neighbor, more than a different country, more than a field of commercial and industrial exploitation. It is a gateway to a continent, not only physically, but spiritually and culturally—the gateway to understanding a hundred million people who inhabit the mountains and valleys from the Rio Grande to the Straights of Magellan.”

Revolution and Ideology: Images of the Mexican Revolution in the United States

Mexico City

Listening to: Selena

Originally built on a small island in the center of Lake Texcoco, the Mexíca (or Aztecs), created Tenochtitlán, what is modern day Mexico City. This event is on Mexico’s flag. It depicts an eagle with a serpent in its beak, the divinely sanctioned sign from Aztec gods that the city built there would be the Aztec’s greatest. The eagle with serpent is now the national sign of Mexico, and proof that one image can successfully encompass and speak for two different civilizations and histories to make one country: Roman Catholic Spanish and indigenous, to make one Mexico.

Until recently the largest city in the Western Hemisphere, ruinas still lie in the city (Templo Mayor), hundreds of years old, protected only by ropes and a moat. The center of the city, the Zócalo (second largest in the world, beat only by Russia’s Red Square) is bustling, and the epicenter of Mexico’s many dichotomies– with Aztec-styled McDonalds restaurants directly across from el Palacio Nacional and la Catedral Metropolitana across from street performers in full traditional Aztec dress—with feathers, shells, beads, and straw skirts. The city is building a second level to its road system in order to combat the city’s desperate traffic problems. Two levels or realities do not seem to phase los chilangos, or residents of Distrito Federal (D.F.) as los chilangos call it. Whether there are two levels of roads or not, you have only to drive down the Paseo de la Reforma (ordered modeled after Champs Élysées by Emporer Maximilian de México, ahem Austria), a wide boulevard, or the “Fifth Avenue” of the city, forested, quiet and impeccably cared for to notice part one of D.F.: the wealth. For part two, you have only to drive twenty minutes to the lower income housing where most chilangos live. This part of Mexico City is dirty, and sprawls for miles, thousands of small concrete homes with sheet metal roofing, among dry desert landscape. You do not have to pay taxes on an incomplete house, so, to save money, residents will « begin » adding an additional floor to their building, really only consisting of structural metal rods sticking upwards, through the outside of the concrete, no walls or even a lackadaisical outline showing forward-thinking or commitment. Outside of the law, or if there is any law at all, behavior like this doesn’t seem so bad here. Things could be worse– its not drug trafficking, which is the clear and visible law enforcement priority here. But, even when walking in the street past police you never know whose side they are really on, because bribes and corruption contribute to long-held skepticism of how much government will do to improve the lives of Mexicans. Even just in passing, it is impossible not to at least vaguely know about the revolutions or uprisings in Latin America, and Mexico is no different. Mexicans wonder why certain “questionable” national priorities exist, and join forces to protest when government “forgets” its responsibilities. For instance, in preparation, or rather, in anticipation of Mexico City’s 1968 Olympic Games, the city began designing a massive subway system to address increasing traffic due to the city’s rising population and thrust onto the global stage. Museums and stadiums were erected, and in total the Mexican Government invested $150 million dollars in preparations for the Games. With what ended in the Tlatelolco Massacre, which occurred a stunning 10 days before Opening Ceremonies (200-300 killed), came as a result of “forging alliances among students, workers, and the marginal urban poor and challenging the political regime.” Protesters created “a revolution from within the system, nonviolent, driven by euphoria, conviction, and the excitement of experimentation on the ground.”

Earlier times were happier. Mexico City’s artistic renaissance, a time in the 1920s through the 1940s when times were more optimistic– los bohemios and film stars from la Epoca de oro del cine Mexico or the “Golden Age of Mexican Cinema,” began a full-force artistic interest in la Ciudad de Mexico from the outside world.

Distrito Federal does have an appreciation for high and low art, importing the works of the finest artists into Mexico and glorifying the most famous Mexican artistic faces. Frida Khalo is a cult figure here—her face is literally on anything you can think of—muras, bolsas and arte de cuerpo. Mexican artists took a lead role in promoting and vocally supporting “the changes promised by the Revolution – land redistribution, universal suffrage, free access to education.” This is something Mexican artists could get behind, partially due to a longing for the ideals of la revolución en Mexico, after the victories of Porfirio Díaz and Benito Juárez’s battles of independence, promoting social justice while ushering in a new ideology of the times, promoting Communist and Socialist ideals. These factors fused into a priority of preserving folk art and tradition. Mexico and its artistic masters inherently understood and deemed it important to maintain that “Mexico is a land of widely diffused popular artistic culture” and that “the humblest peon is an embryonic artist.” So, therefore, the arts, its two levels, speaks for an entire people within Mexico’s largest city.

Orpheu Negro

I watched this film last night, somewhat reluctantly, but in the end, was completely overtaken by the film’s energy and striking visuals. The colors, the music and the culture in this film, tied to the famous relationship between Orpheus and Eurydice. The film is set in Rio de Janiero during Carnival.

Mexico, parte 2

source: flickr.com

San Cristobal and the Braided Revolucionistas

Reading: The Diaries of Ernesto Che Guavara

San Cristobal de Las Casas is a colorful town painted in dusty Mexican-style colors, beautiful, but showing its slip. Chiapas is a problematic province, a history of revolution and contest. It has created a legacy of supporting and advocating for its own people, against the social and economic injustices unsolved or instituted by the Mexican Government. Tourists, I supposed, never knew what to think. Every movie theater in town showed nightly documentaries on Castro’s Cuba and Zapatista’s Liberacion Nacional and every wall a different stenciled graffiti painting. Inspired as they may be by Che Guavara and other socialist heroes, Subcomandante Marcos (el lider revolucionario) insists that “[the Zapatistas didn’t go to war to kill or be killed” but rather “went to war in order to be heard.” Dissent Magazine remarks that the Zapatistas spearheaded “negotiation about what it means to be Indian within a larger Mexican nation… and [creates] a communication and public debate deeply rooted in popular cultural idioms.” By creating militias to generate publicity and enlist sympathizers, the goals of the revolucionarios are and have been education, health care, and political voice—equal rights, equal opportunities for a forgotten population. This autonomous spirit is the palpable spark in San Cristobal, combining crisp mountain air and ancient cultural roots demanding preservation, to lasting effects on what it means to understand rules, or laws—namely Western rules and laws. Not having spent long in Mexico, and being deeply shielded by the paved paths of the Yucatan Peninsula, I was shocked to wake up on my overnight bus to see children carrying large buckets of fresh water to their thatched huts. The cliffs underneath our bus, with rocks dropping quietly to the long bottom, did not seem so scary Our surroundings now looking like mountains of lush rain forest, but cold and stony, we entered a shielded community, nestled in remote hills, a forgotten part, of everywhere. There were political protests the day we arrived (common as rain in the jungle), with caballeros holding signs demanding “Justicia para Chiapas” and “Derechos Iguales” for the Maya. The men sat peacefully outside of the Catedral de San Cristobal de Las Casas for three days, under tarps during the rain, and under sombreros in the sun. The centro mercado, a vast and wild array of local food and craft, demanded full attention as the full skinned heads of la vacas stared blankly at us as we walked by and toasted crickets with chile waited patiently in their deep baskets. Navigating to the local buses, San Cristobal has the narrowest streets I have ever experienced—room for about one pedestrian, with sharp turns and 1.5 foot high curbs. It is a city built for walking and navigation, but the standards, are mercilessly different. After loading into a crowded small local van, we traveled about half an hour outside of San Cristobal to Chumas, which harbors la Iglesia de San Juan Bautista, a church which looks like white wedding cake with blue and green icing on its edges. Two small boys operate the entry door and gently say, “gracias senorita para tu visita, y por favor, no sacar fotografias.” Not that you have a chance of ever forgetting what is on the inside of the church but rather, wanting to photograph the inside of the church only to prove to the listeners of your story that you are not lying about la iglesia. Large and dark with no pews and fresh pine needles strewn across the floor, so that you do not see any floor, there are nearly fifteen altars that seem close to igniting the church in full flame, but never does. Each family who visited brought a chicken (which they would later sacrifice during prayer) came with nearly 50 tall, thin beeswax candles which they stood in 3 or 4 rows, waiting for the candles to become one large lake of hot wax. While candles and incense burn, a shaman, standing on one leg and chanting, lifts his folded hands to the air. A woman sways a sick young girl over the candles, singing and prostrating, while her husband and other children look on. Coca Cola is placed as offerings in front of 40 adorned statues of saints, heavily cloaked and cared for, safely guarded behind glass, while visitors slowly pass by. Outside of the church, the market slowly moves through the hours of the day, unconcerned about the happenings of the church, or the shocked faces of visitors.

Mexico, parte 1

El Viaje a Patzcuaro y Janizio, Dia de Los Muertos

Viewing:  Posada Prints

While riding from Morelia into the town of Patzcuaro, our bus began trailing, and being trailed by, pick-up trucks filled with marigolds. Dia de Los Muertos begins on the night of 1 de noviembre, on the Dia de Santos, or All Saint’s Day. It is one of the most widely celebrated holidays in Mexico, a national and solemn holiday, a time for prayer and reflection, honoring the dead. The most iconic representations of Dia de Muertos are the finely dressed and characterized skeletons, who hail from its earliest forms in pre-Colombian art to its twentieth century romance with their most famous comic artist, Jose Guadalupe Posada. The images of skeletons with personalities have stuck closely to Mexican tradition, which has “a unique dialogue with death” and has turned its traumas and absurdities to laughter. Its representations of the dancing and drinking skeletons create the macabre sense of humor the country adores. For us, while making our way through Southern Mexico, we could not escape from its haunting reminders of the holiday. We slowly began to see the colored paper tissue flags, with skeleton and designs cut out, hanging from tiendas, as our buses inched slowly west. Our destination was the island of Janitzio, which boasts one of the most famous Dia de Muertos celebrations in the world. The island is located in the center of Lake Patzcuaro, about a 30 minute boat ride from the city, which is situated on the lake’s bank. The statue of Jose Morelos, a powerful emblem of the city, rises 131 feet into the air and stands overlooking the island and the surrounding water. The walkways that meander to the top of Janitzio are carved into the island’s stony base. There is one road, a labyrinth, in which you will always lose your way and also find your way. We stepped onto a crowded boat, huddled together against the cold, and sped towards the island, passing boats of visitors along our way. As the boat docked, we were greeted by dozens of homegrown food stands, cheerfully cooking under colorful tents with lights and dia de muertos flags. Circular ovens with trays displayed fried mini-fish, tortillas, empenadas, and taquitos. Traditionally dressed Mayan women called out their menus, pressed gorditas firmly to their stoves and dangled their babies from sashes bound across their backs. Hundreds of travelers come for the famous “muertos” celebration to watch the spectable of veneration the dead, a tradition not followed in American tradition or culture. By constructing shrines out of marigolds and the favorite foods and items of the deceased, each shrine is honored and sacred space. Janitzio is poor– gray and rocky, the only color introduced by its inhabitants were marigolds and the clothing of Mexican (mainly Mayan) women, but despite this, the spirit was whimsical and eerie, leaving the spectator feeling all of the island’s visual complexities simultaneously. To add to my confusion, I traveled to the island with a group of 6 of the infamous Japanese « photo » tourists, who coincidentally were wearing identically styled puffy coat, all in different “pop” colors. The ever-curious photographers, came equipped with thousands of dollars worth of camera equipment, GPS which linked all six to each other, in case the bright puffy coat was not enough to locate a lost member, hot body patch stickers (think, Thermacare without the pain) in case they got cold and chic, ergonomically friendly sidepacks which protected against theft (zipper facing belly and hip). Together, we began our journey to the top of the mountain and first stumbled (you always luckily found everything) the large outdoor ampitheater, holiday entertainment in full swing. The theater, which felt like a coastal version of the Colosseum, overlooked the sea while dancers on stage were masked as « drunken old men » dancing furiously beating canes, feet and bottles on the ground. As the danced closed, attention was directed to twelve traditional fishing boats, which expanded like dragonflies, began moving in circles, their fisherman masterfully steering in coordinated rhythms. We continued on, entering through the cemetario’s massive iron gates. The epicenter of the celebration and with thousands packed into this small lot overlooking the lake, the cemetario was lit only by candlelight. We made our way solemnly through, stepping over gravestones (and occasionally sleeping persons) as we held onto each other’s arms, surveying the intricate shrines, donning photos of dead persons, pan de muertos, coca cola and photos of la virgen de Guadalupe. We creeped (along with thousands of others) into the small chapel, a simple white building with white walls and a statue of a sarcophagus of Jesus under glass, where many Mexicans would sit all night for the night vigil. As we crawled to the top of the island, back to back with visitors and climbing hundreds of steep steps to the top, we reached the Jose Morelos park, where the statue stands, left fist raised to the sky, while the right hand, and the rest of the island, sit peacefully. 

Frutas de Guatemala

en orden: coco, fresas, lima, jocote, moda y pina

Tulum– Photos by Ivan