Archive for June 1st, 2011
Finca Filadelfia
A luxury getaway on a coffee plantation by Tanya Hughes “The hardest part is stepping off the edge,” my canopy-tour guide said encouragingly. Dubiously, I peered over the 40-foot drop. After a couple of deep breaths I took that step and I was flying through the air, held securely in place by my harness. Both [...]
Clean Sweep
Hand crafting the not-so-simple palm frond broom text and photos by Kathy Rousso Palma real (royal palm) grows in Guatemala’s hot climatic regions, and many products can be made from the fronds of this tree. Custom dictates that the harvest takes place three days before the full moon, after which the fronds are dried and [...]
Maximón
Mayan Patron Saint is an enigma text and photos by Thor Janson www.bushmanollie.com There is not a town or village in the entire Mayan Highlands where the presence of Maximón is not being asserted. Although the guide books for many years have only listed three Maximón shrines—San Andrés Itzapa, Zunil and Santiago Atitlán—there are literally [...]
Quetzaltenango
Guatemala’s second (and maybe best) city written by Blake Nelson I spent my first year out of college teaching in Puerto Cortés, Honduras, and a typical conversation went like this: LOCAL: Do you like living here? ME: I love it! LOCAL: Really? I don’t. ME: Let’s change the subject! After to moving to Quetzaltenango (commonly [...]
Safe Passage
One volunteer’s overwhelming experience serving in the city dump written by Hannah Wallace Bowman Every day at 7:15 a.m., a bleary-eyed group of Westerners gathers on the pavement outside La Antigua Guatemala’s San Francisco Church. Clutching banana bread and paper cups of steaming coffee, they soak up the early morning sun. Preparing to make their [...]
Ecofiltro named among world’s top 50 enterprises
Ecofiltro, a Guatemalan company that produces an innovative, easy-to-use water purifier, has been named one the world’s Top 50 Small and Medium Enterprises by infoDev, an international association sponsored by the World Bank. Based in La Antigua Guatemala, Ecofiltro, S.A., is a joint effort between Guatemalan scientist Fernando Mazariegos, who invented Ecofiltro in 1981, and [...]
Bronze
You can see it, hear it, taste and smell it, even touch it. All the senses get involved with bronze in Guatemala. Bronze metal is seen and heard in church bells, of course, and bronze tones cover the hillsides in the reddish-brown fields of peanut and wheat. Light tan coffee beans are bronzed during roasting, [...]
Metamorphosis
Life is a process of becoming. From the moment of birth the process begins through a combination of the stages we go through—infancy, childhood, adolescence, adulthood. In the early stages we move from one to another because there isn’t any choice. We can’t spend the rest of our lives in diapers or dragging around our [...]
Miguel Ángel Asturias
written by Anna-Claire Bevan photo by Jacobo Blijdenstein One hundred years after his birth, Guatemala honored the life of its exiled, Nobel Prize-winning poet, Miguel Ángel Asturias, by placing a statue of him on one of the main streets of its capital city. Made entirely of bronze, the full-body sculpture was the masterpiece of Max [...]
What is the extent of urban planning in La Antigua?
While the city grid of La Antigua Guatemala was laid out in 1541, it seems that the concept of urban planning was abandoned after the colonial era. Over the years, many groups, including Salvemos Antigua, petitioned the mayors for an urban planning commission. For a centuries-old city, alas, we have a “new” urban planning concept [...]
Mayan archaeology convention comes to Antigua
The IV World Convention on Maya Archaeology comes to La Antigua Guatemala and Hotel Camino Real June 17-19, featuring global experts on Mayan culture. With the theme “El Popol Vuh Visto a Traves del Arte Maya” (The Popol Vuh seen through Mayan Art), the conference will contrast the colonial-period Maya Popol Vuh writings with the [...]
June 2011 in Revue Magazine
This month’s cover story features the gem of the Highlands, Quetzaltenango (aka Xela), Guatemala’s second-largest city which is widely regarded as the country’s cultural capital. The story by Xela resident Blake Nelson points out the highlights, accompanied by photos, including our cover shot, by Quetzaltenango’s foremost photographer Harry Díaz. The enigma of Maximón is the [...]
