Inauguration of FOTO 30 Photo Festival in Guatemala

Guatemala’s largest photo festival, FOTO 30, it’s celebrating its 10th anniversary and will open this September 1st with the photo exhibits by Rodrigo ABD at Centro de Formación de la Antigua Guatemala at 7pm and by Club Fotográfico de la Antigua Guatemala en el Museo de Arte Colonial at 6pm. Check the entire program of events for FOTO 30 below […]

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Quetzaltenango’s Mount Olympus

View of Quetzaltenango from the summit of Volcán Santa María (photo by Kristen Moser)

From many viewpoints in Guatemala’s western Highlands, the Volcán Santa María stands like a sentinel overlooking its kingdom. Wrapped in a vortex of clouds, the volcano is a constant reminder to the population of Quetzaltenango and environs of its eruption a century ago that almost completely destroyed Guatemala’s second largest city. Yet today, Santa María stands as one of the […]

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Cultural Festival in Mexico Highlights Harry Diaz Exhibit

The Caribbean Cultural Festival was held in Quintana Roo, Mexico this year. One of Guatemala’s foremost photographers, Harry E. Díaz of Quetzaltenango, was invited to present his impressive exhibit Luces de Xelajú. “Because of its magnitude and relevance, this festival could be called the Pan American Games of Art & Culture, to give a comparison,” said Díaz.   At the […]

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Por el Amor de Milo

Milo y su familia celebran su cumpleaños.

El llego a mi vida una tarde de verano mientras estaba en el trabajo. Lo llevaban escondido debajo de una chumpa. Al verlo fue amor a primera vista. Se miraba tan tierno y lloriqueaba porque tenia frio. Nunca me imagine que este pequeno labrador amarillo de dos meses iba a llegar a ser mi mejor compania y mi inspiracion. Despues […]

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Ex-Guerilla Entrepreneurship

The calm (and coffee) after the storm: Santa Anita La Unión Rebels are on the move in Libya, Egyptians are overhauling their constitution and Tunisians unseated a multi-decade dictator, but reading about it in Guatemala’s relative tranquility makes it easy to forget that the same turmoil engulfed Guatemala not long ago. A history of the 36-year civil war and what […]

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All Aboard the Xela Express

Train-like tour hits Highland highlights With so many cultural, culinary and spiritual destinations in and around Quetzaltenango, visitors can enjoy a leisurely sampling of the area’s most interesting attractions simply by boarding a street-wise locomotive. Suited to travelers’ time-challenged schedules, Tranvia de los Altos shuttles visitors to significant sites in Guatemala’s second-largest city (commonly known as Xela, from the Mayan […]

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Olintepeque celebrates its patron saint June 20-25

San Juan Olintepeque, a historic town about 6 kilometers north of Quetzaltenango, celebrates its patron, St. John the Baptist, with a colorful festival. This area is generally considered to be the site where the famous Maya-K’iche’ prince, Tecún Umán, died in battle against Pedro de Alvarado in 1524. The annual festival features costumed dancers, the traditional dance of the bull, […]

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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 known as Xela, from the […]

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Art Exhibit in Quetzaltenango

Twenty-one paintings are featured in the exhibition, Miniaturas por Harry Thomas Danvers, with the inauguration on May 14 at 7pm. Danvers began his artistic career in the early 70s, studying drawing at the Escuela Nacional de Artes Plásticas in Guatemala City. He explains about his current show, “The idea with the miniature paintings is to make something small seem large, […]

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Holy Week in Quetzaltenango

Colorful and solemn processions will traverse many streets in Central America during Semana Santa (Holy Week) with La Antigua Guatemala’s commemoration of Christ’s crucifixion and resurrection among the most elaborate in the World. Each church has its own procession featuring a massive float (anda) carried on the shoulders of as many as 80 colorfully-robed church members (cucuruchos). Residents meticulously arrange […]

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