FOOD STUDIES IN GUATEMALA

Meeting scholars from around the world here is so cool! We all help each other out when needed. I once found, for a researcher from LSU staying with us, a book he'd been looking for. And it was the very last copy available! At Sophos Bookstore. Life would not be worth living in Guatemala without Sophos Bookstore. I was so happy to be able to help him! (And I'm not being paid to plug Sophos Bookstore, it's just that it's such a great bookstore. Not cheap, though, but they serve great hot chocolate w/cardamom).

I went to the 15th Anniversary Festival of the museum of Universidad San Carlos (MUSAC), the first university in Central America (founded 1553). The early 19th century building is truly beautiful, located quite close to us. Used to be the law school. Its lovely library of antique books is to die for. You know the type: Old leather-bound tomes, antique furniture, glossy wood, that dusty smell.

The theme of the festival was Guatemalan gastronomy. Researchers from the Center of Folklore Studies offered fascinating talks. There were great food tastings. The Center of Folklore Studies offers useful guidance on Guatemalan folklore and culture. It's housed in the century-old building of the Botanical Gardens, built over an old cemetery. I should mention that I haven't met one person yet who doesn't like the Botanical Gardens. I love it too.

Back to food. There's a lot going on in Mesoamerican food studies. Guatemalan cuisine is an admixture of Mayan, African, Spanish cultures, with Arabic and Asian influxes. The ports of Mexico were the load-transfer spots for all cargo shipped from Asia to Spain. Hence, rice (which stopped there on its way to Spain) is a much more common diet staple in Mesoamerica than other Latin American regions. So much for "authentic" cuisines, right?

However ...

Historians have decoded, in the last years, previously indecipherable Mayan glyphs. They've found many ancient texts which refer to foodstuffs appropriate for individuals of different castes of Mayan society. Some foods were "right" for the military, others for athletes, and the "maceguales" or common people were restricted from foods allowed to the elite. There's a whole lot of recent information on that available, down to ancient recipes.

When in Mexico, I've tasted Aztec foods that remain in Mexican cuisine, such as ants' eggs and certain worms which taste like french fries (no, not like chicken). In Guatemala, I've eaten giant ants called zompopo de mayo. Salty and taste like peanuts. In Honduras I ate grilled iguana, garrobo, and it was delicious. Now that does taste like chicken! Goes well with beer, too. (See? I call that food studies MY way.)

One doesn't have to travel far to see Mayan murals and stellae, as there are some in many local institutions. Two blocks from us, in the National Library, there are an interesting few stellae and murals one can see for free (see above and below). They are beautiful and expressive.

See the footprints going from one character to the other in the mural above? There is some sort of interaction going on there, I wonder what it is. Makes me want to learn all this stuff.

Actually...

There are many US, European and Asian archaeologists funded by US and European universities, living in Guatemala for one or two decades, just digging through all these things. They just had an important international conference in Antigua on the subject, which I sadly missed. I can't go to everything, I already try not to miss out on so many events!

My dissertation committee has adjourned for the summer so I won't hear anything about my last draft till the end of the season. However, I'm already working on other research for articles and books in progress. I am so glad that a) I am surrounded by excellent Gauatemalan research resources and b) have wi-fi internet so that I can access JSTOR and all the other databases at my university in the US. Got the best of both worlds here!

Now, if I only could access Hulu and Pandora, the whole thing would be as near perfect as anything. But Magnatune has been working out fine and I do get to watch Jon Stewart every day, if one episode behind schedule. Guatemala City now has a local "American" radio station, with US DJs and all. It's pretty decent; classic rock, old school pop, some Lady GaGa, some alternative, etc.

Below, one of my kitchen shelves which I keep stocked with all sorts of local beans and grains, but also with local artisan pieces. I am afraid my kitchen shelves have more art stuff and books than food, but that's another story!

www.QualityGuate.com

Bed & Breakfast - Lofts - Parking
In the Historic Center of Guatemala

SERENDIPITY, AGAIN.

Starting a business in Guatemala--or most of Central America, for that matter--is not even a tenth of efficient as it is in the USA. The easiest way around the Kafkaesque rigmarole of paperwork and nonsensical bureaucracy (plus the official penchant for subtly and not-so-subtly soliciting one for bribery)--is to purchase an already existing business and do with it what you will (which is how we ended up with an inn). Real estate purchases can be very tricky here, so it's best to always deal with well-experienced professionals.

We didn't go out hunting for a business. At all. We basically just wanted to buy a place to stay when we travel from the US. We searched for something in the Historic Center, since we prefer something with character and none of that "gated community" living. Been there, done that, boring. So, we ended up with a 1940 Art Deco building that had an already operating bed-and-breakfast inn. Serendipity, if you will.

The woman in the photo above is of German ancestry and raised in Europe. She is a chef and somehow, ended up in Guatemala and operating the café at a big bookstore and publishing business in the Historic Center--Librería Piedra Santa. Today she has a well-known daily lunch buffet that brings in crowds to her Café Tasso. Something unheard of in Guatemalan cuisine, she cooks with no fats and no flour, yet her food is delicious. I go often. Her food is plentiful and unbelievably inexpensive for its quality. I would call it Asian-European fusion, but really, it's just plain home-cooked yummy and her little business is thriving. She's also very lively and fun, which makes the whole experience even more pleasant.

A good thing about having an inn is that I get to meet people from all over the world, a great many of them scholars from foreign universities, activists who work with NGOs, backpacking students who want something a little bit better than a hostel, Latin American businesspeople, and so on. Today, for example, I made friends with the two guys who operate the chapter of Water for People in Guatemala. Their work is fascinating. I'm always impressed by people who take their lives in their hands like that, go travel mountains, high plains, new cities abroad, and live to help people. They also look so happy and full of energy! Lucky guys.

The art scene is pretty lively for such a tiny and ultra conservative country. For example, just this week walked to a new artsy café in the Historic Center, the new Café León (there is also the old Café León which I personally prefer) to listen to a young singer-songwriter who drew a packed crowd, Alejandro Arriaza, and also went to the awesome Sophos Bookstore to a presentation by 6 local blogger-poets, who had all sorts of performances, from postmodern theorists stuff--Gayatri Spivak, etc.--to vernacular/humoristic narratives. One blogger brought a sax player who looked like some homeless derelict. For all I know, he was one! Nevertheless, he played well. Meanwhile one drinks tons of really good coffee. All sorts of stuff going on.

All the paintings in this post were made by Zipacná de León, a modern painter of radical politics who was among the spear-headers of Guatemalan printmaking--among other experimental art forms he worked with. This is from an exhibit at the art school where I attend sketching classes when I'm not at work on research for articles or dissertation. Or at the inn.

De Leon was good at mixing traditional elements of Guatemalan culture and modernist painting. I heard that, when he was a child, his mother was suspected of being a subversive during the years of military dictatorships and killed in his presence. Don't know if it is true, but wouldn't be surprised. Used to be pretty common. His paintings are very full of life. Yet there is a certain melancholy infusing most of them.

Today there was a presentation by a sociologist who works with the United Nations. Dr. Linda Asturias has a doctorate from New York University, and presented on human development and education in Guatemala, a wide and in-depth study recently published by the United Nations. All attendants received a free copy of the beautifully bound and printed 2-tome study, which is huge and will be out for sale--expensive, probably--next week. So we were all quite happy to have them (for free, for free!) before anybody else. My husband was happy to recognize her as one of his teachers from long, long ... looong ago.

Serendipity, again.

www.QualityGuate.com

Bed & Breakfast - Lofts - Parking
In the Historic Center of Guatemala

ART SCHOOL & GRAFFITI IN GUATEMALA

Haven't written in a while because the inn has been in "full house" mode for many days. Lots of catering too! Thank goodness, but the loads of work are seemingly never-ending.

Above is the entrance to the art school where I go for classes, in the old "Palacio de Correos" (Post Office Palace) and it truly is a palace, built--over 70 years ago--by one of the megalomaniac tyrants who made the history of Guatemala a tragic case of for-real "magical realism." Be it as it may, the place is beautiful: 4 stories of fine wood, worked iron, a plaza on the rooftop, wide spaces, indoor patios with tile, palm trees and fountains. In sum, the works! (see below)

The art school, nested in what is now the Centro Cultural Metropolitano (that doesn't need translation, does it?) belongs to the City and offers for very low fees (approx. US$3 monthly) courses in painting, drawing, sculpture, printmaking, choir, orchestra, theater, dance and many other. My own experience and what I hear from others is that all classes are really good and it helps, of course, that the place is beautiful and that there is a Starbuck's-type cafe catty-corner to the place.

So up there, my sketching class, which is a case in dysfunction not because of the instructor, who's pretty great, but because many students refuse to "get" that sketching is not only the basis for painting but an art form in and of itself. Hence many students simply don't do or finish the sketching exercises and projects assigned. They registered because they want to learn oil painting and see no need to learn sketching first. Some do apply themselves, but others spend class time looking at magazines and chit-chatting. I mean, they're nice and all, just ... I don't know. Can be annoying. As in, very.

I hope it's only this particular group. I've taken several art classes (in the US, mostly) and I have never seen a more talkative group nor one with such a peculiar sense of entitlement about the class. I also take Printmaking classes at this school, and nobody behaves that way there, so go figure. When the next course begins, maybe I'll be in another group that takes the class more seriously.

Okay. The moving finger writes and having bitched, moves on.

Though I take the class seriously, no hope for me of ever being a full-fledged artist. So here, my first assignment. I had to draw that clay vase and, below, what I came up with. As you can see, soooo not the stuff a Van Gogh is made of!

I know it's sad, but the result made me happy because I managed to do it in one single sitting and it came out sort of okay. However, that is only due to the instructor, who is very skillful, patient and very good about allocating personal time to each student.

Because I'm shallow like that, I like that he puts Celtic music on the stereo for us, as opposed to other classes where the instructors will have loud opera and--okay, call me a Philistine, but I prefer soothing Celtic to jarring opera any day. Which--in sort of a digression--brings me to graffiti in Guatemala.

The Embassy of the United States in collaboration with a local historic preservation society brought Hip Hop and Graffiti artist George Martinez (now the Honorable George Martinez!), the first Hip Hop artist to be elected for political office as a Representative in the USA.

Martinez holds a doctorate in Political Science and is a professor at the prestigious New York University. He does wear a suit when in his office. He conducted a graffiti workshop with Guatemalan youth and not only walked them through the whole process of constructing a graffiti mural, but also gave them a positive motivational speech, full of humor and rap, urging them to stay in school, uplift themselves and their communities, and stay true to their roots. The kids all loved it and the whole event created quite an impact. It was also fun to watch.

There are actually good graffiti murals in Guatemala, creative and well-done, though many are still somewhat derivative. I particularly like the ones created by the members of EKS Crew. Now, I know some call it vandalism and that is a topic that is still open to discussion, but before dismissing graffiti as mere vandalism, I would sweetly suggest that people first educate themselves about it before judging. Not all is negative or vandalism, and definitely, a great amount of it is NOT gang-related. A great amount is, indeed, positive and beautiful.

I admit to being biased, as graffiti is one of my passions--and no, I am not a graffiti writer, just an admirer. I love it enough to write on the subject. Above, the cover of the recently published Encyclopedia of Hip Hop Literature (Greenwood Press, 2008), in which a couple of my essays are published. Hip Hop and Graffiti are now academic topics, with courses taught and textbooks published on the subject. I urge you to find out more about it, it's really fascinating.

Finally, the above-mentioned art school I go to in Guatemala, despite its concentration on the traditional/classic arts and ways of teaching art, also honors Graffiiti ... if you climb to the plaza on the rooftop, you'll find a huge graffiti mural artfully replicating the Historic Center of Guatemala.

www.QualityGuate.com

Hotel - Lofts - Parking
In the Historic Center of Guatemala

INVADED. NOISE AND RAVENOUS HUNGER.

The hotel has been noisily full of students since last week. A non-profit organization that works in collaboration with Chapel Hill University, the Guatemalan Student Support Group, brought 45 students and 3 teachers to stay with us. A couple are college students but the rest are all high school kids.

Talk about noise! Yet it's a happy noise. This program is too wonderful for words. It provides Guatemalan kids from the poorest sectors--rural or city slums, from homes lacking in water, electricity and indoor bathrooms--with an education in the USA, where they finish their high school while living with American host families, then proceed to get a university degree, with the goal of returning to Guatemala to uplift their communities.

I particularly like the photograph above, of a Garifuna girl from the coastlands and a Mayan girl from the highlands, reviewing their English vocabulary list for the day. They are so lovely I wish I were a master painter to create some awesome work of art with their images.

We set up a classroom for the kids, with desks, DVD/TV, blackboard, etc. They are extremely well-behaved and groomed, and spend their free time studying--well, and horsing around too! The teachers have been giving them non-stop intensive workshops in English, since upon arrival in the US they get 100% immersed in English. They are kept to a strict schedule in which the lights are turned off at 10 pm and they immediately all go quiet. It seems very eerie, after the intermittent chatter-laughter din they make all day long when not in class, the sudden quiet at 10 pm. Wish I knew how to do that when my kids were young.

Besides this group, we have researchers from other universities staying here--Costa Rica and Germany--and a band of 11 musicians who had come to play for a concert in the city. They all seem both charmed and befuddled by all the kids. And wow, these kids EAT! Like locusts, they'll go through everything placed in front of them. The kitchen staff are all exhausted. Because other guests, upon watching them eat with the voracity typical of the teenager, end up ordering meals too! I think the cook and her helpers are about to drop dead.

This young man in the photo above is really funny! He caught me about to take his photo while reading, so he immediately hid the book and "posed" for the camera, all "cool dude" him. Some of the kids have already spent 2 years in the USA with their host families and attending school, and their English is amazingly good. Very fluent, great accent--deep Southern accent!--and they coach the new kids entering the program, who all seemed quietly terrified of the new life ahead of them. The ones that have been in the US awhile are all "Dude!" "I gotta go!" and "Hey y'all!"

I have made friends with the teachers, especially Huang, who is a very cultured woman from California with a doctorate from Boston and a long life in Seattle. I was VERY happy to make a friend like that here in Guatemala! She reads history, politics, The Economist and The New York Times. I HAD to hug her! She has made her home in Alta Verapaz, where she works with this organization and travels to the US a lot. She had to help the kids with their English lessons and so I helped with their lessons too.

I asked one of the kids if his host family is nice. He said excitedly, "Very, very nice! I eat all I want and I have my own room." and then he emphasized, with eyes open wide, lest I don't understand how magnificent this is: "My OWN room!" Things we take for granted, such as eating till we're full or having a room of one's own, for these kids are a complete marvel.

Some of the situations have been sad, despite the gaiety all around. One of the girls came home just in time to say good-bye to her mother, who died of cancer the very day the girl arrived. The mother had been in a coma for days, and woke up just to smile at her daughter--since she could no longer speak--only to die right after. It's as if she had just been waiting to see the girl one more time. Absolutely heartbreaking.

Another girl was sobbing very disconsolate because she learned that a young brother had died in her absence. Other students were sad because their parents did not arrive to visit with them and they're all leaving for the US tomorrow. I guess being poor or too rural or perhaps, having family issues, they couldn't make it. But kids being kids, they have all helped and consoled each other most affectionately. It's really tender to see that, how close they become, and how quickly.

In Guatemala, where poverty gets in the way of an education--most of the poor are completely illiterate and most all have health issues related to malnutrition--it truly is a life of hardship that just never ends... till it ends! Poverty isn't ennobling. It's degrading. That people manage to laugh and celebrate life amidst a life of poverty just speaks to the human spirit, and not to poverty being a light burden to carry.

So it makes me most happy that these kids will have a chance at a better life and makes me sad that so many won't. Right now they are all singing songs together and clapping hands! Then somebody sings the wrong word and they all break out in laughter. LOUD laughter. I remember, as a teenager, my friends and I laughed all the time over ... what, exactly? Over anything! Happy memories.

Hopefully the seeds being planted today will flourish, and these children will return to help their communities progress.

I am afraid that as much as the noise has provoked a bit of a headache at times, I will actually miss it all tremendously when they all leave tomorrow.

www.QualityGuate.com
Hotel - Lofts - Parking
In the Historic Center of Guatemala City

FOUND BONES

The way this story goes, I went to the historic cemetery (Cementerio General), found some bones and in the end, brought them home. I did not dig for bones nor desecrated a mausoleum or anything, it was more in the line of a rescue. I'll post the picture and you all decide, but methinks they're human and that they'll end up in the local medical school.

The cemetery is an amazing repository of history and funereal art which combines marbles and statues brought from Europe in the last 200 years, as well as some really great examples of different architectural styles and sculpture from several periods and local artisans. From romantic Neo-Gothic to very geometrically-inspired Modernism, there's all sorts of fascinating stuff there.

It is also a great place to go walk or read ('cause I'm a nerd like that), full of old tree-lined streets with benches and lots of security in the main areas. Okay, so I need to get to how I ended up there today, why I came back with bones, and why I am now all sweaty, sticky, dirty and exhausted.

One of our inn guests, a young German finishing his doctorate in Latin American Studies at a university in Europe, is staying with us while he does research at the excellent Hemeroteca (historic newspaper repository) and General Archives of Central America, where all historic documents end up. Both institutions are half a block away from us.

He wanted to go to the cemetery to take pictures of presidential monuments, as his dissertation is on Guatemalan history, so I drove him there, since I was going too. Thank goodness I thought of taking water bottles for both of us! Turns out the man is a dedicated hiker. He wanted to climb all the hills--which are steep and muddy--and the sun was blistering hot. His dissertation topic is very engaging and he knows an amazing amount of Guatemalan history, so the conversation was quite interesting.

Anyway, he was studying patterns of family names on headstones to chart social evolution in Guatemala, as we walked among many small or medium-sized ancient mausoleums which had partially or totally crumbled to the ground. Some had no names, nothing. Either they have been erased by the elements or crumbled or been stolen.

By one of these, in a mound of trash, surrounded by old soda cans, were some strewn bones mixed with the debris/trash from the crumbling tomb and my friend exclaimed quite shocked "Look, human bones in the trash!" I argued that those were surely chicken bones, clearly some cemetery workers had eaten there and left the chicken bones with the soda cans (see bones above). Hey, I really believed that.

He pulled out some and laid them out carefully, declaring them human. In Europe they clearly offer much better Anatomy classes in high school than I ever received! Because he was naming all these bones while my brain quickly went into "huh?" mode. On the other hand, perhaps the Anatomy classes in my school were good; however, since I was never paying much attention to my classes ...

But I digress.


Back to the bones. By the size of them, they seem to be a child's bones. Tombs all around were approximately 100 years old--or older--and there was nothing left of coffin, clothes, hair, whatever. These small bones were all mixed with mud, soda cans, old bricks, etc. The picture above is a close-up of the vertebrae pieces stacked up. They do fit like a jigsaw puzzle! What an amazing thing. A new curiosity for all things Anatomy has been sparked, I can feel it ...

A cemetery worker--a talkative but cranky old guy--passed by hauling buckets and I asked him why these tombs are allowed to crumble so and why human bones are mixed with debris. I mean, what is going to happen to them?

He informed me--he yelled at me, actually--that families go live abroad, then completely forget about their mausoleums and these crumble. Hence they, the cemetery workers, have to cart all that garbage and throw it away. He yelled "that's all garbage, it's waiting to be carted away and disposed of!" I told him "you can't do that, it has old human bones in there" and he replied that they don't have time to shift through all the garbage and pull out old human remains; if their families can't bother to take care of them, why should they? The relatives should hire workers who would gladly take wages to upkeep the old mausoleums, etc. etc.


Well, I felt I just couldn't leave those small bones to be thrown away like that. I mean, once they were some parents' baby. So I put them in my bag and figured I'd wash them and do something more dignified with them, I don't know, like give them to the medical school or re-bury them. I said that it is sad that it comes to this, somebody must have loved this person, and then we end up like this. My friend said "well, when you get to this, you won't care anymore." True.

Which is why I'm donating all of my organs for transplant and my body to science. Maybe some day they'll figure out why I was born with horns, cloven hoofs and a pointy tail.

So. Back home. I washed the bones. They still had minuscule filaments of dirty-whitish thread stuck to some parts which must have been from the death shroud. Or maybe something that stuck to it later on. Sad. My husband isn't too happy, but after 25 years of marriage, I guess he has built some sort of emotional strategy to deal with my actions. I'm always bringing home stray cats, injured birds and lizards, and such. Now I brought bones.

And so that's that. I hope the medical school wants it, else, I don't know what the hell to do with them, but throwing them in the trash is not an option.

Ah well.

We have a large group of 45 college students coming in from the USA this weekend, so had to go buy tons of food--college students EAT--as we have to cater 3 daily meals for them during their stay. The coordinators don't want the students eating street food and that's fine with us! So busy weekend ahead, most of it being work. Yet I shall be brave, muster courage, and heroically endeavor to find some fun to be had somewhere.

www.QualityGuate.com
Bed & Breakfast - Lofts - Parking
Historic Center of Guatemala