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 Some 488 years ago (give or take), Pedro de Alvarado and his band of marauding Spaniards engaged in a long and serious battle, slaying the possibly-factual indigenous hero Tecún Umán and gaining hold of the highland city they would later call Quetzaltenango.
Of course the city had been around for some time already – historians put the founding of Xelajú (the original Mam name for the settlement, although it was under Kaqchikel control by the time the Alvarado arrived) some 300 years before the arrival of the Spanish.
So really, we should be celebrating Xela’s 788th (give or take) birthday. But anyway.
Quetzaltenango’s had an illustrious trajectory since Colonial times. The city’s spawned presidents (Barillas, Cabrera, Guzmán), guerrilla leaders (Rolando Morán) and artists of international renown (Otto Castillo, Luis Xicara and Rodolfo Torres). Most importantly, Juan Guttierez, the founder of international fried chicken chain Pollo Campero, was also born here.
It’s a city that we love for its anachronisms – the absurd, failed experiment which was the Sexto Estado (where Quetzaltenango tried to be the capital of a separate country – three times) and the Ferrocarril de los Altos (a multimillion-dollar boondoggle of a railway that ran for a little over 40 kilometers, took 31 years to build and functioned for just over three years). Spectacular failures that the city takes great pride in.
But we love Xela mostly because not everyone does, and those of us who live here couldn’t imagine living anywhere else. It doesn’t have that gringo bubble-comfort that Antigua does, or the eye-popping vistas of the lakeside villages, but there’s something about Xela that if you get it, you really get it. Like an old friend and long-time Xela resident said “I’ve never met anyone that left their heart in Antigua, but have met plenty that left it in Xela.” Xela’s the ugly chick with the cool personality, the song you have to listen to 10 times before it starts to grow on you. We love its cobbled streets, its chilly nights, the bustling markets, adobe shacks and gaudy belle-epoque architecture. We love the little bars and cafés, the just-enough-but-not-too-much pace of life, the cultural activity and most of all, we love feeling like we’re actually in Guatemala, while still having a few comforts from home close at hand.
So happy birthday, Xela – 488 or 788, nobody’s really counting. Whether we were born here, are just passing through or decided to make you our home, we’re just happy you exist.
P o p p i n g
Xela on the Map
A surprising and somewhat welcome announcement as Xela received a visit from Guatemala’s head tourism honcho, Pedro Duchez, the director of INGUAT in late April. Duchez claimed that Xela would be moving into the “first category” amongst tourism destinations in the country – putting it alongside longtime poster children Tikal, Antigua and Lake Atitlán.
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by Janne Sørensen
Yep – the dance, not the sauce, although the name salsa covers the fact that the dance is a mix of several different styles. Salsa together with soccer is the national sport of Guatemala and a part of the Guatemalan culture.
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by Diana Pastor
My best friend, who came to Xela from Minnesota over a year ago, is currently learning the Ixil language. Maybe he never thought that, in learning a Mayan language, he would be making a small contribution to the preservation and dissemination of this language, which has survived only thanks to population growth.
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March wrapped with big showbiz news as Guatemala’s most famous musician and Pepsi spokesman Ricardo Arjona breezed through for the local leg of his Metamorfosis world tour. Earth hour (that thing where you turn your lights off for an hour) was not such a big hit – there were reports that “hundreds” of Guatemalans had participated – possibly because the electricity goes out for at least 10 hours a week anyway, so we feel like we’re doing our part just living here. Brownouts may be a thing of the past, though, as the country’s largest hydroelectric plant was opened in Alta Verapaz.
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by Susanna Raymundo
You leave behind your teenage years and your dream of youth to be a mother, a victim of sexism, ignorance and customs. Your parents accept your marriage with another child to bring more children into the world, sometimes not caring if he is nearly twice your age. You become a housewife for his family and your own family.
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 Whatever you think/feel/believe about the whole Jesus story, there’s no doubt that Easter is not an event that goes unnoticed in Guatemala. The devout Catholics hit the streets, carrying around various statues and idols, the Evangelicals stoically ignore the whole thing (although we don’t really understand why) and pretty much the rest of the country goes to the beach, to stand shoulder to shoulder in knee-deep water next to the people who, during the rest of the year they stand shoulder to shoulder next to on the bus.
And amongst all of this, the real meaning of Easter can get a little lost. Because, taking the Bible story as an allegory (let’s just run with this for a little while, fundamentalists, and see where it takes us) the story of Jesus is about one guy who went around saying we should all be nice to each other and ended up getting nailed to a cross for it.
Which, on the face of it, is not a great one for the kids. But then many ironies exist in the gap between Christian theology and practice. The question “what would Jesus do?” has almost lost meaning as the multitude of interpretations have basically led to the point where the answer seems to be “whatever it is that I feel like doing at this particular moment”.
Any book such as the Bible, written as it was to give structure to a largely unstructured society at the time, compiled from the writings of various authors and filtered through an untold number of translations and revisions over the years is always going to be ambiguous in meaning and could in the end be used to justify pretty much any point of view. It’s hard to imagine what the early prophets would have thought of the preacher I heard the other day, saying that victims of natural disasters deserved what they got because they’re all sinners. I guess they’d point to the story of Sodom and Gomorrah by way of precedent.
In the end, though, it’s not important what other people think the story is about – what matters is what you take away from it. And for me the lesson is simple – think about what you’re doing. Don’t be a dick if you can avoid it. And if you’re going up against the big guns, make sure you have connections in high places.
P o p p i n g
Pasos y Pedales
Bike lanes in Xela? Mmm… not quite yet. But one small step towards that is Pasos y Pedales, which takes place Sundays from 8:30am to 1:30pm. Basically, they block off the 4th Calle of Zona 3 between 19 and 24 Avs and the street becomes a pedestrian thoroughfare, open to strollers, dog walkers, bike riders, skaters, rollerbladers and anybody else who generally has to dodge traffic the rest of the time.
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Celebrating its fourth year, Xela’s Slow Food Festival has the dual purpose of celebrating local produce and raising consciousness about food-related issues. XelaWho caught up with festival director Haylee Fuller to find out why Slow is the Go.
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by Diana Pastor
In our ongoing series looking at Guatemalan customs and traditions, this month we’re looking at an Easter favorite – Easter Bread. Passed down through generations, this tradition has changed somewhat over the years, but even today it is difficult to find people who do not participate in it.
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