You may not know it, but Xela’s nickname is the Cradle of Culture, which at some times seems like a cruel joke and at others fits the bill perfectly. It seems like we’re on an upswing, though – last month’s FLEX literary festival was a raging [...]]]>

P o p p i n g

Festivals

You may not know it, but Xela’s nickname is the Cradle of Culture, which at some times seems like a cruel joke and at others fits the bill perfectly. It seems like we’re on an upswing, though – last month’s FLEX literary festival was a raging success and May’s Xelajú Es…  looks to be every bit as good as last year’s. Add to that the excellent exhibitions coming out of Casa No’j and the Ciudad de la Imaginación and newcomers like Nativos Café and the solid film schedule offered by the Casa de los Tiempos and it looks like Xela’s cultural scene is healthy once again.

Now if we could only get the Casa de la Cultura and Municipal Theater to start supporting emerging artists, we might actually get somewhere…

F lo p p i n g

Skate Park Drama

A little over a year after its grand opening, Xela’s skate park is hitting tough times. Neighbors are complaining that the site is being used more for drug and alcohol abuse than ollies and rail slides and the Municipality (who put up Q1 million for the park’s construction) say they can’t afford to provide security and are looking around for someone to administer it. A couple of local sports organizations have expressed interest, but there’s no word yet if entry to the park will remain free.

Expat Philosophy

Let’s face it: Expats are dicks. And I know, because I’m one of them. It’s like my friend Tom says, we’re all here because we’re either Wanted or not wanted back home. Sometimes, though, every once in a very seldom while, usually by mistake and under the influence of alcohol an expat will say something worth repeating. The XelaWho team recently racked their brains for such overheard pearls of wisdom, and here’s what we came up with from over 10 years of biting our tongues…

On ‘the system’

“Everything works here. Just not in a way that you could ever possibly imagine”.

On the political left

“They’re like a bunch of blind monkeys, getting lead by nobody”

On getting things done

“Hey – as long as you go in with stacks of money, unlimited time and no expectations of success whatsoever, you’ll be fine”

Every neighborhood has its drunk, and ours is no exception. Don Arturo is a harmless enough old fellow – the only time we really hear from him is when he comes home late from the cantina and begins pounding on the door because his wife, the long-suffering Doña Angelica, has [...]]]> As told by Colin Shadel

Every neighborhood has its drunk, and ours is no exception. Don Arturo is a harmless enough old fellow – the only time we really hear from him is when he comes home late from the cantina and begins pounding on the door because his wife, the long-suffering Doña Angelica, has locked him out.

Nights like these, he will persist for a while, until some sleepy part of his rum-soaked brain wakes up and reminds him that from bitter experience there’s no way that the door is going to open, so he may as well go find a comfortable patch in the cornfield at the end of our street and begin to sleep off the excesses of the night.

One thing our street has that not many others do is a particularly mean rooster. A measure of its meanness is that nobody has given it a name, and it’s universally known as “The Rooster”, having such a fierce and dreaded reputation that everybody in the street knows instantly who you are talking about. But for the purposes of the story, we’ll call The Rooster “José” and extend our apologies to all the José’s out there, for bringing shame on what is otherwise a perfectly fine name.

Nobody knows what Señora Sanchéz, José’s owner, does to her animals but before José appeared she had a particularly mean goat who terrorized the neighborhood with his sharp little stunted horns and a running speed that you may not expect from such an animal.

José’s favorite method of attack is straight on – to his credit he is not a sly animal. He will hunt you down and pause for a moment in front of you before taking a few steps and launching himself at you, the plan being to get enough height to take a

good chunk out of you at chest level.

Many of the neighbors have taken to carrying a stick, or at least a corn stalk as a preemptive defense against José’s advances, and it appears that José has received enough such beatings that even the sight of someone carrying something stick-like will make him think twice.

My son, on the other hand, likes to face José off gunfighter-style, and they eye each other for some time until José makes his move and my son grabs him by the throat in mid-air and gives him a mild throttling in an attempt to teach him some manners.

And so it was that one day, returning from my morning walk, that I found Don Arturo scratched and bleeding from his face and chest and arms, lying in the cornfield. His wife and Señora Sanchéz were tending to his wounds.

“Don Arturo” I said, “What happened? Did a car run you over?”

“No” he said “Worse. Last night I came home late, and not being able to get into my house I came to sleep in the cornfield. This morning as the sun rose, The Rooster found me and began attacking me, pecking at my arms and face. But I was still so drunk that I couldn’t rise to defend myself, only cry out meekly while that evil animal had his way. After some time he must have gotten bored and wandered away.”

And anywhere else, this would be a cataclysmic event. Don Arturo would realize that he’s hit rock bottom and Animal Services would come to see about José, perhaps obliging Señora Sanchéz to keep him locked up. But it seems that life goes on – Don Arturo still gets banished to the cornfield a few times a week and José still patrols the neighborhood, looking for his next victim.

March 2013 will be best remembered as the month when the whole of the Catholic world (and much of the rest) went into Pope-mania, following the (shock-horror!) announcement that Pope Benedict VII had decided to [...]]]>                                        

P o p p i n g  or  F lo p p i n g ??

Pope Francis I

March 2013 will be best remembered as the month when the whole of the Catholic world (and much of the rest) went into Pope-mania, following the (shock-horror!) announcement that Pope Benedict VII had decided to resign from his supposedly lifelong, God-ordained position as the head of the Catholic church. This was promptly followed by a barrage of speculation about who could replace him, as the Cardinals mused over their options whilst billowing black smoke from Vatican. After much deliberation, the Cardinals decided to elect Jorge Mario Bergoglio, the then-Archbishop of Buenos Aires, as Benedict’s successor. So what has the verdict been since then – a popping or a flopping choice?

Well, for starters Bergoglio represents that Catholic church’s first ever Latin American Pope, which is pretty monumental news for the continent (although not so surprising given how many of the world’s Catholics live here). Secondly, one of the Pope’s first declarations was to declare his commitment to using his position to help the poor of the world, which definitely gives him another +1. Even better, he said that he would like to see a “a church that is poor and is for the poor”, so who knows whether he’ll be able to do something about that monstrous hypocrisy of the Catholic Church who claims to follow the teachings of Jesus and his whole “eye-of-the-needle” philosophy whilst also being one of the wealthiest institutions on the planet.

On the other hand, reports are already emerging accusing Bergoglio the types of misogyny and discrimination that we have all come to associate so heavily with the Catholic church. He previously claimed that women are “naturally unfit for political office” and that women have always been the “helper of the thinking and doing man, but nothing more”, which doesn’t exactly bode well for the cause of gender equality. He has also been accused of facilitating the “disappearance” of two Jesuit Priests at the hands the military authorities of Argentina during the Dirty War.

How his Papacy will play out will just have to be seen, but we suggest not keeping fingers crossed for radical change within the stubbornly traditional Catholic Church.

Guatemala Making History

The Trial of Efrain Rios Montt

If history was being made in March across the Atlantic in the Vatican, it was also being made right here in Guatemala with the start of the trial of Efraín Rios Montt, who faces charges of genocide for his role in the civil conflict of Guatemala during the 1980s. The trial of Rios Montt represents the first time a national court, in any part of the world, has started a prosecution against one of its own previous heads of state. The general faces charges of crimes against humanity in connection with the killing of 1,771 indigenous peoples during the period of 1982-1983, when he acted as head of the ruling mititary junta. “His arrest in January 2012”, Amy Ross explains*, “represented an extraordinary break with impunity in the Central American country; the decision to proceed with the trial, despite attempts to have the charges dropped, is of even greater significance. No ranking officer has been held responsible for the violence in which some 200,000 people, almost all civilians, lost their lives.”

* Source: http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2013/02/20132364350499257.html

I’m always thinking of my hometown of Nebaj, how I miss it! I miss its cold rain and icy temperatures getting right into the marrow of my bones. I miss seeing hailstones the size of a peach pit without a single drop of rain falling from the sky. I miss [...]]]> by Susana Raymundo

I’m always thinking of my hometown of Nebaj, how I miss it! I miss its cold rain and icy temperatures getting right into the marrow of my bones. I miss seeing hailstones the size of a peach pit without a single drop of rain falling from the sky. I miss my little solitary neighbourhood with only 5 houses made of adobe and wood. I miss the icy water of the rivers, lakes and springs where I would lose my plastic sandals, while my mother washed the clothes of our family with snakes basking in the sun just meters from her.

I used to eat together with my parents and siblings in the darkness around the campfire. We would play tag, or make figures from beeswax, or hear the stories of my parents. And when nature called I would ask for one of my older siblings or my parents to accompany me out into the yard where we planted trees of peaches, plums, avocados and chayote, as well as beautiful flowers that my father grew.

I used to lose myself out on the trails full of tall trees, wedding butterflies and dragonflies, where I was chased by barking dogs that saw me as wild prey.

I also miss the moments I passed in the mountains with my family where we would gather wood, throw ourselves in the river with our dogs, or play in the big green fields where we reared the pigs. I used to make little cakes with my mother, who learned how to make them solely through trial and error, and then we would sell them in the few shops that there were in Nebaj.

You could climb up into the attics of the houses to surprise the pigeons there and try to grab one of them – although they always escaped me. Right from our attic, I used to watch couples falling in love, as the men would wait for a woman who he was attracted to and would flirt with her with the sounds “chit, chit”. If she liked the man she would move her shawl or change it from one shoulder to the other, he would then approach her and grab her shawl. Their looks were full of flirtation, and they would spend hours talking together without touching anything more than her shawl.

I want to feel my feet touching again the wet soil with dried pine needles, while my father made the adobe for our house.

I want my mother to tie me a headscarf with a typical knot, to lie me down on the ground where the roots of the chayote grows, and to pass me the earth that she digs up to find these roots so that I can make cakes of soil.

In my previous article, I spoke a bit about the Garifuna, one of the two non-Mayan ethnic groups in Guatemala. In this month’s edition, I’m going to tell you a little about the Xincas, who live in eastern Guatemala, occupying parts of Jalapa, Jutiapa and Santa Rosa. A Guatemalan writer [...]]]> by Diana Pastor

In my previous article, I spoke a bit about the Garifuna, one of the two non-Mayan ethnic groups in Guatemala. In this month’s edition, I’m going to tell you a little about the Xincas, who live in eastern Guatemala, occupying parts of Jalapa, Jutiapa and Santa Rosa. A Guatemalan writer states that the Xincas were one of the original inhabitants that gave the greatest resistance to the Spanish invasion of 1524. However, despite their fierce opposition to the Spanish, the Xincas were finally defeated and made into slaves, like the Mayans.

It is speculated that the Xincas migrated to Guatemalan land from South America as it was found that their language has a number of words with similarity to the Andean vocabulary. Unfortunately, today the number of speakers of Xinca is small, with fewer than 300 speakers. But the number of people belonging to this ethnic group far exceeds the number of people who are able to speak Xinca. Even so, over the years – like all other indigenous peoples of Latin America – the Xincan population has been greatly decreased through forced displacements which has led to the dispersion of the group.

Sadly, it has not been only in the past that the Xincas have had to fight for the survival. Right now, their falling population, the little attention given to them by the government, and the pressure of special interest groups have created a multitude of problems for the Xincas. These problems are clearly illustrated in the last serious and major incident that took place on Sunday 17th of last month, when four members of the Xincan parliament (a political space with representatives from all of the communities of this group) were kidnapped at night during their return to the village El Volcanito in the municipality of San Rafael de las Flores, Santa Rosa. Throughout the morning these leaders had participated as observers in a referendum on mining where the majority of those present reiterated their rejection of the mining operations there. A day after the incident, Exaltación Marcos was found dead, who held the position of secretary in the Xincan parliament. Two other members of the parliament were able to escape while the kidnappers were traveling in a car. The last hostage was found very shaken up in a hotel in Chimaltenango

Who are those responsible for such a crime? Suspicions abound. What is evident is that, once again, history repeats itself. Greed, abuse of power and corruption become the enemy of one of the many Guatemalan ethnic peoples who have been forced to defend and to continue defending what has always belonged to them: the right to live in peace and to inherit their land to their children and grandchildren.

Before we go on with our Popping section for this month, we need to issue the warning that this piece of “news” is solely based on promises made by local politicians, both incumbent and aspiring, and so relying on them to [...]]]>

P o p p i n g

New transport system on the cards??

Before we go on with our Popping section for this month, we need to issue the warning that this piece of “news” is solely based on promises made by local politicians, both incumbent and aspiring, and so relying on them to bear fruit is about as useful as relying on the weatherman to tell you whether its going to rain or not tomorrow. But anyway, cynicism aside, according to El Quetzalteco, there has been some talk, and rather wishy-washy promises, going around Xela’s political circles about finally trying to upgrade Xela’s inner-city transport system. There’s certainly a lot of enthusiasm for the idea amongst Xela resident, for whom the fun of holding onto the railings of a minibus for dear life as its hurtles through the city is starting to wear thin. It’s  going to certainly take some ingenuity to come up with something that works though, since our streets are too narrow for a Trans-Metro style system. So don’t go expecting anything anytime soon!

F lo p p i n g

Las Americas underpass

Those of you who were lucky enough to be around in Xela for the pheeeeenomenonally long time is took the municipality to construct the underpass on Avenida Las Americas, will, we’re sure, be pleased to know that the structure is already collapsing and, if gravity has anything to say, will shortly transform the underpass into simply an overpass. Numerous complaints have  been sent to the municipality to warn them of the underpass’ precarious situation, but so far people there seem to be more than happy to just sit and watch it fall down. Heck, we put the thing up for you all, we hear them saying, what more could you want from us?! Leave it to the next administration to sort out any problems!

International Women’s Day

March 8th marks the date of International Women’s Day, an event respected worldwide to celebrate women’s economic, social and political achievements; to show appreciation for the work and lives of women across the globe; and to raise awareness on issues and challenges still confronting women  in countries worldwide.

It’s a particularly important date for us here in Guatemala to remember and respect: Guatemalan women continue to suffer from disproportionately high levels of poverty, discrimination, malnutrition and illiteracy. Violence against women is also currently showing little sign of abating: in 2012 alone over 700 women were murdered and very few of their killers prosecuted.

So we encourage our readers to do something special for the occasion, whether its donating some time, money or resources to the many great organisations working on gender issues in the region (such as Nuevos Horizontes; EntreMundos can also put you in touch with some others, see ad p19) or simply showing your appreciation   for the event, or for any women in particular that inspire you or have had a great impact on your life. There are also some events going on in Xela to celebrate the day, so check out our Que Pasa Xela section for more info.

The Maya are perhaps the biggest attraction for tourists to our country. However, there are two other major ethnic groups in Guatemala, less known than the Mayas but no less interesting. These are the the Xincas and the Garifunas. In this article, I will tell you a little about the [...]]]> By Diana Pastor

The Maya are perhaps the biggest attraction for tourists to our country. However, there are two other major ethnic groups in Guatemala, less known than the Mayas but no less interesting. These are the the Xincas and the Garifunas. In this article, I will tell you a little about the latter.

The Garifuna of Guatemala can be found in the department of Izabal. The origin of this word is not well known. How the Garifuna culture came about is a story that goes back many years, to the sixteenth century. It is assumed that the first Garifuna were African slaves that the Spanish brought with them to serve them in their colonies of America. But some of the cargo ships on which they travelled were wrecked and ended up on the coast of what is known today as St. Vincent, an island of the Lesser Antilles. Here lived the Caribbean Indians, who received the Garifunas into their communities. Both groups mixed over time, resulting in a melting pot of lifestyles, physical features and language. Consequently, the Garifuna language is a mixture of Arawak (the language of the Caribbean Indians on the island) and some words from African languages.

But the Garifuna only lived on San Vicente in peace for a while, as the English wanted to take over the territory and enslave its people. And so the Garifuna, who have always been well known for their fighting spirit and desire for freedom, decided to confront them. However, they lost the war and the British expelled them. So the Garifuna left the island on boat looking for new places to settle, arriving first to Roatan in Honduras. Then they spread to Nicaragua, Belize and Guatemala.

Despite their long history of struggle, the Garifuna maintain a cheerful philosophy and are full of life. They are dedicated to cultivating cassava, fishing, and making canoes. Most of their meals are an excellent example of their rich culture. Personally, I recommend coconut bread and cassave (a tortilla made from cassava flour). Music and dance are also an essential part of their lifestyle. Their musical style is fast and lively. Among the dances that stand out is the Punta (which is originally a supposed to be a mournful dance but is still very lively) and yancunu (which is only danced by men).

In closing, I would like to tell you about one of the most prominent Garifunas is Wingston Gonzalez. He is a young poet of Livingston. His book “Los Magos del Crepusculo (y blues otra vez)” (“The Wizards of Twilight (and blues again)”) is a pure fusion of culture and poetry that makes Wingston an excellent  representative of the new generation of Guatemalan writers