Guatemala: Volcán De Fuego

I've been traveling all over the country since I arrived last week, but for now I'll just post pics of Antigua, which has been more or less my home base between treks. Much of what I'm doing elsewhere involves stories I'm not ready to share yet.

Here in Antigua, one of the nearby volcanoes (specifically, the Volcán De Fuego, 3763 m and S/SW of town) has been belching humo y polvo for a few days. I overheard some local residents saying there was lava action, too, but I haven't gone up there to see first-hand.

This activity is pretty mellow. But one resident explained to me that whenever it acts up more seriously, the most vulnerable community is a little village called Yepocapa, which sits at the volcano's northwest slope (it's on the opposite side of the volcano from Antigua, and much closer to the lava source).

We saw a lot of smoke on Wednesday, even when we were traveling through the lowlands and sugar cane plantations further south... azucarero country.

This pic above from today is kind of a crappy snapshot, but you can see that there's a steady, grey stream of smoke rising from the peak, even in full light at midday. Link.

The volcano is about the warmest thing in town right now. There's been an extreme cold wave in Guatemala this past week -- the coldest in 15 years, with really strong winds. On Thursday, some places dropped as low as 32 degrees. Places like Huehuetenango, Sololá, and Quetzaltenango were hit the worst, and the capital was pretty bad, too. One resident told me today that like 10 or so people have died from the cold -- some of the worst hit are urban poor who live on the streets or in makeshift "casas de carton," shelters from cardboard and plastic sheeting, no real protection from the elements.

Here's an article about the cold wave in Prensa Libre: "El día más frío de noviembre," Link.

FWIW, it's night now, and I'm really frickin' cold. (Image: Xeni Jardin)

Guatemala: thousands of women protest wave of "femicides"

Rough translation of news, from Spanish:

"Thousands of women took to the streets today in Guatemala City's Historic Center to demand an end to the violence in the country against them. In Guatemala, more than 540 women have been murdered in the past year. 'Over our body, we decide,' cried hundreds of women during the march to the center of the capital, which caused heavy traffic congestion..."

Link to news article.

Tomorrow is International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women: Link.

And in related news, a human rights group named after a female journalist slain during Guatemala's internal armed conflict today received an award from the king of Spain. Again, my rough translation from Spanish:

"The Myrna Mack foundation is 'proud' to receive the Human Rights Prize of 2006 from Spain, said its senior representative Hellen Mack. 'We feel very satisfied, because the recognition of our work for human rights and democracy in Guatemala.' "

Link.

Guatemala: Haciendo tortillas (video clip)

Link to video (in Flash or Quicktime).

Doña Mati and Doña Anamaria fixing lunch today in Doña Anamaria's lovely home. If there were Iron Chef competitions in Guatemala, they'd shred the competitors like cheese. Doña Mati's tortillas are the stuff my food-dreams are made of. This flavor does not exist outside of Guatemala, and this flavor alone is reason to return. True soul food. When she finished making this stack, she tucked them in to a straw basket. I pulled the little cotton blanket aside and huffed the corn fumes, like sniffing glue.

We had lomito and frijoles volteados, too, and some killer-hot chiletepin. Where: Antigua, Sacatepequez, Guatemala (lat: 14.567 lon: -90.733 alt: 1601 m)

Guatemala and bandwidth policy reform

Snip from a Globe and Mail column by Neil Reynolds about the relatively radical spectrum reforms in Guatemala, where bandwith is now assigned as personal property that comes with its own legal title.

Guatemala (population, 16.5 million) introduced its reforms in 1996, when it got rid of Guatel, a state-owned telephone company managed for years by the military. Guatel had traditionally allocated bandwidth by bribery. El Salvador (population, 7.5 million) introduced its reform in 1997. In both countries, the reforms expressed a novel principle -- that unused radio waves should be made available, either by public auction or by first-come, first-served -- to anyone who wanted to use them.

Guatemalan law now defines property rights in bandwidth in single-page documents called TUFs, titulo de usufructo de frecuencia, or title to frequency use. These deeds state that TUFs may be sold or leased, traded or swapped. They may be used as collateral or as equity.

People who hold them can change ownership simply by writing on them the names of the new owners. TUFs expire at the end of 15 years, but will be renewed for another 15 years on request. TUFs grant owners exclusive control on the use of the bandwidth they govern.

In 10 years, Guatemala has granted almost 4,000 TUFs, including 590 to amateurs. Although it is among the poorest of Latin American countries (with GDP of $1,500 U.S. per capita), it possesses the highest quantity of spectrum for wireless communication: 140.0 megahertz. Only Chile, with four times Guatemala's GDP per capita, matches it. El Salvador ranks third with 137.8 MHz.

Link

Guatemala: 15 die in marketplace fire

At least 15 people died in a fire at Guatemala City's La Terminal market, which comprises a vast, complex maze of stalls. I've been there before, and it's easy to imagine the horror of being trapped in that place with a fast-moving blaze.

The fire is said to have been caused when someone dropping a lit cigarette near one of the illegal fireworks stands. Sergio Morales, human rights ombudsman of Guatemala, said Thursday (my clumsy Spanish translation) -- "The people who sell those fireworks know that they are dangerous, but they sell them anyway, because it's a profitable business."

Link to story in Prensa Libre about the blaze (Spanish), and here's an English-language item: Link.

The thing about fireworks here is -- they just seem to go off constantly. Antigua's been my home base here between trips from one part of the country to another, and sometimes it sounds like the city is being bombed. Whenever you have a birthday party, you have loud fireworks, same for other festivities. Seems there's always an excuse to light them off.

Image: A worker carries plastic bags out of the burned-out market. Émerson Díaz, for Prensa Libre. Where: Lat: 14 38 N Lon: 90 31 W.

Guatemala: Murders of transgender/transvestite people on the rise

Two transvestite sex workers were shot dead in Guatemala City on Wednesday -- right in the middle of the day, in the street, outside of a bar. Violence against transgendered and transvestite people is on the rise here, in a country with an overall muder rate nearly ten times as high as the USA. One teenage, transgendered sex worker was shot dead two months ago in the capital, her tongue reportedly cut out by the gang member whose sexual advances she refused. Snip from Reuters story:

Police are rarely interested in finding the killers of transvestites and are sometimes involved themselves, gay rights activists say.

In December last year, Juan Pablo Mendez, or Paulina, was killed and another transgender prostitute was wounded by three people witnesses identified as uniformed police officers.

"The general level of violence in Guatemala has increased exponentially over the past few years with most crimes going unpunished," said Sebastian Elegueta, a Central America researcher for Amnesty International.

"But it's the most vulnerable groups in society, like women, sex workers or transgender people, that are targeted first and those that are afforded the least amount of protection from the state," he said.

Oasis Director Jorge Lopez said transsexuals are particularly at risk because the majority work as prostitutes, trawling the dangerous streets of Guatemala's old city in short mini-skirts, wigs and platform heels.

"Transgender people end up in sex work because they've been kicked out of their homes, their schools, their jobs," said Lopez. "The only options left for them to make a living is prostitution or working in a hair salon."

Link

Guatemala: Marimba players (video clip)

Link to video (in Flash or Quicktime).

Marimba band playing at a popular restauraunt in Antigua called La Fonda de la Calle Real (the food there is quite tasty). Where: Antigua, Sacatepequez, Guatemala (lat: 14.567 lon: -90.733 alt: 1601 m)

Guatemala: Piñatas Encarceladas

Link. Where: Antigua, Sacatepequez, Guatemala (lat: 14.567 lon: -90.733 alt: 1601 m)

Guatemala: mercado snapshot - 2 kids share an apple.

Two Mayan toddlers hanging out at their mom's fruit stand decide to share an apple after playing tug-of-war with it for a few minutes. Link.

Guatemala: vendiendo nisperos en el mercado

Quick screengrab from a video shot on Canon PowerShot Elph SD630 in the mercado yesterday morning. I'm tinkering around in iMovie and FinalCut, editing little short form videos using two kinds of footage: lower-res stuff shot on this tiny device, and HD video shot with the Sony HDR-HC3 (shoots video in high-def or standard format to miniDV). The great thing about video on the altoid-tin-sized SD630 (and similar ultracompact devices) is that the device is absolutely unobtrusive. You can move through public places with camera in hand, and not attract unwanted attention in crowds. The Sony HC3 is very small for a camcorder, but -- it's still a camcorder, and it attracts attention in circumstances where crowd attention is not a safe thing. The tradeoff is always stealthability/mobility versus image quality.

Tiny, inexpensive cameras are great for shooting video "notes" for yourself, or capturing snippets of environmental ambience. Nobody's going to want to watch 2 straight hours of this stuff on a big screen, but if the end result is online anyway, the limited res capability isn't a big sacrifice. Thank you, YouTube, for lowering image quality expectations!

Just as with still photos, it seems the camera you have with you at all times is the best one.

Costa Rica: space alien volcano umbrella plants

I'm in Guatemala right now, not Costa Rica. But an internet pal of mine calls CR home, and shot this photo yesterday of Volcano Irazu's crater with a patch of Sombrillas de Pobre (Poor Man's Umbrella) nearby. If I didn't know better, I'd think he lived on another planet.

About that space alien plant, "They are a giant leaf with a perfect stem," él nos explique, "It wards off rain wonderfully, but you can't pick them in the park, of course."

Here in Guatemala, I'm tucked away under heavy wool blankets in a village between two volcanoes: one spews fire, the other water. The wind outside is noisy and forceful tonight. Electricity and internet keep going on and off and on and off again. I can read and fumble around the room by candlelight, but the veladoras won't help me send emails. It's really cold out there, and I'm grateful to be safely inside.

Guatemala: Visit with Don Victoriano

Link to larger size image. Far right: Don Victoriano, 56, is a K'iché linguist from Sololá who has contributed to the development of textbooks and dictionaries for the K'iché Mayan language in Guatemala. In the middle, his grandson Claudio, 13, wears a homemade uniform for the indigenous school in their village where kids study K'iché language and culture along with general education courses. Their economic circumstances are extremely harsh. Claudio's father is no longer with the family. His single mother now raises him and his 4 sisters on a weaver's meager income. Claudio is suffering the physical effects of malnutrition. It's hard for a kid to learn on an empty stomach. At far left, with the big giant blonde head, me.

Guatemala: La sirena fountain, Cafe Condesa (video clip)

Link to video (Flash or Quicktime), or click the embedded clip above. Still photos: 1, 2.

A fountain inside the very old Cafe Condesa in la Antigua, Guatemala.

(Tech notes: shot on ultracompact Canon SD630 Elph, edited in Apple iMovie).

Guatemala: "heartbreak device" spotted in mercado

In last week's edition of the Boing Boing Boing podcast (Link, episode #8), Mark Frauenfelder talked about a string of incidents (Link) in which children found themselves happily imprisoned inside these machines where you try to grab fuzzy toys with a mechanical claw. Our guest that week, John Hodgman, calls them "heartbreak devices" because "they are not particularly responsive to the poor reflexes and ill coordinated movements of a 5 year old, so very little comes of it except for tears -- and the enjoyment of watching a claw."

Anyway, I saw one of these things in a mercado in Antigua, Guatemala today, but lacked a child to cram inside.

As Flickr user timmycorkery points out, "Possibly the best part of this photo is the counterpoint of the Hodgman quote with the sign in the back of the machine asking that the user not smack the glass with the claw, i.e. precisely what the poor reflexes and ill-coordinated movements of a five year old will cause to happen."

Link 1, Link 2.

Guatemala: Recycled Life, film on dump residents

I haven't seen this documentary by director Leslie Iwerks yet (narrated by Edward James Olmos), but it looks incredible. My adoptive father took me to this place once in the late 1980s to visit the home of an elderly Mayan woman (one of many thousands of displaced people who lost their homes during Guatemala's internal armed conflict). Her home consisted of plastic bag strips and carboard boxes, and she subsisted here, like others, by scavenging the dump. Snip from film synopsis:

For over sixty years, children have been born and raised here, parents and grandparents eat and survive here… Thousands of families have thrived in the largest and most toxic and dangerous area in all of Central America. For decades, the Guatemala City Garbage Dump and its inhabitants ("guajeros") who recycle the city's trash have been shunned by society and ignored by the government, until a disastrous event in January 2005 forever changed the face of this landfill and the many people who call it home.

Link to "Recycled Life," alternate Link. Trailer: Quicktime Link. The end of the trailer says, "For screening info contact Leslie@leslieiwerks.com."

And here's an organization that works with children from the dump: Link to safepassage.org. (Thanks, Anonymous)

UPDATE: I swapped emails with the film's director, Leslie Iwerks, and she tells us,

The film has been selected as a semi-finalist on the short list for the Academy Awards. We took almost ten trips to the Guatemala City dump and photographed the lives of the people living there, and the changing events that took place over the time we visited, including the fire in 2005. Edward James Olmos narrates the film, and it has won six top film festival awards since the middle part of this year.

Guatemala: 2 interesting places to stay near Antigua

I haven't been to either of these places, but they both sound cool. One is owned by a fan of BoingBoing who introduced himself by email, and the other is owned by a couple of his friends.

The centrally-located Black Cat hostel opened in Antigua earlier this year, and from the sound of some of the posts on the Lonely Planet's Thorn Tree Forums, it seems quite popular among backpackers already. This little guy appears to be the resident mascot.

Earth Lodge offers treehouses, cabins, or dorm-style accommodations a short drive out of Antigua on a mountaintop avocado farm. An American and a Canadian opened it in 2003. Looks lovely online. Above: the view from Earth Lodge (photo courtesy earthlodgeguatemala.com.) You may see a volcano erupt now and then.