Revue Magazine

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Many factors influenced Guatemala’s first building boom
Poet Robert Burns was voted Greatest Scot of All Time in 2009. Burns was born in 1759 in a thatch-roof cottage built by his father and lived there for seven years, a hard life of farming and poverty. He went on to live a fast life of carousing and [...]

Coconut palm…royal palm… date palm…coyol palm…uh, coyol palm?
WordWeb Online calls it a tropical American palm with edible nuts and yielding useful fiber. In some countries of Central America, especially Costa Rica and Honduras, it is known for the sweet liquid that flows inside its trunk and is extracted to drink as a 100 per cent [...]

Artist Rosamaría Pascual de Gámez stands with her latest mural, “…so you can compare the size with an average person.” The painting now hangs in the baptistery of the Cathedral of Santa Cruz del Quiché, the second of her works there and the 18th mural she has donated to Guatemala churches. At five square meters, [...]

For centuries, all over the world artistic expressions of the birth of Jesus have touched people of all ages and stages, the right and the poor, the merry and the melancholy, the proud and the profane.

Part III: University of San Carlos Medical School
By the end of the 17th century, six hospitals had been founded in Guatemala. But, lacking scientific information and methods, hospitals provided little more than refuge or asylum. Sickness and cultural attitudes toward it were a social problem. In addition, the times were characterized by conflict between [...]

The latest medical advances in Spain were slow to reach Guatemala which saw its first autopsy in 1622. Hospitals were simple asylums for the sick, consoled by religion.

written by Joy Houston photos: Jack Houston
Part I: 16th Century
What medical options were available centuries ago in Guatemala for wounds from enemy arrows, burns, natural disasters or epidemics?
Mixing medicine with magic was routine in colonial days. “Medical science was slave to theory and superstition,” writes Carlos Martínez Durán in Las [...]

The third edition of Elizabeth Bell’s Lent and Holy Week in La Antigua hits the shops just in time for the crowds that hit the town for this year’s celebrations. When first approached in the early 1990s with, “You should do a book on Holy Week,” her response was, “What? We go into hiding during [...]

Ballerina Bette van Lunteren danced her way from her home in Holland to the heart of La Antigua Guatemala. She graduated from the Theater Dance Department of the School of Arts in Amsterdam and taught Dutch school children for six years. Her program was one of interactive expression on a one-day theme, group by group, [...]

While preparing the Convent La Concepción for its reopening as the Museo de Semana Santa (Holy Week Museum) they have uncovered new colors, secrets and surprises.
In June 1737 the nuns of Convent La Concepción invited the town of Santiago de los Caballeros, now La Antigua Guatemala, to a celebration. Sound strange? Yes, but the lovely [...]

Capuchinas is one of the many landmarks that needs long-term protection (Jack Houston)
by Jack and Joy Houston
Panchoy 50 celebrated the conclusion of its first phase in September with a glitz-and-glitter gala at Hotel Casa Santo Domingo. The project, launched in February, completed formation and analyses of 10 volunteer committees working toward an integral, 50-year development [...]

The Story of the Ruins of San Jerónimo
The spacious, bright and well-kept flowered lawn of the San Jerónimo ruins at the north end of Alameda Santa Lucía welcomes visitors to the site of a school that functioned barely four years and closed with five students. In Colonial Architecture of Antigua, Sidney Markman wrote, “Very little [...]

La Recolección is off the beaten track but worth the extra, dusty walk, being among the most impressive ruins in town.
Religious reformers punctuate history as far back as anyone wants to go. Constantine, Luther, even Henry VIII, the Wesley brothers. The past century knew Billy Sunday and Billy Graham. Antonio Margil de Jesús is hardly [...]