Revue Magazine

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 [...]

In 1928, Mildred Covill Palmer took a little trip—that spanned a lifetime!
written by William C. Paddock
The first North American to restore and live in an Antigua home was one of the most remarkable people this town has ever known. Mildred Covill, born in Iowa in 1898 had, by the time she was 16, been a [...]

Guatemala, El Salvador and their sisters did not win independence on Sept. 15
At our house in Panajachel, July 4 is Independence Day for two reasons. As citizens of the United States, my sons and I observe it in some fashion. But July 4 is also the day that my youngest, Aaron Donald Coop, marks his [...]

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.

A late bloomer of Latin America
written by David Jickling
Among Latin American capitals, Guatemala City is a later comer. Most of the major cities of Spanish America were founded in the 16th century, within a hundred years after the arrival of the Spanish. In contrast, Guatemala City was established at the end of the [...]

Guatemala is home to many surprising precedents, for better or worse.
Guatemala is the oldest country in the Americas, though not the oldest republic. Civilization, kindled here some 43 centuries ago, is Guatemala’s loftiest precedent.
Ancient Guatemalans were the first peoples in the Americas known to engineer a sophisticated water-pressure system. They may have been the first [...]

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 [...]