In 1946 Gore Vidal purchased the property adjacent to the elaborate façade of the Church of El Carmen. (photo by Jack Houston)

Mystery tantalizes the memory of Amelia Earhart, who disappeared somewhere over the Pacific during her attempted flight around the globe in 1937, piloting her twin-engine plane with only a navigator aboard. The world watched and waited as communication broke, came again, broke again and eventually fell silent. In the early days of aviation, Earhart’s gutsy solo flight across the Atlantic in 1932 and support of women aviators and other feminist causes won her popularity.

That popularity and tantalizing memory would find its way into a colonial church ruin in La Antigua Guatemala.

Amelia Earhart’s public was devastated that July night in 1937, but none so much as the boy who called himself Gore. Born Eugene Luther Gore Vidal at the United States West Point Military Academy Hospital in 1925, he chose to be called Gore after his maternal grandfather, Thomas Gore, democratic senator from Oklahoma. Growing up in Washington D.C., young Gore often read aloud to his grandpa, who was blind, while absorbing political philosophies.

Amelia Earhart also became very special to the boy. Gore’s father, according to biographer Susan Butler, was the great love of her life. They never married, but the pair worked together to further passenger air travel, while their romance sizzled. During that time, the boy Gore became fond of Amelia and found in her a substitute mother. Gore’s mother, an actress and socialite, had divorced his dad in 1935 to marry wealthy stockbroker Hugh Auchincloss, later stepfather of Jackie Kennedy.

Gore grew up and, after serving in World War II, began to write novels. In 1946 he moved to Guatemala and bought a piece of property adjacent to the ruins of the Church of El Carmen, including what was the sacristy. Little is known of the church’s history, but a simple hermitage built to shelter an image of the Virgin Mary was destroyed by earthquake in 1717 and replaced with an elaborate baroque structure, the facade of which remains one of the most photographed in La Antigua Guatemala. Royal edict declared that the convent for the Capuchin nuns would be established there. But the place was deemed unsuitable when the nuns arrived in 1726, and a new site was purchased.

Vidal hired architect and artist Pat Crocker to make the place livable. Crocker’s paintings are well-known in Antigua, and he also edited one of Vidal’s novels. Among Gore Vidal’s orders was a fireplace ‘with no flat surfaces’, so the typical straight line Antigua style was scratched for a flamboyant curvilinear design. A later owner, who bought the house from Vidal, told this writer that Gore wanted to be sure there was no mantle for a photo of his mother.

Gore Vidal lived and wrote in his Antigua house from 1947 to 1949. He then turned to the more lucrative writing for screen, stage and then booming TV. He flirted with politics, returned to novels and became an outspoken and controversial essayist, historian, analyst and activist. His family provided a wealth of political and social connections to feed his prolific writing. After spending years in his Italian villa, he lives today in the United States.
Meanwhile, scientists examine findings on a remote island in the Pacific. Could Amelia Earhart have landed and lived out her life there?

Gore Vidal, who brought along his own intimate and affectionate memory of Amelia Earhart, represents the stream of writers and artists, archeologists and anthropologists, historians, adventurers, diplomats, freethinkers and just plain nice folk who have been lured by Antigua.

At the beginning of time, according to ancient Mayan legend, the gods from their center spun out the cosmos, setting in place the universe. The corn god laid out the four corners and erected the World Tree in the center, from whose branches grew one of everything to come. When they became too full, the ‘fruit’ fell, scattering seeds. The old tree then provided shelter for the new plants and nurtured them. The stump has continued to exist as the center of the world.

Creation and acts of the gods in making the world and regulating nature has been at the heart of Mayan thought and religion for 3,000 years. Mayan civilization flourished at the time of Christ in what is now Central America, building magnificent and colossal cities and temples. The Maya world view that survives in Guatemala’s indigenous culture looks back, contrary to the Western world view that looks to the future. For the Maya, the past sustains the present.

The weaving tradition expresses that past and the world view, full of symbolism which connects the Maya to all of creation. The Maya people center themselves in the cosmos and creation by the cloth they weave. The spindle is seen as the center, from which yarn is spun out. Myth has it that a Maya woman, led by a goddess, learned to weave by watching a spider weave a web. The back strap loom is seen as an aspect of the World Tree, the weaver feeding the loom to create. Wearing the traditional, woven costume (traje) is part of the backward focus—the importance of customs. The tradition of weaving continues in the traje, and so the Maya maintain their identity.

Girls learn to weave at age four or five. Women generally design their own blouses (huipiles) and spend several months weaving their creations. It is a costly process, both in time and money, and the huipil is worn for many years. Designs may be passed down from generation to generation, with styles unique in colors and designs particular to landscape, ceremonies and mythology of each Maya group. Yarn for the weavings is of locally grown and spun cotton or, in the colder climates of the highlands, fine wool.

The traje of an indigenous Maya woman identifies her ethnically and socially. Further information of civil status or position may be shown in the manner in which certain articles are worn.  For example, the way she wears the hair ribbon may tell whether she is married or single.

Earliest weavings used only geometric designs but then added fauna and flora. Textile motifs celebrate life, showing harmony with nature and the cosmos in symbols such as seeds, rays of the sun, phases of the moon, corn, volcanoes, birds and other animals, water jugs. Vivid colors of the weavings reflect the flowers that abound in Guatemala.

Much of the meaning of the symbolism has been lost or changed, making it difficult to research this significant aspect of Mayan clothing. And younger women, feeling more and more social freedom, choose colors and patterns according to preference rather than identity. Often huipiles are simply less expensive fabric blouses with machine embroidery. Also increasingly, there is the choice of modern Western clothes.

The weaving tradition is a dynamic art form with ties to the past. It is more than craft. Artisans have filled their weavings with memories of their people. It serves as an instrument of ethnic identity and has also become a major source of income, with tourists choosing table coverings, napkins, bags, pillows, bedspreads and more.

Remarkably, the Maya and their tradition have adapted and survived.

photos by Rudy A. Girón

Jesús Nazareno de la Merced (photo: © José Carlos Flores)

Jesús Nazareno de la Merced was also the oldest Antiguan. Over a century had passed since his sculpting by Mateo de Zúñiga and his “fleshing” by painter José de la Cerda. Their bill to the town council of Santiago —today called La Antigua—was 65 pesos.

The killer quake that rattled Panchoy Valley (La Antigua) in 1773 led to the founding of a new capital in Ermita Valley in 1776. But even then, most Santiagans refused to move. Similarly, after Hurricane Hattie ravaged Belize in 1965, the government of Belize founded Belmopán—only to see the population of Belize City stay put.

The job of moving La Antigua’s masons, maids, porters and wet nurses to Ciudad Real (Guatemala City) fell in 1778 to viceroy Martín de Mayorga. His biggest card was the bond that Santiagans felt to Jesús Nazareno and to another wooden statue, Nuestra Señora de las Mercedes. Move these images, Mayorga reasoned, and you move the people.

Jesús Nazareno de la Merced owned many superlatives even in Mayorga’s day. It was the first baroque object crafted in Guatemala.(1) In 1717, it became the first image consecrated by a bishop in the Americas. Four years later, authorities named it patron of Santiago. Today, many call it Guatemala’s most sublime portrayal of the Passion.

After watching the Easter processions, Mayorga prudently allowed the after-burn of Semana Santa to cool. By June, Jesús Nazareno and Nuestra Señora were again veiled in their altars. This was their usual state, except on Sundays and holidays.

On June 25, Mayorga assigned the parish priest—a man named Acuña—the sad chore of announcing the move. This tiding, following Mass, caused every countenance in town to drop.(2) The townsfolk sought the intervention of the cofradía (town council), who secured an order to unveil the images for the rest of the day. By 6, the church was packed with standing-room-only mourners.

The men charged with packing the statues elbowed their way in at 8:30.(3) When they removed the crown of thorns, several women untied their braids and offered their ribbons for its re-fastening. Another woman unraveled maguey fibers from her nagua (apron) to bundle the image in its veil. The Nazareno did have to part with one thing: his cross. Once disassembled and boxed, he was placed on a stool in the church. For a fortnight, somber devotees recited rosaries over the hallowed cargo and begged Don Martín to reconsider.

But on July 7, Mayorga gave Acuña his marching orders. This priest, whose first name was Simón, doubtlessly identified with the Simón who helped lug the original cross to Calvary. But the parallels do not end there. The flesh-and-blood Cristo entered Israel’s capital on a donkey; Acuña’s wooden Cristo arrived in Guatemala’s capital on a mule—a half-donkey.

This ignominy was blunted by reverent pilgrims joining the trek, resulting in a spontaneous procession. They reached San Lucas on the first day, where the statue was reassembled and “enthroned” in the local pastoral chair. The next day, a Wednesday, Mass was held with the Nazareno as honored guest.

An encore occurred on Thursday in Mixco, today a capital suburb. There are no accounts that roadside spectators hailed the image with palm fronds as it entered the city, but this is likely. Over the next 22 years, it was adored in private ceremonies before finding permanent rest in the church at 11 avenida and 5a calle. But Mayorga’s gambit worked: The patron of Santiago became the patron of Guatemala City and drew a multitude of Antiguans along with him. Consequently, the approach of Christmas saw the start of Guatemala City’s earliest building boom.

The statue’s old post in Santiago was filled by a second wooden image, Jesús Nazareno de la Merced de Antigua. This was not the first imitator bred by success; 356 years after the “birth” of the original, every self-respecting Guatemalan parish aspires to have its own Nazareno. The dozens now in existence include Jesús Nazareno of the Mission, of Justice, of the Three Powers, of the Sweet Vision, of the Righteous Death and of the Heavenly King.

But the original retains a quiet primacy. It was, after all, the one known to Hermano Pedro de Betancourt. This Antiguan (recently sainted), apparently escorted it in Easter processions from 1657-61.(4) More miracles are attributed to it than to any other, and it counts the most legends. In addition to the claim of stigmata (bleeding), it is said to perspire when carried past downtown Guatemala’s Metropolitan Cathedral.

In 1888, composer Santiago Coronado was visiting the image’s home in what is today zone 1. In a dream he noticed the Nazareno missing from its usual spot. Worried, he searched inside the church first, then outside. At this point, according to the account Coronado gave his grandson,(5) he saw the statue emerge from a grave in the chapel cemetery. “Hey, Santiago!” it exclaimed. “Where is my march?” Coronado quickly finished a march he had been working on and named it The Grave. This composition became the Nazareno’s official accompaniment.

Another legend is contemporary. Devotees testify that things go awry when Jesús Nazareno wore the “Dove Shroud” (a cloth of unknown whereabouts). A warehouse, La Paquetería, allegedly burst into flames as the shrouded image passed in front of it. The 1976 earthquake is said to have struck when the image donned the cloth, and in 1998 its anda (carrying platform) caught fire when shroud and image made contact.(6)

The year 2005 saw the statue making its 350th “birthday” rounds that culminated in the capital’s Easter processions, but Jesús de Nazareno and his clones will be out again this Easter. And at any other time of year you can still go downtown and, six blocks from the National Palace, find the image that started it all.

1. Miguel Álvarez Arévalo, official chronographer of
Guatemala City (interview).
2. Luis Gerardo Ramírez Ortíz, oral historian and member
of the modern cofradía.
3. M. Álvarez A., Historia Instantánea, No. 3, pp. 66-69
4. Ingrid Roldán M., Prensa Libre, Jan. 24, 2005
5. L. G. Ramírez Ortíz.
6. I. Roldán, Prensa Libre.

by Dr. Nicholas M. Hellmuth

The most remarkable deity in the ancient Mayan myth of the Popol Vuh is “Seven Macaw.” In reality this preening bird-creature is pictured in Classic Mayan art as a snake-eating raptor. So in most renditions in murals and pottery, Seven Macaw is a hawk-like composite creature without very many features of a macaw (other than an overall, spectacular strutting posture). This giant bird monster is also called the “Principal Bird Deity.”

Primarily at Copán, Honduras, in association with the ball courts, is a giant mythical bird pictured with primarily macaw characteristics. Indeed at Copán you get the concept of “Macaw Mountain.” Ironic that in a highland area you get such a concentration on macaws whose natural habitat is more in the rainforest lowlands.
Whereas an ornithologist could perhaps tell the difference between Mayan portraits of parrots and Mayan renderings of macaws a thousand years ago, I will bunch them together for this article.

In the Museo Nacional de Arqueología, in the Museo Popol Vuh and other museums, you can see highly stylized macaws in profile on the sides of Early Classic basal flange bowls. This class of ceramics is from the Tikal, Uaxactun, Holmul area of Central Petén, but examples can be found elsewhere, including Belize and potentially at Copán, since the ceramics of Honduras were also influenced by styles from nearby Guatemala and Belize.

In the museum of glass and archaeology in the Hotel Casa Santo Domingo in La Antigua Guatemala, you can also see macaw effigy vessels (again we use the word “macaw” as a generic term; some of these may be large parrots).

A few centuries later you also find macaws as ballgame hachas (hatchets). A vulture is more common, but macaws, bats, deer and feline heads are also stylized to form a ballgame hacha. An hacha was worn on the special ballgame belt, especially during decapitation ceremonies and ritual portraits of the players posing with the giant ball.

Although there are several macaw species in tropical Latin America, the one you see most often in Guatemala is the scarlet macaw, Ara macao.

The most remarkable renditions of Seven Macaw are from the pre-Classic murals of San Bartolo, Petén. But this giant bird deity is, as mentioned, primarily a snake-eating hawk composite, despite its name as a macaw in the 16th century Quiché Highland Mayan version of the Popol Vuh, which is the version that has come down to us.

Macaws are commonly pictured in Mayan art from about the 2nd century onward, but on ceramics are most common in the early Classic Petén region of Guatemala. For sculpture, the most common place to find representations of macaws is Copán, Honduras.

Otherwise, hummingbirds, water birds, vultures and raptors (hawks and eagles) are the birds most commonly pictured in Classic Mayan art. Overall more than a dozen species, or even 20, could be itemized, but you soon notice that certain species are pictured more often than others. You can see photos of some of these birds on our website, www.maya-archaeology.org.

Dr. Nicholas Hellmuth is director of FLAAR Reports (Foundation for Latin American Anthropological Research). For more information visit www.digital-photography.org

Monuments of Santo Hermano Pedro are rare on Tenerife, but there are several in La Antigua: (left) at the entrance to town, (center) in the garden of San Francisco Church, outside of the tomb where his remains lie, (right) at El Calvario Church where he first lived in Guatemala

Where did Hermano Pedro come from?

Young Pedro de Betancur, age 22, left his home on the Canary Island of Tenerife in 1649 and sailed to the New World. Many ships were crossing the Atlantic at that time, with Tenerife a geographically necessary port of call between Europe and America. They were filled with adventurers lured by the promise of gold and silver in abundance. Not Pedro. Humble and devout, he was inspired to join evangelizing efforts. It seems safe to assume that he really didn’t know what he would face.

For those who like to read the end of the story first, here it is. Pedro became Hermano Pedro and then Santo Hermano Pedro, the first saint of Central America as well as the Canaries. Pope John Paul II canonized him in Guatemala City in July 2002. Backing up briefly, the young Pedro landed first in Cuba, then Honduras. From there he walked, arriving in 1651, after two years of travel, in Santiago de los Caballeros, the Spanish seat of the government at that time, now La Antigua Guatemala. He held neither title nor prestigious connections nor do we know of anything else he had to offer—except his compassion and devotion. In his zeal for the priesthood he entered the Jesuit school in Santiago but just couldn’t make the grade. Pedro was accepted into the Third Order of the Franciscans and worked at the Church of El Calvario. In his off-hours he focused on caring for the poor, the sick, the homeless, the uneducated. He took ‘justice for all’ seriously.

Pedro declared, “Here I have lived and here I will die.” And so he did in 1667, his remains now lying in La Antigua’s Church of San Francisco. But when the young man thought of home, what did he think about? Now for the rest of the story.

Tenerife was formed by a volcanic eruption. Pedro was born in the peaceful and pastoral town of Vilaflor on the slope not far from a still active volcano. Just as in Santiago, he was probably familiar with occasional volcanic rumbles. And with a climate not unlike that of Guatemala, bright bouganvilla thrive on Tenerife, just as they do here.
Pedro was a poor boy.

He was a shepherd, tending a small flock in a place called Granadilla, a little down from Vilaflor, toward the sea on the southwest of the island. He helped his struggling family with four brothers and sisters. It must have been of some comfort to him to have landed in a place remarkably similar to his homeland. 

More than five centuries ago today’s capital town of Santa Cruz of Tenerife was born and developed around its port. Although traces of the town’s origins remain, Tenerife’s real history is in the original capital of San Cristóbal de La Laguna, high up on the hill and safely away from pirate activity on the seas at that time. The urban design of San Cristóbal de La Laguna modeled that of many cities founded in the Americas by Spanish colonists, including Santiago de los Caballeros. The Franciscan church and monastery there were built in the late 1400s, over 100 years before young Pedro left home. The town is now the ecclesiastical and university center, but being at the northeast end of the island, it is not known whether Pedro was ever there. 
 
Today in Santa Cruz, with a bustling commercial seaport, intense traffic of cruise ships and several good beaches, tourist business is booming. A recent law allows construction of only five-star-and-above hotels. Apartment buildings as high as 15 stories fill the town, painted in soft colors like the colonial shades of La Antigua. San Cristóbal de La Laguna, a UNESCO World Cultural Heritage city, is a 30-minute winding ride up the hill by a sleek, modern tram. The two towns make up the most populous area of the island, with a total of almost 400,000. It is difficult to tell where one ends and the other begins.

On Tenerife, Hermano Pedro’s history is told very briefly. Among the little left of those beginnings are his natal home and a cave that has become a popular pilgrimage site. The house has been reconstructed and now includes a church and convent of the Bethlemites, the women’s Order formed in Santiago by his followers. The cave is where the boy hid himself and his flock from harm at the hands of English pirates and African Moors who had been known to snatch youngsters like him and carry them away as slaves. Although the process toward canonization began in 1698, collecting information about his life, little is known that can be verified of the young Pedro. 

The rest of the story is well-known in La Antigua, where the name and work of the fine young man from Tenerife live on. Just one example is Las Obras Sociales del Santo Hermano Pedro, home to almost 300 persons with severe challenges and where every year 270,000 patients of limited resources receive medical attention. ‘The Obras,’ as it is known, also has facilities to care for children and senior citizens and provide addiction rehab. Friends and relatives on Tenerife who knew Pedro the boy may never have had opportunity to know about Pedro the saint.

Curiously, while Pedro simply carried out kindness and acted justly in Guatemala, John Milton in England wrestled with causes and consequences of good and evil. Milton went blind in 1652, just after Pedro arrived in Santiago and before dictating his 10-volume Paradise Lost to his daughters. It was published in 1667, the year Hermano Pedro died.

photos: Jack Houston

What started as a blank square in the original drawings, La Antigua’s Parque Central grew and morphed in fits and starts for 467 years to meet the needs of each new generation.

Written by Judy Cohen

My interest in the design of La Antigua’s central park was sparked in the defining moment that I focused on the shape of the planting areas, which are vaguely geometric and, like puzzle pieces, rounded at the edges. There is one puzzle piece on one side of a path and another exactly like it—or close—on the other. If I walk across the path following the straight line of the pavers, the pieces will meet.

Symmetry, they say, is harmonious and beautiful. Dropped randomly, these planting areas would be a chaotic jumble. Instead everything is measured so precisely that the effect of the rounded edges of the curbs, the wavy branches of the trees, together with the curved walkways and walking circle around the fountain, creates a small masterpiece. My first thought was that a renowned landscape architect designed it in one piece, but no—it didn’t happen that way at all.

Santiago de los Caballeros de Guatemala (later renamed La Antigua Guatemala) was founded in 1543. This year lies in the blurry timeline when the late Middle Ages changed into the Age of Discovery. The conquistadors followed hard on the heels of Columbus to the new world, driven by gold fever and the desire to conquer. They earned their name.

Only 51 years had elapsed between the time Columbus landed and the founding of the third Guatemalan capital. The first two sites were abandoned as unsuitable. Early settlers had already learned hard lessons about natural disasters in the new country; earthquakes first, and then floods and mudslides, which destroyed the second capital. They prayed the Panchoy Valley, only a few miles away, would be far enough from volcanoes to keep them out of danger. The new location was flat, beautiful, had plenty of water, lumber, clay for adobe bricks and rich soil.

Juan Bautista Antonelli was the Italian military engineer appointed by the crown to design the new town. He used the grid system with the avenidas north, south and the calles east, west. The town plaza was placed in the center. What we now know informally as Parque Central was founded as the Plaza Mayor, Plaza Real or Plaza de Armas. It started as a blank square on Antonelli’s drawing and grew and morphed in fits and starts for 467 years to meet the needs of each new generation.

The Plaza Mayor was a busier and more exciting place in other centuries than it is now. It was the center of all public activities: entertainment, markets, public events, parades and religious ceremonies. They even staged horse races and bullfights on special occasions. Water was piped in for the horses in 1555, but there was no central fountain until 1738. And: “Every so often a military parade took place, hence ‘Plaza de Armas.’ The ladies would dress in their most flouncy frocks and petticoats, uncaring of the mud that ruined all the hems, and crowd around the Plaza in billowing skirts that echoed the surrounding arches.” —Antigua For Life, Barbara Belcher de Koose, p. 62.

In the only painting of it in the 17th century (1678), we can see the marketplace, which the city fathers had to organize into some kind of order so horses and carriages could get through. Still no formal streets.

In Europe (1400-1800) law and order was established and punishment carried out in public squares. The conquistadors brought this practice to Central America. Hangings, whippings, and the stocks were used to enforce order. Looters were hanged and people whipped for trivial offenses.

The park went through the same ups and downs as the town. If the town suffered earthquakes and floods, the plaza was neglected. In careless times, people broke the fountain, cut off the heads of the original sirenas (mermaids) designed by Diego de Porres in 1738 and threw them on the rubble heap. When the town prospered, the square prospered, too. Needed repair work was done, trees were planted and rubbish removed.

Few cities have fought as hard to stay alive as Antigua. There was an almost continual push by the forces of nature to destroy it. At the same time, dedicated and stubborn people through the ages fought to pull it back from disaster. Despite the optimistic hopes of the first settlers, Santiago (later La Antigua) was not safe from nature’s might. Between 1520 and the end of the 19th century, 50 major eruptions of Fuego occurred. In 1773 a massive earthquake hit and the Spanish king ordered the city evacuated, although it had recovered from a devastating one in 1717 and rebuilt.

Following a major flurry of building called The Golden Age, the 1773 quake destroyed the most beautiful churches, convents, monasteries and private homes in one day.

Afterward the capital was officially moved to Guatemala City, along with all the wealth that could be carried on the backs of Indians or carted away in wagons. As much or more damage, they say, was caused by salvagers as by the earthquake itself. Citizens were threatened with jail if they didn’t leave.

However, the community was never quite abandoned. From being the acknowledged capital of Central America and a bustling, vibrant church-oriented city, it lapsed back as a quiet village again and was renamed La Antigua Guatemala.

When the modern age dawned, the charming, colonial city of Antigua, for the most part, was buried under mud and rubble and forgotten. Not by everyone though. Knowledgeable people knew that a gargantuan job of restoration could restore it. Fortunately, since it was now off the beaten track and in a known earthquake area, Antigua didn’t suffer the same fate as Lima, Peru and Mexico City, where many remaining beautiful colonial homes and artifacts were destroyed to build high rises in the name of progress.

Coffee brought a degree of prosperity to the valley in the late 1800s. Dedicated people realized they also had a treasure in the colonial city lying under a lot of mud and rubbish. They began to dig it out and protect it.

The park went through a major renovation in 1936. The sirenas in the fountain were restored by Oscar González Goyri; the rusted shaft from 1738 was cleaned and restored. Water flowed once more. A series of proclamations came out: In 1940 Antigua was declared a Protected City, which saved many of the beautiful old colonial houses from being torn down. Buildings were limited to two stories.

In 1944 Antigua was protected further when it was declared a National Monument. Modern buildings were barred. However, billboards and neon signs crept in, and other debris of the 20th century littered the narrow streets.

Once more in 1976, a major earthquake struck. It destroyed most of the renovation efforts. Over 20,000 people were killed and a million were left homeless in Guatemala. In Antigua, most of the renovation and digging out was destroyed when the charm of the old city had just begun to emerge. This seemed trivial at the time.

In 1979 UNESCO designated La Antigua as a World Cultural Heritage Site. For the first time, a codified list of do’s and don’ts outlined what renovations could and couldn’t be made and what materials must be used. The neon signs and billboards were removed and overhead wires put underground.

Prosperity didn’t reach everyone. A Civil War, begun in the early 1960s, lasted 36 years. According to historian Elizabeth Bell, tourism in Antigua dropped to almost nothing during this time, and, of course, prosperity lowered for all but a few.

After the Peace Accords were signed in l996, non-profit organizations (NGOs) arrived from all over the world to help Guatemala get back on its feet.

Parque Central was an eyesore after the war according to people who saw it then. Maintenance had been put off for years. The cement benches were cracked and crumbling, and the shaft of the fountain was rusted and broken once more. No water had flowed for eight years. Fallen trees were a hazard and there was dangerous barbed wire which fenced off unsafe areas. Plus only one street lamp worked.

The Spanish schools, which started in the late 60s and 70s, were beginning to come back. Tourists were returning. The city fathers wanted to spruce the city up, and Parque Central was its heart.

Nuestros Ahijados (God’s Children) a local NGO, took on the renovation. Patrick Atkinson, its CEO, had the help and support from the Guatemalan Corps of Engineers and the Mayor of Antigua.

Mr. Atkinson used his own staff of gardeners (some blind) and the older children to dig out approximately 10 inches of topsoil. They had to remove the rubble beneath it, consisting of cement and tile, because the tree roots couldn’t get through and reach the water table.

The topsoil was replaced and wrought-iron green fences put around the planting areas. The fences had little sticks between the chain links to discourage children from swinging on them. They didn’t hurt, but were uncomfortable, also decorative.

Long cement benches—chipped and stained with urine and graffiti—were replaced with smaller ones with wooden slats and green ironwork like the fences. After 2½ years of work, the latest renovation of the park was finished in 2002.

Antigua has survived by serendipity and the tenacity of people who simply refused to abandon a lovely site. Its history reminds me of the story the Phoenix, a mythical bird of antiquity.

1940 photo of Antigua’s central park by Stein (courtesy of CIRMA)

Rafael Carrera and Francisco Morazán

As Guatemala was positioning for its independence, these two general-politicians and antagonists might be called the cofounders of modern Central America.

Mix equal parts Washington, Bolivar and Garibaldi, add some Jefferson, a dash of Montesquieu, and a sprinkling of Zapata. Knead well and bake the mixture under the torrid skies of Central America. What do you get? Francisco Morazán.

Today this list of ingredients can be read throughout the isthmus as the legacy of the man who midwifed, and nearly preserved, a great union. Had the United Federation of Central America survived, it would rival Colombia or Argentina in size and influence.

From the doorstep of Chiapas to the Panamanian frontier, boulevards, ports, schools, bridges and even pharmacies all bear Morazán’s name. But who was he, really?
That question is as interesting as the list of enemies who ultimately sank the dream of Central American unity. One of these, Rafael Carrera, fathered the nation-state of Guatemala. Both Morazán and Carrera were gifted generals and self-made men, but they were otherwise opposites.

Carrera, born in Guatemala in 1814 (22 years after Morazán was born in Honduras), never learned to read, nor had to. During his adolescence, he wearied of herding pigs and became a bandit. His unwed mother was said to have been a servant of the aristocratic Aycinena family, among whom Rafael was begotten by a scion. This is unlikely; he was Mayan in appearance and origin, and a coin minted with his true likeness suggests some African ancestry.

The union that Morazán united and that Carrera dissolved was coextensive with the Kingdom of Guatemala, so-called, part of the Viceroyalty of New Spain. This kingdom never saw its kings, the Spanish monarchs; not one ever visited. The five extant republics of Central America, plus Chiapas, comprised it. In the early 1820s, all six briefly belonged to newly independent Imperial Mexico, which collapsed in 1822.

These republics did not have to fight either Spain or Mexico for their independence. But they did fight each other during the Federation period (1824-1839). Each of the five “states” had its own president, and there was also a federal president. The separation of powers between federal and state presidents would never be resolved.

These republics did not have to fight either Spain or Mexico for their independence. But they did fight each other during the Federation period (1824-1839).

During this period, Morazán was federal president three times, and at other times served as state presidents of El Salvador, Honduras and Costa Rica. Carrera, as a warlord, emerged as de facto ruler of Guatemala, and, for periods, of Honduras and Nicaragua.

To the extent that the union lasted anytime at all was a testament to the military and diplomatic prowess of Morazán, who consistently put his vision of unity ahead of personal ambition. This was evident in 1831 when he willingly yielded the federal presidency after an electoral defeat. True, he had ruled largely by decree during this first term, and in defeat he received as a consolation prize the Honduras presidency. But his policies were enlightened: He enacted freedom of worship, press and speech, created election tribunals, and built schools for the lower classes.

Morazán’s greatest reform, ironically, militated against the union he sought. This was the emancipation, decades before the United States did so, of the vast slave class. The states now lost much of the glue that bonded them as provinces during the colonial period: an infrastructure of roads and bridges that depended on slaves levied from the latifundios, or great plantations. With the resultant crumbling of trade and communication links, the five states began going their own way, or forming unwieldy daughter federations. At one point, El Salvador and Honduras were joined, while Guatemala, Nicaragua and Costa Rica formed another ephemeral union.

Two political parties emerged from the cauldron. Men like Morazán and his friend Mariano Gálvez (a Guatemalan state president whose image adorns the Q20 note) led the Jeffersonian “liberal” faction. Men like Carrera and the criollo general Manuel Arce, the reactionary first president of the Federation, led the “clerical” faction. This latter was an alliance of bishops and wealthy latifundio owners, plus some people of humbler origins who were blood kin to the slaves but suspicious of pluralism and Protestantism.

Carrera was one of these. We do not know if his opposition to union and democracy were driven more by outlook or opportunism, but we do know that he vowed to destroy the union, and, with his charisma and leadership acumen, he would prevail.

At the age of 31, Morazán, a lawyer by training, was named a captain in the federal army. Though he lacked military training, he quickly distinguished himself in the first of many civil wars that would plague the Federation. Soon, he was a general. His serial victories in war opened his doorway to politics, and during the short, unhappy life of the Federation, he plied both; on several occasions he was simultaneously a head of state and a field commander.

At the height of Carrera’s power during the Federation era, he controlled, while still in his early 20s, not only Guatemala as an extra-constitutional strongman, but Nicaragua and most of Honduras. But these latter two states and Costa Rica, balked at both Carrera’s tyranny and unionism, and seceded. Guatemala, governed by the clericals even when liberals held titular power, was perpetually in rebellion. Only El Salvador, the seat of the federal capital, remained faithful to the union.

In effect, Guatemala now had to achieve independence from El Salvador; but unlike the peaceful separations from Spain and Mexico, this phase would be bloody.

Carrera’s mission, to wrest the biggest chunk of the Federation for himself, was now easier than Morazán’s mission, to preserve the union. In effect, Guatemala now had to achieve independence from El Salvador; but unlike the peaceful separations from Spain and Mexico, this phase would be bloody.

One engagement took place in San Andrés Semetabaj, overlooking Lake Atitlán. Morazán was favored, but Carrera outfoxed him by scoping the battlefield terrain beforehand and memorizing it. He routed Morazán, who fled to Guatemala City and regrouped. But even there, Carrera had a trap set for him; the decisive battle took place where the San Juan de Dios Hospital now stands. The tactical genius of the erudite and progressive Morazán had been trumped by that of a former highwayman who could not read.

But Carrera could dictate, and he ordered his scribe to make known that Morazán now carried a price on his head. Morazán fled to Peru, where he was offered, but declined, a generalship in the doomed struggle of Peru and Bolivia against Chile in the Pacific War.

While in exile, and bitter over the secession of Honduras, Morazán began identifying himself as Salvadoran rather than Honduran. El Salvador returned the honor by later recovering Morazán’s remains and erecting a monument to him. Yet both countries would pay him the supreme honor of naming a province in his honor.

In 1842, long after the dissolution of the union, Morazán returned from exile, this time to Costa Rica where he led a coup against Braulio Carillo, the only true dictator in Costa Rica’s history. He was rewarded with the presidency, which he used to lay democratic foundations that remain in place to this day. But within months an old friend betrayed him to a clerical insurrection. Soon he faced a firing squad, which he was given the honor of commanding himself. Morazán was not quite 50.

Carrera lived past 50, but barely. His “Presidency for Life,” stained with despotism and corruption, lasted until 1864, when he was assassinated.

Around 1890, Cuban poet José Martí lionized Morazán as “a powerful genius, a strategist, a speaker, a true statesman, perhaps the only one Central America has ever produced.” Morazán may well have been Central America’s top achiever. But Carrera may qualify as the top overachiever, rivaled only by filibusterers William Walker and Lee Christmas. Like Hitler or Stalin, he was a man of small stature and towering complexes, but one with the spunk to seize the levers of power and strike down all opponents, real and imaginary.

These two general-politicians might be called the cofounders of modern Central America. Antagonists in life, they are united in legacy as a parable of democracy and despotism that defined the region—perhaps even to the present.

Church and plaza of San Miguel Escobar, facing west; probable vicinity of the second Santiago and possible site of its cathedral.

Exactly where was the center of old Santiago? Traditionally the honor has been assumed to belong to the urban center of Ciudad Vieja, the Old City. But was it?

Tropical storm Agatha raged throughout Guatemala in May, déjà vu of 9/11/1541 for the hard-hit area east of Ciudad Vieja. Weeks later, the church of San Miguel Escobar still sheltered people from some of the 80-plus homes that were lost along the river that cuts through a crevice on the skirts of Volcano Agua. Logs and limbs dumped by the water had been collected and piled in front of the church. Front loaders still scooped up all sorts of debris left by the storm.

Residents there, keen on their history, readily relate the story of that night 469 years ago when a similar storm rained torrents of water, dislodging boulders, uprooting trees and tearing down walls. Some go as far as to say there has not been a storm so severe until Agatha.

There were no front loaders in 1541 to clean up Santiago, the name of the second location of the seat of the Spanish government in Guatemala, located in the Valley of Almolonga, currently Ciudad Vieja and San Miguel Escobar. The destruction resulted in moving the town in short order to what is now La Antigua Guatemala. But exactly where was the center of old Santiago? Traditionally the honor has been assumed to belong to the urban center of Ciudad Vieja, the Old City. But was it?

According to historian J. Joaquín Pardo, “..analysis of colonial chronists and 20th century excavations and research show that is not so.” The chronists would seem to be the first source of information, and János de Szécsy read them, although with a grain of salt. “The history of Santiago was only of modest interest for the chronists, who concentrated their attention on the detailed history of Antigua,” he wrote in Santiago de los Caballeros de Goathemala en Almolonga. Szécsy carried out extensive excavations in 1950 and concluded, “There exists no convincing proof to suppose that the capital was in Ciudad Vieja.”

Official records of the town council of that early settlement, printed in Libro Viejo, include a plot of the city and names of its inhabitants. Having reached a severe state of deterioration, the originals were finally compiled as best they could be, laminated in 1968 by the U.S. Government Printing Office and remain in Washington. Analysis of those records by the Academia de Geografía e Historia concludes that Santiago “can be positioned to the east of the urban center of Ciudad Vieja, as far as San Miguel Escobar.” Pardo recognized, “Thanks to the scientific works, the limits and center of the second Santiago are known with almost complete certainty and exactitude.”

Conquistador Pedro de Alvarado had set out from Mexico in 1524 to extend the conquest of Spain to Guatemala. The contingent, basically an army, stayed but a few months in Iximché, the first place named Santiago, but then moved on. After a brief stay in Comalapa, they reached the Valley of Almolonga, a pre-Colombian settlement long since abandoned, and said, ‘This is good. Let’s stay awhile.” It was beautiful, with fertile land, trees to provide plenty of fruit and wood, pastures and moderate temperatures. Volcanoes provided protective ‘walls’ for defense as well as ways for easy in-out. Almolonga means “gushing waters,” one of the major pluses but also “a prophetic touch to the catastrophe that awaited.” (Libro Viejo)

“The ‘city’ was itinerant for more than two years. All the neighbors and members of the council were soldiers, so the ‘city’ was established in the military camp,” wrote Jorge Luján Muñoz in Historia General de Guatemala. In 1525 it became the first chore of the council to decide whether to settle in Almolonga or choose another site. They explored the area and debated. The few objections included wind, marshes and “the earth shakes a lot because of fire that the volcanoes put out,” but in the end it was almost unanimous: they would stay.

“What is said to be the palace of Alvarado turned out to be the façade of the monastery. None of the three monuments of Ciudad Vieja were found to be authentic.” Szécsy attributes the claims to ‘local legend’.

Officially founded on November 22, 1527, the second Santiago was lined out and parcels of land assigned “according to the custom established in the foundation of Spanish cities in other parts of New Spain,” wrote Christopher H. Lutz in Historia Sociodemográfica de Santiago de Guatemala. Libro Viejo records a church, public plaza, hospital and lots for civil authorities and neighbors. More than 600 indigenous people were established outside the grid, where they grew vegetables and cared for the cattle of the Spanish.

The Santiago built over the next 14 years was not elegant. The 100-or-so Spanish were people of simple preference, “of low nobility and poor in Spain,” wrote Szécsy. “I suppose Santiago was something like a beautiful 20th century village.” There were no architects or specialized workers, and no large buildings, given the size of excavated foundations.

The Franciscan and Dominican orders established monasteries at the corners of the city, the Mercedarians closer to the cathedral. And, of course, there was the palace of Pedro de Alvarado, whose wife, Beatriz de la Cueva, died in the storm of 1541 along with half the population.

The Franciscans stayed in Santiago after the move to care for the population that chose to remain there after the catastrophe, basically indigenous Mexicans who had come with the conquistadors. The area was slowly repopulated, building over the structures of Santiago. According to historian Fuentes y Guzmán in Ciudad Vieja, “The Franciscan church became parish church of the new municipality.” These inhabitants adopted the name of Ciudad Vieja.

Ruins of the Santiago cathedral, the palace of Alvarado and the chapel of Doña Beatriz have been said to lie under that church and its plaza, the basis for claiming the now urban center of Ciudad Vieja as the urban center of Santiago. But studies of measurements, orientation, architectural style, geography and observation of flood patterns over the centuries fail to support the claims. According to Szécsy, “What is said to be the palace of Alvarado turned out to be the…façade of the monastery,” adding, “None of the three monuments of Ciudad Vieja were found to be authentic.” He attributes the claims to ‘local legend’.

Unfortunately Szécsy’s studies were suspended due to lack of funds. “The foundations of the majority of public buildings, like the cathedral, the Mercederian monastery and the Royal House probably would be discovered if more excavations were done.” The Palace of Alvarado, the Dominican monastery and perhaps even the center of Santiago are believed to be buried now somewhere under private coffee farms. “It is logical to suppose that the city founded in 1527 was on the site of San Miguel,” wrote Lutz.

San Miguel Escobar includes coffee farms and is in fact a neighborhood within Ciudad Vieja, so the claim of that municipality is technically correct. The hitch is location of the urban center and identification of the ruins.

Today the ruin said to be the chapel where Doña Beatriz and 11 ladies of her court died on the night of the storm is bordered by school classrooms, where very much alive children play, 469 years later. Life goes on, with or without answers about the past.

photos by Jack Houston

In his spare time from his duties as choirmaster at Thomas Church in Leipzig, J.S. Bach composed his Coffee Cantata in 1732, for performance by his special musical group at Café Zimmerman.

Mm! How sweet the coffee tastes,
Lovelier than a thousand kisses,
Mellower than muscatel wine.
Coffee, I must have coffee;
And if anyone wishes to give me a treat,
Ah, then, just give me some coffee!

Coffee houses were popular in Germany at that time, although coffee was not yet acceptable in homes. Beer was the true German drink of the day. Attempts to cultivate coffee in Europe had failed, and coffee came primarily from Brazil.

The first mention of coffee dates to Arab writings of the 9th century, when Maya civilization in Guatemala was on the decline. Legends of coffee’s discovery include that of goats, who became agitated after eating the beans from a bush. The stimulating beans became popular with monks at a local monastery, who had trouble staying awake for evening prayers.

By the end of the 16th century coffee had made its way through the Middle East to Europe, where Italian clergy thought it diabolic. But the pope, after trying it, decided it would be a shame to leave it to the infidels and, rather than condemning it, awarded it the church’s seal of approval. Meanwhile, Santiago de los Caballeros, now La Antigua Guatemala, was officially established in 1543, with monasteries going up all over, aimed to some degree at appeasing the powers that caused repeated natural disasters of earthquakes and volcanoes. The beloved Bishop Francisco Marroquín had died, the Jesuits had begun teaching basic reading, the Franciscans and Dominicans were building elaborate monasteries and the first nuns had arrived in town.

Santiago had two convents for women in the mid-17th century, while London women were banned from cafés, which eventually became men’s clubs. At one point the cafés were closed, considered to be places of sedition. That didn’t last long. They reopened in 11 days.

Although records show no export of coffee until 1853, since the Liberal Revolution of 1871 coffee has been Guatemala’s dominant export.

By the turn of the 18th century cafés had opened in Holland, Vienna, Boston, New York and Philadelphia. Santiago de los Caballeros had no cafés, but it did have seven monasteries, four convents, sixteen orders and three dozen churches.

The first coffee plants were brought to Guatemala from Jamaica and Cuba by the Jesuits in the mid-1700s. They were used as ornamental plants at their monastery in Santiago de los Caballeros. The Jesuits were expelled from Guatemala in 1767, but by then beans or cuttings had been taken to other parts of the country. Despite Guatemala’s fertility for coffee cultivation, coffee plants were primarily ornamental for nearly a century, growing to 12 or 14 feet, with little use other than medicinal, such as “to be taken as a curative to prevent fever,” recorded Regina Wagner in The History of Coffee in Guatemala.

Still, apparently news of the pleasures of drinking coffee had reached Guatemala. Records show that coffee crowned the inaugural banquet celebration in 1745 of the first archbishop of Santiago in his palace next to the cathedral. In the same year King Frederick the Great of Prussia built Sanssouci Palace in Potsdam, near Berlin, where Voltaire visited frequently. The lower level kitchen, now a museum, included a separate room with all the paraphernalia to equip the new custom of entertaining guests with coffee and cake: containers for beans, grinders, water pots, cups, cake molds, cake plates, cake servers. A new, round table was introduced for the living room, on which to serve the coffee and… That said, Frederick himself was a tea drinker, agreeing with those who thought coffee to be a women’s drink, not manly. He preferred wine or beer for his guests to loosen their tongues. Nonetheless, he later recognized the income potential of coffee and established coffee roasting companies.

In Guatemala, what little consumption of coffee there was in the early 1800s was satisfied with local production and imported beans, mills and pots. Dyes of indigo, then cochineal, produced by a beetle, remained the chief exports until mid-century, when a plague hit the beetle. It was bad timing for the beetle, with chemical dyes developing and coffee consumption increasing. By the time the beetle recovered, just a few years later, attention had turned to coffee. Demand was outpacing production. But records show no export of coffee until 1853.

Then began the boom. The Industrial Revolution had increased trade, drawing Guatemala and other Latin American countries into the world economy. The Germans, with their craze for coffee, came and stayed, buying up large properties for coffee cultivation and introducing their custom of drinking coffee in public places. Foreign immigration was welcomed, bringing new ideas, technology and capital.

While the country developed roads, rails and ports, banks and borrowing systems, there was a lot to learn about planting, pruning and processing the crop. And there was a lot to learn about competition, currencies and corporations. Everything was done “to support, stimulate and protect production of the ‘golden bean’,” wrote Wagner. “Ever since the Liberal Revolution of 1871, coffee has been Guatemala’s dominant export.”

The film Out of Africa opens with a Danish woman’s soft, haunting voice lamenting, “I once had a farm in Africa.” A coffee farm, of course. The complicated industry has risen, fallen and risen again, surviving pests and plagues, drought, earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, two world wars and the Great Depression. Alas, the coffee habit has the world hooked.

Coffee has played a major role in Guatemala’s development as well as the world market, where next to oil it remains the most-traded commodity. Prints of globalization are everywhere. While coffee plants still trim the plaza of the old Jesuit monastery in La Antigua, the menu of a lively chocolate/coffee café on the square of Bratislava, Slovakia includes ‘Espresso Guatemala.’ And both Leipzig and traditional Vienna now have Starbucks, which buys coffee from Guatemala.

photos by Jack Houston

The only instance, in the entire Spanish conquest of the Americas, when the local chieftain was permitted to retain the power of government.

By the year 1543, after several unsuccessful military expeditions against the warlike Q’eqchi’ Indians, the Spanish conquerors were desperate. At the same time, it had become evident to the chieftain of chieftains of the Q’eqchi’s—Aj Pop’o Batz—the ruler of Tuzulutlan (the Land of War), that the Spanish invaders could not be forever held off by force of arms.

Although he commanded one of the fiercest tribes of the Maya race, Aj Pop’o Batz was as wise as he was courageous. He decided to try to find some political modus vivendi to the crisis presented by the Spanish conquest. As a first step, he gave one of his daughters in marriage to the chief of Zacapulas, who had already been converted to Christianity, and he thereby opened a channel of communication to the Dominican priests under the direction of Father Bartolomé de las Casas.

At about the same time, Father Bartolomé, a defender of the Indians against the excesses of the conquest, had obtained a commission from the crown of Spain to send missionary priests to Tuzulutlan to try to bring the Indians peaceably to the cross and crown. Las Casas sent three Dominican priests, Juan de Torres, Luis Cancer and Pedro de Angulo, to the land of war. And these three, bearing gifts and a band of musicians from Mexico, journeyed to Tuzulutlan, establishing missions and baptizing converts as they went.

By the time they arrived at the capital of Tuzulutlan (now San Juan Chamelco) in May 1543, they were already able to speak Q’eqchi’, and they were cordially welcomed by Aj Pop’o Batz and his lords. Aj Pop’o Batz quickly accepted conversion to Christianity, and had himself baptized with the name Juan Matalbatz on June 24 (the day of St. John the Baptist). He also directed all the members of his tribe to be baptized as well.

This conversion of their chieftain caused great consternation among the Q’eqchi’ people, who lamented the loss of their own god Tzul-tak’a (mountain valley).
As a consequence, there were in the beginning (and down through the years) attempted revolts by disaffected Q’eqchi’s against Juan Matalbatz, which he put down by whatever means necessary. He protected the Dominican missionaries with his life and forged a firm alliance with them.

In February 1545 Juan Matalbatz and several of his lords journeyed to Spain under Dominican auspices and were received at the court of the Holy Roman Emperor, King Charles V. They presented the king with gifts, including 2,000 quetzal feathers and live, singing birds in cages. The king was delighted, and observing the Indians’ meager garments in the cold climate of Madrid he praised them as “men of steel.” He in turn presented them with religious images for their churches, silver crosses and censers, and the bronze bell which still hangs in the church of San Juan Chamelco.

Just as Juan Matalbatz found it necessary to keep his followers in line, so too did Bartolomé de Las Casas have to vigilantly guard against incursions by other Spanish colonists, who generally treated the Indians brutally. He maneuvered adroitly in both Guatemala and the Spanish court to make Tuzulutlan a Dominican fiefdom, answerable only to the crown.

These efforts were successful, and in September 1554 the Dominicans installed Juan Matalbatz as the first provincial governor. This is the only instance, in the entire Spanish conquest of the Americas, when the local chieftain was permitted to retain the power of government. As governor, Juan Matalbatz was even granted the right to arrest and punish Spanish transgressors of the law, which was considered a great affront by the conquistador mentality of the time.

The great alliance of the Spanish and Q’eqchi’s was celebrated in 1548 by the change in name of the province from Tuzulutlan (land of war) to Verapaz (true peace). Although there was always friction between the two races—even rebellions at times through the years—the Verapaz basically escaped the violent upheavals that characterized the conquest elsewhere.

Communal Indian ownership of the land was respected, and the Q’eqchi’s preserved their own language and culture to a remarkable degree. To this day it is assumed in the Verapaz that a Ladino will speak Q’eqchi’, not that an Indian will speak Spanish.

The Dominican rule endured until the mid-18th century, and thereafter the sheer physical isolation of the Verapaz from the rest of Guatemala shielded it from the revolutions of the 19th century. It was not until the 1880s, under President Justo Rufino Barrios, that the land of the Verapaz was finally expropriated from its Indian owners, thus ending the accord originally forged by Juan Matalbatz and Bartolomé de las Casas.

Nevertheless, the synchronism of these two powerful men of peace made what is now Alta Verapaz an island of relative tranquility in the turbulent sea of the conquest during the three centuries that followed them.

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 died at age 37. But that’s another story. The cottage is now a quaint museum; there’s even a replica in Atlanta, Georgia.

Two hundred-plus years before Burns was born, thatch-roof shelters went up all over in Santiago de los Caballeros, now La Antigua Guatemala. They are long since gone; but even if preserved, they would hardly be considered quaint. Similarities end with the thatch roofs and the hard life.

In 1541 survivors of the historic flood that destroyed Almolonga on the skirts of Volcano Agua, the previous site of the seat of the Spanish government in Guatemala, struggled and scrambled to rebuild their lives a few months later. They hurriedly put up provisional poles and cornstalks and sticks of any kind, all shelters with thatch roofs. The people were not well and able-bodied either. They had been traumatized and wounded; they had lost family and foundations. There was no international aid to helicopter in supplies and help. Certainly the fine architecture that graces the ruins seen today in La Antigua was not on the to-do list.

The establishment of the new Santiago was one more headache for Spanish King Carlos V too. At the very least, the timing was bad. There were political pressures of the Protestant Reformation, Turks threatening trade at the Mediterranean coast, trouble in Vienna and Hungary; and Conquistador Pedro de Alvarado had just died in Mexico. “The process of conquest culminated in the 1540s with the definitive establishment of the city of Santiago in the Valley of Panchoy.” (Historia General de Guatemala, Vol II)

The first order of business was to provide a place for mass for the workers doing the urbanization, such as it was in that time. The site chosen for the Ermita de Santa Lucía (a chapel for the image) was at the southwestern corner of the new Santiago, at the road to Almolonga and off the official grid pattern layout so as be out of the way of the work in progress. Within months a church to serve as the temporary cathedral replaced the chapel, and in 1543 church authorities officially moved to the new city.

Interestingly, though, the Church of Santa Lucía was not the first to be built in the new area. Coincidentally, not long before the disaster, a chapel for an image of Santa Ana had been provided for a village to the southeast. According to J. Joaquín Pardo in Guía de Antigua Guatemala, a small church was built in 1541, “…being this the first there was in the Valley of Panchoy.” The Church of Santa Ana has continued to this day, with various careful reconstructions that have retained typical colonial architecture.

“Formal construction developed slowly due to few trained, experienced Spanish workers,” wrote Sidney Markman in Colonial Architecture of Antigua Guatemala. Even monks took up construction work to get the job done, “but also at times as a show of self-imposed humility.” Markman questioned the contribution of the indigenous population to the building process. Since all shelters—housing, churches, even monasteries—were originally of thatch, locals were put to work, but at the time they were not skilled in any construction trade and their numbers were few. Further complicating things were the New Laws issued from Spain in 1542 that freed slaves and relieved workers from abuse and injustices.

Indigenous populations developed outside the new town at its corners: Candelaria built in 1548 for farmers and artisans at the northeast, Manchén on the hill in 1565 for ironworkers and carpenters at the northwest, and Nuestra Señora de los Remedios in 1574 for rope and mat makers at the southeast. About that time the king instructed religious orders to spend more time and money on buildings “worthy of the newly introduced religion so that the Indians might be attracted to it and leave behind their heathen idol-worshiping.” Change began, with brick and stone becoming common in the 17th century. Tile and wood roofs replaced thatch; now as parish churches, residences for priests and large plazas to serve as marketplaces were added.

Santiago de los Caballeros experienced a building boom big time. According to Domingo Juarros in Compendio de la Historia del Reino de Guatemala 1500-1800, by the end of the 17th century there were 38 churches, including 16 monasteries and convents. The northwest area grew so rapidly that the little Church of Manchén was replaced in 1580 by the larger Church of San Sebastián, down from the hill to where it would be less isolated and more convenient, at the north end of 7a avenida.

Architecture flourished not only in religious structures but civic buildings and private homes as well. Styles moved from Renaissance to ultra Baroque, façades full of pillars, columns, arches, layers, niches, swirls and sculpture. These are seen in the ruins of La Antigua today. Of the first parish churches;

Spiral, elaborately decorated columns and niches make the Church of Candelaria, at the north end of 1a avenida, one of the finest examples of Baroque in the New World;

The Renaissance façade of the Church of Nuestra Señora de los Remedios, just over the little bridge as Calle de los Pasos divides toward the Ermita of El Calvario, contains the sculpture of Mary as a child;

Plaster filigree, flower designs and octagonal windows cling to the neglected Church of Manchén, little noticed today on the hillside to the right, across the busy intersection at the north end of 6a avenida, where the road curves left to San Felipe;

The church seen today on the site of the old Church of Santa Lucía, on the Alameda Santa Lucía at 7a calle, built in the late 20th century, “is supposed to be similar to the original,” according to Verle Annis in The Architecture of Antigua Guatemala, 1543-1773. It seems the services of the Church of Santa Lucía had been moved to the Church of San Sebastián;

Denuded of plaster, the Church of San Sebastian reveals brick structure. Franciscan recorder Ximénez wrote that the church had more than 8,000 parishioners by the end of the 18th century. That was more than the cathedral, which served the Spanish population, whose properties were within the town plan. Having not suffered significant earthquake damage in 1773, the church continued until 1874 when the roof collapsed, a century after the town moved to what is now Guatemala City.

Figures are hard to confirm, but most sources agree that the population that moved from Almolonga in 1541, counting local workers, was about 5,000. It grew to about 30,000, beyond the original grid, and was running out of space as well as funds to support the religious institutions. Authorities became stingy with permissions to build. Fortunately, perhaps, religious fervor waned at about the same time.

It had been 230 years and a long way from the thatch roof, improvised shelters. As nature dictates, all things run their courses, and the quakes of 1773 put an end to it all. Or, perhaps a new beginning.

photos by Jack Houston

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 soloist on the “Chautauqua Tour” with William Jennings Bryan, and (at an illegal age) homesteaded along 160 acres in Montana. Next she was in San Francisco selling real estate, and then worked as a reporter on the old San Francisco Call, later moving to Los Angeles where she was employed as a stockbroker. A striking woman, over six feet tall, and later with a mane of white hair, her very presence dominated any group. Even her arrival in Guatemala was unique.

The defunct Pan American Airways was not, as most believe, the first U.S. international airline. It was the Pickwick Bus Company of Los Angeles that began with a scheduled flight to Mexico City. Mildred’s husband was a pilot hired by Pickwick to be the engineer to plan a route extension to Guatemala City. After breakfast the morning of the trial flight, Mildred drove him to the airport. When the navigator failed to show up, the senior pilot asked Mildred to take the navigator’s place. Always ready for an adventure, she parked the car in the shade of the hangar and the three flew off in a Ryan, the same model plane Lindbergh had used to cross the Atlantic. Landing in wheat fields and on dirt roads, they eventually arrived in Guatemala City. The year was 1928, and Pickwick Bus Company, somehow anticipating the stock market crash the following year, immediately went broke. In order to survive Mildred opened the El Patio restaurant which was near the Palace Hotel in Guatemala City, zone 1. The restaurant became an immediate success with the city’s foreign colony as well as with a large group of Guatemalans and functioned for the next 40 years. Mildred did all the work and organization of the restaurant while her husband contributed by amusing clients with great stories of his exploits.

Mildred became a close friend of the first Mrs. Popenoe, Dorothy, when the Popenoes moved to Guatemala City in 1930. In 1932 the Popenoes moved to Tela, Honduras where Dorothy tragically died within a week of arrival. Mildred went to Tela at Wilson Popenoe’s request and escorted his young children to Maryland to be cared for by a relative. Mildred returned to Guatemala via Los Angeles where she found her breakfast dishes still on the table and her car, now four years older, still parked in the hangar’s shade.

Early on she fell in love with Antigua, a town then isolated by a long hour’s trip over a narrow gravel road, and in 1934 Mildred paid $320 for a ruined house on what was then known as the Street of the Bells. Today’s Casa de las Campanas required eight years of reconstruction, the work done with the loving care of an artist—which she was.

This was before tourism was actually an industry. Then, the few tourists that came normally all arrived in Puerto Barrios on the United Fruit Company’s Great White Fleet, took the train to Guatemala City, a bus to Antigua and on to Chichicastenango where they stayed at the Mayan Inn—at the time one of the world’s great hotels and still worthy of honorable mention. The tourists wanted to see a house in Antigua and Mildred obliged. Casa de las Campanas during and after its reconstruction became a part of every tour. To visit the house, one entered and left through a shop where Mildred sold backstrap woven textiles, working many into clothing of her design. She designed everything she herself wore, from her hat down to her shoes. All were of native weaving. When President Castillo Armas’ wife, during a 1957 State visit to Washington, followed Mildred’s example by wearing clothing of indigenous weaving, the press was effusive with its praise.

For two decades virtually every tourist to Antigua signed her guest book and for 10 years she was the only North American resident of the town. The advent of World War II and the closing of Europe to Americans was the beginning of today’s North American colony. By 1948, there were about a dozen Americans living in Antigua, the number falling to about six in 1951, when this writer first arrived. By then, Mildred had divorced Lewis Palmer, who later died in a plane crash in Florida.

Mildred was my family’s great friend, a powerful and varied influence in the early foreign colony and life of Antigua, always quiet in her multiple philanthropies. For years she taught English to a number of local needy children, some later becoming respected guides and entrepreneurs. She was ahead of her time as a singular and fierce advocate for keeping alive the artistry of Guatemala’s weaving. A portion of her textile collection was given to the Museo Ixchel (Guatemala City) during a ceremony honoring her at the American Embassy.

Mildred Covill Palmer died in 1981 in her Casa de las Campanas. She is buried in the Antigua Cemetery, the fourth mausoleum to the left of the entrance.

First published in Revue: June, 1999

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 birthday. This was not wholly by accident; for his cesarean delivery, we had a window of 10 days to choose from. One was July 4, so we went with that. If he’s ever Stateside on that day, I’ll tell him that the fireworks are in his honor.

His birth was, in its way, a manifestation of independence. With the cutting of the umbilical, he became independent of the placenta. To be sure, babies remain dependent in other ways, and true independency comes in stages. I see three independence rites marking the passage to childhood autonomy. The first is birth; the second is the day of weaning; and the third is that first day he or she can be left for a play date at a friend’s house, confident that Mom, Dad, siblings and home all continue to exist, even if they are not in sight.

Where we live, the holiday marking national independence is Sept. 15. This day is celebrated not only in Guatemala but everywhere between Shammu’s house in San Diego to the doorstep of South America (the Costa Rica-Panama border); only Belize is excepted. It is the day we associate with national independence, but in fact it recalls only the first of three separations that wrought the nation states we see today. Guatemala did not experience independence overnight; she had to be born, weaned and separated from her siblings. Independence was not gained once, but thrice: in succession from Spain, Mexico, and El Salvador.

The hubbub of September commemorates the first separation, which, for Guatemala and her neighbors to the east, was painless. The wars of liberation against Spain were waged elsewhere; Chile, Argentina, Mexico and the Andean republics all fought hard to sever the umbilical. What is now Central America was not even a theater of conflict. And so, there is irony in the martial flavor of the independence processions that traipse, tromp and even goosestep through Tegucigalpa, Managua and other capitals on Sept. 15.

The year of birth was 1821. Guatemala (then called Ciudad Real) was free of Spain, but not of Imperial Mexico, which had, at the moment of her own independence, inherited most of the Viceroyalty of New Spain, which also encompassed California, the Great Basin, Texas, Cuba, modern Central America and oodles of islands.

The weaning came in 1823, when the six “sisters” of the former Kingdom of Coathemala—Ciudad Real, San Salvador, Comayagua (Honduras), León (Nicaragua), Costa Rica and Chiapas—declared independence from Mexico as the United Provinces. Emperor Augustín sought to keep them but succeeded only in retaining Chiapas. Agustín not only failed to retain his empire, but his life; in three years he faced a firing squad of Mexican republicans. Four decades later, another emperor, Maximilian, met the same fate. (Moral: If you are ever offered the Mexican throne, the prudent thing is to decline.)

Though not wholly bloodless, as had been the separation from Spain, this second separation was hardly a struggle by the standards of warfare. But the third and final separation was so sanguinary that Guatemalans rightly claim that their independence was purchased with blood.

Since my sons and I are also Guatemalans, we also observe Guatemalan independence. My boys are told that they must be equally proud of both patrias, and study the history of both. Living in Panajachel is helpful for this, since from our house we can look up at a mountain where an engagement in Guatemala’s independence struggle played out. The battlefield in San Andrés Semetabaj is today a semi-developed gated community overlooking Lake Atitlán. I have friends there, so I can always visit. There are no historical markers, much less a bronze monument. In fairness, though Guatemalan and Salvadoran forces slugged it out here, it was not the decisive battle. That occurred where Guatemala City’s San Juan de Dios Hospital now stands. But I’ve never found a marker there, either (although there might be one somewhere.)

By this time, 1837, Comayagua, León and Costa Rica had all broken away from the Federation, as the United Provinces had also been called. The rivalry between the two linchpin provinces, Ciudad Real and San Salvador, provided their opportunity. These three successions did not happen anywhere near Sept. 15 of any year; nonetheless, the date remains the national holiday for those three countries.

The president of the crumbling Federation was Francisco Morazán, an enlightened politician who has departments in Honduras and El Salvador named for him. His opponent, Gen. Rafael Carrera, is portrayed by artists with a bushy mustache and other ladino features. In fact, he was a skinny, illiterate 24-year-old Maya. Most of the money was on Morazán to win, but Carrera vanquished the Federals. His military genius is unrivaled in Central American annals.

Independence was costly for both men. Carrera became the first ruler of the Guatemalan nation state but was assassinated at 42. Morazán survived but died in ignominy; he renounced his Honduran nativity and considered himself Salvadoran, as only San Salvador remained loyal to the Federation until its reduction. Even today, El Salvador, a de facto nation state, is officially the “Republic of El Salvador in Central America.” This name is the surviving vestige of the Federation, the last entity Guatemalans fought to achieve independence.

The original Independence Day, in 1821, was like any other day back then. Sheep grazed, shamans chanted, looms were threaded, maize was shucked, and the eternal Xocomil rippled the glassy face of Atitlán. No convention was held, no parchment signed, no speeches given. It took weeks for the news just to arrive from Mexico. And when it did, it inspired shrugs, not parades.

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 king’s people and the municipality and constant struggles between those of conscience and those who enriched themselves with land acquisition, slavery and fraud. All of this kept the clamps on progress.

Before his death in 1563, Bishop Francisco Marroquín, a Franciscan, had made provisions in his will to found a school for sons of Spanish commoners and, in fact, a year earlier had laid the first stone, on property of the Santo Domingo monastery. He included the income from an 883-pig farm in Jocotenango to sustain the school. Marroquín’s admirable bequest would wait 58 years for fulfillment. The school, Colegio de Santo Tomás, was founded in 1620 and lasted less than 10 years due to trouble with funds. But in 1676 when Spanish King Charles II finally agreed to found a university in Guatemala, including a medical school, the selected site was of the then abandoned Colegio Santo Tomás. Marroquín would have been pleased; he had also left funds to found a university.

At the inauguration of the University of San Carlos in February 1681, according to Durán, “Pomp reigned in the streets and plazas.” But for all the ceremony, teachers for the medical school, promised from Mexico, never showed up. It came as no surprise. Several times during the history of Santiago de los Caballeros, Mexican doctors had been expected, even paid in advance, but didn’t come. “So scarce were doctors that it was impossible to find teachers for the new university medical school.”

Finally in October a degreed doctor arrived from Spain to head the department. But how discouraging it must have been for him to find empty classrooms! Given the history of doctors, the profession was not respected by the noble class and not preferred even by other social classes. “…nothing attracted as much attention from parents as priestly studies,” wrote Pardo, Castellanos and Muñoz.

A plague in 1686 wreaked havoc, and “doctors fled from the hospitals,” wrote Durán. A second doctor, Miguel Fernández, arrived from Spain and, having no students for 10 years, addressed himself to social and legal aspects of medicine. He insisted that good government requires healthy people, thus the right to demand compliance with laws. Administrators of hospitals were ordered to “not meddle in medical matters.” The brothers of the Order of San Juan de Dios, who notoriously wrote faulty prescriptions and to whose care had been entrusted administration of the hospitals, ignored the order. Fernández pled that those who offered cures without knowledge needed to be prevented if the people were ever to trust doctors. Without that, he added, there was little hope of attracting doctors to teach at the university. But the practice of medicine by those who had no right to do so continued, bringing a public declaration in 1703 that “prohibited the practice of medicine under pain of six years of exile.”

The first medical student graduated in 1703. Only one of the seven who graduated by 1725 took up the struggle for an honorable medical profession. Others “transformed their noble and useful profession into sterile arguments and hateful rivalries.” Their personal behavior didn’t help. Durán refers to the “sect of drunken doctors.” Even the brothers of the Order of San Juan de Dios “ate well and drank numerous cups of chocolate while the sick suffered hunger.”

There were no medical graduates in the next 25 years. The university building tumbled in the earthquake of 1751, and the university moved to new construction south of the cathedral in 1763. By 1773 there had been only five more medical graduates.

Just as the history of Santiago de los Caballeros, now La Antigua Guatemala, was born of catastrophe, so ended the colonial city and the first period of university medicine with the earthquakes of 1773. Plus, in the months that followed, an epidemic, believed to be typhoid, hit the town killing 4,000, “doing much more damage than the earthquake,” wrote Durán. Victims were buried by the hundreds. Church and civil authorities talked and talked to find a solution and formed the first public health board in Guatemala. But it was the archbishop, not doctors, who figured out the source of the disease. The workers had fled to the highlands after the earthquake and returned carrying the disease. It then spread rapidly in the hospitals, where patients slept together and ate from the same plate. In the end, the head of the medical school concluded that the epidemic was due to influence of the stars that unleashed sulfates in the water which, freed in the air, poisoned and coagulated the blood.

Provisional care was provided, funded by a tax on shopkeepers, for the sick who would remain in Santiago while churches and hospitals moved to the new capital to begin again. To the sadness of silence as people left Santiago was added the silence of death due to the epidemic.

History and legend are full of stories. As bumpy as the health care road was, progress came—slowly, but it came. It would be 16 years before another medical student graduated. Meanwhile the study of medicine was flourishing in Spain, with thousands of students. Nonetheless, in Guatemala, “Teaching of medicine was defective originally, lacking teachers and students, but the errors of ideas and methods were the same as those anywhere,” according to Durán. “At the end of the 18th century the University of Guatemala was parallel to modern teaching of that century in Europe.

“The University of San Carlos was outstanding, producing books, doing dissections and experiments, founding an anatomy museum…and doing blood transfusions 80 years before London.”

References:

• Durán, Las Ciencias Médicas en Guatemala
• Álvarez, Hospital de los Hermanos de San Juan de Dios
• Álvarez, Historia General de Guatemala, Vol. II
• Pardo, Castellanos, Muñoz, Guía de Antigua Guatemala
• López, Proyecciones Socioculturales en la América Hispano

The author thanks Dr. Johnny Long for assistance with this series.

photos: Jack Houston

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.

photos: Jack Houston

By 1600 Hospital Real de Santiago and Hospital de San Alejo had been up and running for almost 50 years. Still, in Santiago de los Caballeros, the capital of the Spanish Kingdom in Guatemala, now La Antigua Guatemala, “the scientific poverty of the 17th century” enslaved doctors in circles of useless theories, wrote Carlos Martínez Durán in Las Ciencias Médicas en Guatemala. “Hospitals were simple asylums for the sick, consoled by religion.”

Medical advances in Spain were a long way from Guatemala. A surgeon, Juan de los Reyes, arrived and became the first medical administrator of Hospital Real in 1595. He also took up the challenge of demanding that all persons who presented themselves as doctors show their credentials. This, of course, was something most could not do. But word of the flourishing new capital lured the ambitious, some good, serving years without pay, and some not-so-good but with hopes of a comfortable livelihood. In 1612 the municipality supported a demand to crack down on all who practiced medicine without credentials “as required by the laws of the kingdom, which practice results in much harm to the town,” records Durán.

Persistent efforts of the municipality brought to Santiago a degreed doctor from Mexico. In 1622 he accomplished what is believed to be the first autopsy in Central America, after an apparent suicide by poisoning at the town jail.

Civil authorities further demonstrated their concern for healthcare in 1636, recognizing the need to isolate the number of lepers who roamed the streets. Records show that the disease had been carried to New Spain by African slaves. The townsfolk feared the lepers, believing the deforming skin disease to be contagious. To isolate the disease, the Captain General, per King Philip IV, ordered construction of a hospital outside the west end of town near the Guacalate River. There a mill for grinding wheat could add income to the stipend granted by the king to support the hospital. In 1640 the Order of San Juan de Dios, which had been administering Hospital Real for three years, accepted administration of the third hospital in Santiago, Hospital San Lázaro.

Earthquake damage in 1717 vacated the hospital. By the time it was reconstructed in 1734, some patients had found refuge in town with the Bethlemite Order; others apparently were left on the streets. According to Verle Annis, an edict directed that all lepers in other hospitals or free should be placed in the rebuilt hospital. Abandoned after the 1773 quake, the property became the municipal cemetery in 1834 and remains so today.

Backing up to 1636, at the same time the Captain General was concerned about the lepers, Bishop Bartolomé González Soltero was anxious to build a hospital for clergy, complying with the Council of Trent. A bronze plaque on the side of the church of San Pedro Apóstol credits Bishop Marroquín with the work, but in fact Marroquín had had his hands full before he died a century before. Eventually Bishop Soltero bought a house with cathedral funds to be used for the project. But the scarce funds allotted for support were instead distributed where they were more needed. Although “they were very numerous the religious that existed at that time in the city of Santiago de Guatemala,” not many were sick or aged, writes Dr. Fidel Aguirre Medrano.

The first stone was finally laid in 1646, but the epidemic of 1647 delayed construction again. More than 1,000 died in a few months, and the doctors couldn’t help. In fact, according to Durán, “they had the custom of fleeing the city when the plagues entered.”

Then, during a series of earthquakes in 1651, wild animals came into the town, including a fierce lion that roared through, ripping papers from the wall of the Town Hall. “What next?” the people must have groaned. “Will we ever have peace and health?” But according to Domingo Juarros, reports of disasters and epidemics of that time often make no mention of hospitals or care, only prayers to religious figures. It was believed that the bishop placated divine justice and health returned when he went barefoot in processions. Alas, work was delayed again when the bishop died.

Hospital San Pedro Apóstol was finally ready for clergy patients in 1663, administered by the Order of San Juan de Dios. A doorway flanked by twisted columns and topped with a niche with similar columns, on 3a avenida behind the present church on 6a calle, may have been the entrance to a chapel of the hospital before the church was built.

After the earthquake of 1773 Hospital San Pedro Apóstol served not only clergy but the community as well. Although purpose and administration changed over the centuries, the hospital, now called Obras Sociales del Santo Hermano Pedro, is the only colonial hospital that has continued until the present time in La Antigua Guatemala.

The young Pedro de San José Betancourt, now Santo Hermano Pedro, arrived in Guatemala in 1651 with a passion to serve his fellow man, echoing the efforts of Fray Matías de Paz and Bishop Francisco Marroquín a hundred years earlier (see Part I in June Revue). In a simple, donated thatch-roof house on the Pensativo River, south of the San Francisco monastery, Hermano Pedro ministered to the sick and the poor he had brought from the street, his first patient being an African slave. Support came from donations and from 30 community families who each provided food one day a month for the dozen-or-so receiving care.

Pedro solicited funds and land for the growing number of convalescents in the hospital he started to build. Although he would not live to see it finished, those who followed not only finished construction of the hospital, which functioned officially in 1667, but formed the Bethlemite Congregation, which went on to found hospitals in South America. Hospital Belén was the first convalescent hospital in New Spain, for recuperating rest and comfort, and the fifth and final hospital founded in Santiago de los Caballeros. Some lepers found refuge there after the 1717 quake. In 1740 there were 20 beds for men, 8 for women. After the 1773 earthquake the work moved to the new capital, now Guatemala City. And Hermano Pedro became the first saint from Central America in 2002.

By the end of the 18th century there were many complaints against the Order of San Juan de Dios. The brothers had come from Portugal with the sole purpose of founding and administering hospitals. Despite the lofty mission, members of the order had fallen to padding their own pockets. The prior himself was caught by surprise one night, ready to run off to Mexico with trunks packed with hospital supplies. Durán writes, “It’s incredible that a prior of the brothers of San Juan de Dios had lasted more than 15 years administering the hospital, with grave detriment to the health of the sick and integrity of the funds.”

The colonial hospitals circuited a complicated maze of founding, ownership and sponsorship. It was common for a bishop or church or monastery to acquire land, sometimes purchased, sometimes through gifts or inheritance, and assign income from crops or animals for particular works. This surely led to tricky politics.

But probably no more so than the vying for European thrones during the same period or clever taxation schemes in the American colonies. In 1710 England taxed soap as a frivolous luxury. On the bright side, in 1714 champagne was invented in France, and the first typewriter was patented in England.

References:

• Durán, Las Ciencias Médicas en Guatemala
• Annis, The Architecture of Antigua Guatemala 1543-1773
• Medrano, Historia de los Hospitales Coloniales de Hispanoamérica
• Juarros, Compendio de la Historia del Reino de Guatemala 1500-1800

The author thanks Dr. Johnny Long for assistance with this series.
Next month: A medical school is founded in Guatemala.

Guatemala City in 1875, view from Cerrito del Carmen (Eadweard Muybridge, Fototeca Guatemala Cirma)

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 18th century after the destruction of what is now called La Antigua Guatemala.

Nueva Guatemala a la Asunción grew slowly during its first century. Hard times provided few funds for public and private building. It did not reach a level of amenities enjoyed by the earlier citizens of La Antigua until after 1850. Only with the income from coffee exports after 1880 did Guatemala have the resource base to build a modern city.

Old timers alive today remember when the city virtually stopped at 18th street. To venture out to Tivoli or Santa Clara (today’s zone 9 and zone 10) was to take an excursion into the countryside. It took nearly 20 years for the city to recover from the devastating earthquakes of 1917-18.

After the revolution of 1944, the city began to grow dramatically. Industrial expansion created jobs which drew people to the city. The failure of land reform denied opportunities for many people in the countryside. The earthquake of 1976 and subsequent violence in the Highlands encouraged people to move to the capital.

Now “vegetative growth”—as the demographers call it—promises to duplicate the size of the city every generation. The current population of greater Guatemala City is over two million and is projected to reach four million by 2020.

With urban growth have come the problems of modern cities: traffic, crime, water supplies and pollution. Marginal barrios, street children and the proliferation of informal street markets add to the list. But at the same time, growth has brought energy to the city, dramatic vertical and horizontal expansion, new commercial centers and wider entertainment and cultural opportunities.

What will it lead to? What will the city look like in the next 20-30 years? What will it be like for its citizens? Will it recreate the fabled tacita de plata of yesteryear? A center of creativity, or a new urban jungle reminiscent of the New York of “West Side Story,” the London of Dickens or the Paris of “Les Miserables”?

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 in the world to invent the zero, a concept unknown to such contemporaries as the Romans. Agricultural husbandry was practiced here before anywhere else in the Americas.

In the late classical period, ancient Guatemalans erected the first arguable “skyscrapers” in the Americas. Not until over 1,000 years later was the height of Temple IV (71 meters) exceeded—and that by a modern building in Chicago, circa 1880.

Following the 1944 Liberal Revolution, Guatemala became the first, and to date the only, Central American state to see the emergence of a “nation builder,” a leader with the stature of a Mandela, a Gandhi, or an Ataturk. He was President Juan José Arrévalo.

Under Arrévalo’s successor, Jacobo Árbenz, the first truly comprehensive land reform on mainland Latin America occurred in Guatemala; President Árbenz himself willingly surrendered land to landless peasants.

In 1871, Guatemala became the first Central American society to eschew state religion. Over the second half of the 20th century, Guatemala became the first Hispanic nation where the majority of the population professes the Protestant religion.

Peru, Bolivia and other South American countries had long given official status to indigenous languages. But in 1998, Guatemala became the first Central American country to constitutionally recognize the first language of virtually every citizen.

Guatemala is the first Latin American state to boast Nobel laureates in multiple disciplines. There are Miguel Ángel Asturias (literature) and Rigoberta Menchú (peace).

In the early 21st century, Guatemala is the first Hispanic country to produce a comprehensive homeschool curriculum (see page 12). This happened in spite of Guatemala’s ranking as the second least developed Hispanic nation (after Equatorial Guinea), and the association of homeschooling with highly developed countries.

Ruin of inside wall of Hospital Real de Santiago, now within a private garden

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 Ciencias Médicas en Guatemala.

What was done in 16th Century Guatemala for wounds from enemy arrows and clubs? Or repeated and prolonged epidemics? Or burns from fires that raged through farms? How was one treated in case of a lion attack? Domingo Juarros records an offer of substantial reward of gold or corn to the one who would kill a lion of ‘extraordinary size’ that kept descending Volcano Agua, terrorizing Almolonga, the second site of the seat of the Spanish Kingdom in Guatemala.

It was not an easy place to live. The Spanish brought diseases to which the indigenous people were vulnerable, and the new land presented tropical diseases unknown to the Spanish. As if all that wasn’t enough, natural disasters wreaked their havoc again and again. And again and again the people turned to religion for all they could expect: a little comfort to ease the pain and, they believed, appease the powers that had caused it.

Then came September 11, 1541. Saturated slopes of Volcano Agua released earth and trees and rocks and boulders to rush through Almolonga and kill half the population. It was not the only time the people would believe the end of the world had come. Bishop Francisco Marroquín gathered his remaining flock together and post haste identified a place for relocation, not far away where now is called La Antigua Guatemala. The move was affected in December.

They were a tired, broken people indeed, both physically and psychologically, virtually all of them grief stricken, some orphaned children or grandparents whose families had perished as well as their homes. All of them had experienced trauma as never before. It seems fair to guess that many had fractures, wounds or infections from the muddy waters that mercilessly knocked everything and everybody out of their path.

There had been a hospital in Almolonga, Hospital de la Misericordia, the first to be built in Guatemala. It was basically a place for the poor and a shelter for pilgrims. Durán calls it “a simple thatch hut to shelter orphans and invalids.” In Almolonga medicine almost did not exist. No records list those cared for with disease or injury; no doctors appear on population lists.

Hospital de la Misericordia had been ordered with royal priority and prominent location. In that time of Spanish conquest King Charles V issued a decree for the founding of hospitals for all people under Spanish jurisdiction. Years before, Dominican Fray Bartolomé de las Casas had begun the struggle for hospital attention for the indigenous people. After the move, some Franciscan clergy remained to care for those who would stay in Almolonga.

But hospitals then were not as we know them today. Medical care, such as it was, was given in church atriums and arcaded corridors of convents. This created a fertile field for fast-talkers and opportunists who presented themselves as doctors, including barbers who did the bleeding. Chronist Francisco Ximénez writes of one who “took pulses of the sick as often as he took them to the cemetery.” Antonio de Remesal tells of one in Almolonga who put the people in greater danger than anything else, burying “more Spanish in one year than had died in 10 wars of the New Spain.” The man was prohibited from seeing patients, a prohibition lifted due to lack of doctors in the great need after 9/11/1541. No wonder the people feared doctors.

Interestingly, in Europe at that time Spain was flourishing and, with a long history, had become the leader in medical facilities. Laurentino Díaz López records hospitals and a school of medicine since the 10th Century. Spain had “six mental hospitals when England, France and Germany had none.” In the colonies, hospitals had been built in Santo Domingo and Mexico. But Spanish days of glory were fading by the time its medicine came to Guatemala in the 18th Century.

Meanwhile, time passed and life returned to Santiago de los Caballeros, as the new capital was then called. The beauty of the flowers and kindness of climate helped to heal the horror. Optimism rose along with the walls of beautiful churches and monasteries. The people were willing to forgive the powers that had rained terror on them.

But it didn’t take long for the compassionate Dominican Brother Matías de Paz to notice the indigenous poor dying on the streets due to cold, bad food and lack of hygiene as they worked digging foundations for noble housing. He bought a site near the plaza of the church of Candelaria, off the northeast end of town, and built a thatch roof house to shelter the sick he “carried on his shoulders when they could not walk,” says Dr. Fidel Aguirre Medrano. He went through the streets collecting funds to feed those in what would become Hospital de los Indios, or Hospital de San Alejo, the second to be founded in Guatemala.

With increasing numbers in his care, de Paz realized he needed help and moved the work to across the street north of the Santo Domingo monastery. Even then, records Dr. Ramiro Rivera Álvarez, support became so difficult that a man and his wife were named to go to the butchers and solicit a pound of meat for each patient.

In 1559 the king agreed to sponsor the hospital that had been built for Spanish and mulattos in 1553 on a site Bishop Marroquín had purchased within city limits, on Calle de la Concepción, now 4a calle, at 2a avenida. According to Ximénez, the site was to include the hermitage and Hospital de Nuestra Señora de los Remedios, to whom it would be dedicated and which name it originally carried, as did Hospital de la Misericordia in Almolonga. Research does not explain why that hermitage was not built there but years later on the south edge of town. Once under royal sponsorship the name changed to Hospital Real de Santiago (Royal Hospital).

Marroquín recommended the efficiency of joining Hospital de San Alejo and Hospital Real de Santiago. The hospital would have four rooms, separating the indígena and the Spanish. It sounded like a good plan, but neither Marroquín nor the king expected the strong resistance of the indigenous people to sharing a facility with the Spanish. The joint hospital was tried, separated, tried again but separated again in 1578. The indigenous …continued on page 44

patients reoccupied Hospital de San Alejo, with a stipend from the king and administration by the Dominicans. The king had added a public pharmacy, a service the Franciscans also would offer at their monastery. Meanwhile, Bishop Marroquín died in 1563, leaving a remarkable legacy of service.

A medical administrator first came to the Hospital Real in 1595, then the order San Hipólito, then another doctor and finally in 1667 the Order of San Juan de Dios, the sole purpose of which was overseeing care of the sick. Hospital de San Alejo was delivered to the Order in 1669, a decision not accepted easily by the Dominicans, who had been in charge for almost a century. Authorities had not given up on joining the two hospitals and gave the order once and for all in 1685. The new facility, not taking the name of either, became Hospital de San Juan de Dios, under which it functioned until 1776.

In 1669 Hospital of San Alejo had just 12 beds; in 1686 Hospital de San Juan de Dios had 24. The town council later bought adjacent houses for expansion and for building the Church of San Juan de Dios. Eventually the spacious facility occupied an entire square block.

The peace that had returned to the town after its establishment in 1541 was not to last. Various plagues and diseases, including perhaps typhoid, recurred for 20 years, with, according to Durán, “…the doctors so necessary in those times conspicuous for their absence, and only saints and virgins could heal and comfort.” Earthquakes and volcanic eruptions continued, not to mention that the beloved Bishop Marroquín’s successor was his opposite. Little was recorded of medical care in the last years of the 16th century; obtaining funds was always a struggle. But Marroquín had left terms in his will by which he would again years later care for the people.

Meanwhile Martin Luther died disconsolate in Germany in 1546. In mid-16th Century the Bubonic Plague assaulted London, and the worse earthquake in history hit China, killing 830,000.

The author thanks Dr. Johnny Long for assistance with this article.

Next month: Three more hospitals serve Guatemala in the 17th and 18th Centuries.

References:
Durán, Las Ciencias Médicas en Guatemala
Juarros, Compendio de la Historia del Reino de Guatemala 1500-1800
López, Proyecciones Socioculturales en la América Hispaña
Medrano, Historia de los Hospitales Coloniales Hispanoamérica
Álvarez, El Hospital de Los Hermanos de San Juan de Dios