A few years later the talented artist, who wrote her first song when she was 5 years old, won an international singing competition in Mexico, which landed her a record deal in Miami.

However, it appears that writing, singing, producing and playing her own instruments aren’t enough; Flaminia also juggles being a doctor alongside her music career—something she admits hasn’t always been easy.

“I did have to stop my music while I was finishing med school, and then had to put med school on hold when I was in Miami. But I was able to promote the album this year because of a favorable work schedule, which allowed me to concentrate on music in the afternoons,” Flaminia explains.

After recording her first album in the U.S., Flaminia returned to Guatemala in 2006 and encountered various challenges. “I didn’t have a huge budget to hire studios and producers to do whatever I wanted, so that set me back a lot—until I was able to do it on my own.”

In 2009 she collaborated with Guatemalan DJ Francis Davila on his debut album Shine, which propelled the duo onto the number one spot on local radio stations.

The singer-come-doctor, who lists Alanis Morissette and Nine Inch Nails among her musical inspirations, says she can’t imagine her life without music.

“It’s what I love doing and it helps me release what I’m feeling. I don’t write songs thinking about commercial success, I write them because I’m going through something, or I like a melody in my head and want to extend it. I think the music industry’s lost that. It’s all become about how you look and how much you undress, instead of actually transmitting something and being a musician.”

Flaminia, whose single Whisper was number one on the music station 94.9 FM last month, has no desire to give up her job as a doctor in Guatemala City. Instead, she eventually wants to set up an organization to aid public hospitals in her homeland.

Flaminia’s new single Wanted (Never again) is on sale now in music stores across the country.

A candid chat with INGUAT’s Walter Fischer

Imagine a place with volcanoes and mountains, jungles and deserts, white sands and black beaches … but while you and I have already discovered the beauty of Guatemala, the majority of the world remains oblivious.

INGUAT, the country’s tourism board, has embarked on a 10-year campaign to increase tourism in the country at both a national and international level.

“Guatemala has a lot of unique products on offer like its selva (jungle) and Mayan archaeology,” says Walter Fischer, senior advisor at INGUAT. “It’s cultural tourism that doesn’t exist anywhere else in the world, and we want to put it at everyone’s fingertips.”

The organization’s latest strategy promotes Guatemala as El Corazon del Mundo Maya (The Heart of the Mayan World) and, coupled with increased advertising of the nation’s attractions, aims to help the country achieve its potential in the travel industry by 2020.

“Costa Rica has 25% of what Guatemala has,” says Fischer. However, since it has promoted itself better, Costa Rica remains a more obvious holiday destination for vacationing foreigners.

INGUAT’s emphasis is on increasing tourism but with customer satisfaction over customer sales–so that visitors leave planning their return trip. It also wants to capitalize on upcoming events to draw in tourists, such as the year of the Mayan Prophecy in 2012.

Guatemala… has cultural tourism that doesn’t exist anywhere else in the world, and we want to put it at everyone’s fingertips. —Walter Fischer, INGUAT

This year has already seen an increase in tourism compared with last year and it’s hoped the numbers will keep rising. Promotional television advertisements for Guatemala have started appearing in various nations around the world as well as on popular channels like CNN and National Geographic.

In addition to pushing the country in places far afield like Germany, Spain and the UK, INGUAT is also canvassing at a more local level and encouraging neighbors to visit.

Central America has Guatemala at its fingertips; residents of these countries don’t require a visa to visit and many unique destinations are just a bus ride away.

With the recent increase in air travel across the region, INGUAT hopes tourists will be persuaded to extend their vacation and visit a chain of popular attractions throughout the area.

“Rather than someone coming just to visit Mexico, why not go from Palenque to Tikal, on to Antigua and fly back?” asks Fischer.

Internal tourism is also very important to INGUAT. Viaja a Guatemala sin salir de Guatemala (Travel to Guatemala without leaving Guatemala) is a new project that encourages residents to go beyond the tourist hot spots of Antigua and Panajachel and visit lesser-known archaeological towns around the country like Uaxactun.

While Fischer admits the level of in-country violence is a challenge to the country’s tourism industry, he insists the international perception of Guatemala remains its biggest barrier to development.

“There’s a lot of negative publicity about Guatemala,” he says. “But there’s also a lot of positive things to say about the country, which rarely gets mentioned.”

written by Anna-Claire Bevan

Francis Dávila is one of Guatemala’s leading DJs and is heralded as being hugely influential in the country’s electronic scene.

“I first started playing a live act with a sampler and a synthesizer at the local raves in the late 90s,” says Dávila. But it wasn’t until a few years later when he moved to San Francisco, Calif., that he discovered the magic behind being a DJ.

“I understood that it wasn’t just about putting tracks together, it was a way of expressing myself by selecting the right tunes at the right time, blending sounds and beats in a harmonic way.”

Growing up he gained inspiration from a lot of ‘80s bands like Depeche Mode, New Order and OMD.

Dávila made music for TV, radio commercials and the film La Casa de Enfrente before returning to Guatemala to focus on his career as a DJ and music producer. Today he enjoys the challenge of converting people here to a genre of music that is already popular across Europe.

The Guatemalan-born star has already shared decks with DJ Tiësto, Armin Van Buuren and Paul van Dyk, and is currently working on a new album due for release next year.

As far as future ambitions go, he says his dream is to keep playing music with the same feeling, energy and illusion he has had up until now.

You can catch Dávila at his upcoming appearance on May 13 at 8 p.m. at La Casbah, 5a ave. norte #30, La Antigua.

First seen in 1973, he became a common jungle personage. Like Lord Greystoke, he was suckled by the wild beasts, crowned his head with the iridescent feathers of quetzal, and drank directly from the fountains of origin. Navigator, explorer, biologist, photographer, author, synergetic geometrician, he walked in boustrophedon the four cardinal points, leaving testimony of his path everywhere. —Sensei Manuel Corleto

Oliver Thor Janson is a wildlife conservationist who uses photography as a tool to promote environmental education, his life passion.

Born in Chicago, the son of a Swedish immigrant father and an Irish-Chippewa Indian mother, Thor began his career as an explorer at the age of four when he ventured out on his tricycle far beyond the home territory. At the police station, he was asked to reveal the names of his parents but little Ollie could only repeat the names of the two beloved dogs who had raised him: “Jimi, Pepe, Jimi, Pepe.”

Childhood was spent between Chicago and the forests of Northern Michigan. Ollie took an early interest in nature studies and loved to keep snakes as pets. From the age of six Ollie summered at Camp Charlevoix in the pristine boreal forest near Traverse City.

One dawn, he hurried down for the daily reveille, flag raising and inspection by the lake shore and stood in a line with the 300 other scouts. Inspection involved the camp nurse checking to see if your fingernails and ears were clean. When she came to little Ollie she suddenly screamed at the top of her lungs. A water snake, which he hadn’t had time to put back in its popsicle-stick house, was poking its head out from the neck of Ollie’s T-shirt. This funny event became a permanent part of Charlevoix’s camp lore.

At university, young Janson focused on biology and music. At Schiller International University in Berlin, he studied music theory under the famous organist Gerhard Blum. At Southern Illinois University, he focused on experimental electronic music and forestry. At the University of San Francisco, he entered a pre-med program and studied oceanography, publishing a paper on Holothurians and the life of deep ocean trenches.

“It seemed like the primary focus of most of my colleagues was simply how to get themselves set up for maximum money making, not liberating their fellow human beings from the oppression of disease. To take advantage of people when they are down—when they are sick—in order to extract as much money from them as they can bear, that seemed wrong to me. Such an attitude is not likely to endear a young student to the medical faculty. So I decided to resign from the university, hop on my Honda 350 motorcycle, and tune in to the wild blue yonder … heading south … destination unknown!”

It was during this, his first trip around the world in 1973, that Janson visited Guatemala, where he lived for a time with a Kaqchikel Indian family in a dirt-floor hut by the shores of Lake Atitlán. “These humble Mayan people taught me that happiness cannot be bought with money; happiness is a quality of the spirit.”

Janson continued around the world, sailing to the most remote islands of Polynesia, working in New Zealand, trekking across Africa and Asia and finally returning to California. “I knew within minutes of stepping on American soil that I would not stay there. It was just too civilized. I guess I had gone native somewhere in the jungles of Mesoamerica. But where would I go? I remembered the happy times I had spent with the Maya in Guatemala and was determined to return.”

It was February of 1976 and Janson was working in Chicago to get some traveling money together when the news of the devastating earthquake in Guatemala came over the wire. As soon as he could, he returned to the land of the Maya to assist in the reconstruction.

That fall he met and became friends with Professor Mario Dary, Director of San Carlos University’s School of Biology, who invited him to join the faculty, where Janson instigated a project to study and protect the endangered manatee. Janson’s project led to the establishment of the Chocón-Machacas Manatee Reserve at Río Dulce, where he was to be the park director.

In 1982, Janson established his own conservation group, Defensores de la Naturaleza, where he remained as director until 1987. Dissatisfied with the government’s handling of forest conservation, he spearheaded an innovative program to open the way for a private organization to manage wild lands with private-sector funding.

His project resulted in the establishment of the Sierra de las Minas Biosphere Reserve, which is managed by Defensores. At present, Janson is focused on protecting the quetzal and its habitat and is director of the Cloud Forest Defense Project.

“I love Antigua and I love the Monoloco. I could spend the rest of my life here, but I’m approaching 30 and I can’t do it forever,” he says. “I miss my family a lot, too – I have two fairly new nephews.”

Before moving to La Antigua from his native Minneapolis in September 2006, Zac had visited Guatemala twice, as his older brother was working at a nonprofit here. Zac learned of the Monoloco bartending job through his brother.

“My most memorable experience was when my brother and I lived together; we overlapped here for a year. It made us so much closer. That first year was so much fun.”

Zac’s first New Year’s was another memorable time. “It was incredible, I was blown away with how busy it was and how much fun it was.”

And what will he miss most about Antigua?

“Honestly, it’s going to the Monoloco and all the friends I met here – all the staff, the managers, the owners – because they’ve been so nice to me. I’ll miss the easy lifestyle, too.”

And those many friends will miss him, too. ¡Qué le vaya bien!

How many years living in Guatemala?
Almost a quarter of a century.

Why the move to La Antigua?
Guatemala was terra incognita: wild, unfashionable, yet terribly alluring and void of Western habits. Mostly, I was drawn to experience the vibrant indigenous Mayan culture. It was a unique privilege—Maltiox chech alak! Antigua was the ideal base from where to explore this country then considered the Bhutan of Latin America. An ideal climate, an extraordinary setting of old stones, myths and legends, close to an international airport, yet a world away from civilization.

For those who fell under her spell it couldn’t get any better. And, believe it or not, the civil war had an appealing edge that drew a small but interesting group of adventurous individuals.

Antigua’s best time?
Early morning walk and the puffs of Fuego!

What has changed, for the better or the worse?
Being “out there” in Central America was very seductive. Antigua exuded a culturally authentic sense of place, and something unique and magical was always in store. It was unpretentious, its commercial ambitions unobtrusive and was graced by poetic imperfections and centuries-old patina that made Antigua a very special place in the world. Communication was expensive and unstable and delicacies were rare, making the arrival of a post card or a bar of Toblerone feel like a gift from the gods!

In the past decade a whirlwind of circumstances has transformed Antigua into a backpacker mecca, a petri dish for fast food and culturally invasive commerce where the “Miami Colonial” is replacing the baroque and making Antigua a caricature of itself. Even its ghosts are fleeing the fumes ‘n tunes of the fast stuff. A waste of potential and valuable opportunities.

Carole Wilson Lewis

Carole recounts that, as a child, she loved to spend time in her grandmother’s kitchen. During that time, she says, the family cook held a respected and full-time position, not only in her grandmother’s home, but in many Guatemalan homes. The cook’s position needed to be full time, because food preparation was so time consuming. Carole remembers that when she was very young, the cook still went to the Guatemala City mercado by horse and carriage. Then, when the food arrived home, it took hours of preparation before the wonderful meals flowed out of the kitchen.

Although her grandparents built one of the first modern homes in Guatemala, designed by a protégé of the well-known French architect Le Corbusier, Carole’s grandmother insisted upon building a poyo into her kitchen. There, alongside her modern appliances, the traditional poyo burned coals on its surface. On top of these coals, meat and a variety of vegetable were boiled together, producing the delicious broth of a cocido. A dos fuegos was used to produce a roasted meal. Food would be placed in a pan on top of the coals of the poyo. Another pan, also with coals in it, would be placed on top of the first, providing heat from both top and bottom. Preparation of tortillas would, of course, begin with the grinding stone, or piedra de moler.

In search of the meals of her childhood and youth, Carole has utilized many older cookbooks. In some recipes, she has found that the given amount of ingredients can still be used today. But, with the oven replacing a dos fuegos, for example, it is difficult to accurately judge cooking temperatures and time. In other recipes, the amount of ingredients to use is difficult to determine. The oldest cookbook Carole has utilized, Lybro de Cocyna, which dates from 1844, is an anonymous compilation of recipes published by the University of San Carlos. One of the recipes calls for “one cent’s worth of cinnamon.” What is the equivalent amount of cinnamon for today’s recipe? A teaspoon? A tablespoon? More? Less?

The oldest cookbook Carole has utilized, Lybro de Cocyna, which dates from 1844, is an anonymous compilation of recipes published by the University of San Carlos

Carole’s passionate hobby of the past several years has been to authentically adapt ingredients and cooking methods from traditional recipes to today’s lifestyle. This has involved Carole’s analysis of many versions of a specific recipe, which results in her own compilation, or “consensus” recipe, and then trials of that recipe in Carole’s own kitchen.

Starting with the 1920s cookbook by Doña Crecencia de López, Carole has utilized, among others, the cookbooks of Doña Catalina de Balsells, Doña Aurora Sierra Franco de Álvarez and Doña Julia de Montano. Who knows? There may one day be a cookbook by Doña Carole Wilson Lewis, one that would include an easier version of these recipes for the modern lifestyle.

Carole’s own education in cooking began as a young bride. Her first husband, André Trombetta, was a Frenchman whose mother had learned to cook with the noted French chef, Mme. Bonnamour. Mme. Bonnamour, among her other culinary achievements, supervised the cooking in the boyhood home of Prince Phillip, husband of Queen Elizabeth of England. Carole recounts that her husband “was always talking about how to bone a chicken or how to make puff pastry.”

Her husband’s descriptions further fueled Carole’s own interest in all things related to cooking, and in the early 1980s, she opened Le Marmiton, “The Kitchen Helper,” a cooking store in Zone 9, Guatemala City. The store sold kitchen utensils, and various well-known individuals gave cooking lessons. Copeland Marks, a food historian who wrote for Bon Appétit gave lessons on Southeast Asian cooking. Marks was also the author of False Tongues and Sunday Bread: A Guatemalan and Mayan Cookbook. Jean Francois, now owner and chef of Tartines, taught French cooking at Le Marmiton. With the death of her husband, Carole closed Le Marmiton and eventually moved to La Antigua Guatemala.

Carole shares with us the following traditional recipes, updated for today’s cook and kitchen, but retaining special traditional features, such as the use of the jug with a small mouth, the tinaja. She has also provided the Spanish words for ingredients, for our English speakers who would like to shop in the mercado or smaller tiendas, as well as the prices which she has most recently experienced. The Piloyada Antigüeña is one of the dishes which was prepared using traditional methods from Carole’s childhood, and which we can all enjoy today, with the use of our modern appliances.

Fresco de Súchiles

This is a fermented drink made from fruit, most commonly from pineapple.
In an earthen jug with a small mouth
(a tinaja) place the following:

• Peel of one pineapple (piña)
• 1 cup toasted dried kernels of yellow corn (maiz amarillo)
• ½ brick of panela, diced (panela is a cake of brown sugar)
• 1 inch of fresh ginger, crushed (jengibre)
• ½ cup toasted barley (cebada)
• 4 dried jocotes (jujubes) found at spice stalls in the mercado (optional).
• 10 cups of water

Tie up the following in a piece of cheesecloth and add to the jug.
• 5 toasted allspice seeds (pimienta gorda)
• 1 tsp toasted anise seeds (anís)

Cover the tinaja with cheesecloth and let ferment undisturbed for three days.
Strain and serve cold. Add more water as needed.

Chinchivir

A típico drink of Antigua, is made from a “secret” recipe passed from generation to generation. Very few people have the recipe. Café Ana has it on its menu. You can also buy it at Ferretería Armas on 7a avenida norte (a hardware store where you can also buy cucurucho costumes in all sizes) and at a house next to Colegio La Salle on 4a avenida norte.

If you mix
• ginger beer or
• ginger tea with Fresco de Súchiles, you can come up with your own version of Chinchivir.

Refresco de Chan

This is a refreshing drink made from the seeds called Chan (Hyptis suaveolens), a favorite drink of the peoples of the New World. The conquistadors rejected it because of its association with ¨pagan¨ rituals. It is high in protein, and is taken to avoid constipation. You can find it in the mercado at the spice stalls.

Soak 2 oz. of chan seeds (semillas de chan) in 2 quarts of water until the seeds swell, about one hour.

Add:
• Sugar, or other sweetener, to taste
• 1 cup lime juice
Serve over ice or very cold.

Piloyada Antigüeña

Piloyes are large red beans with white stripes. They can be bought in the market for about Q8 a pound. (Prices depend on season and harvest)
In a large heavy pot, soak overnight in water to cover 1 lb. Piloyes with 1 head of garlic and 1 large onion

The next morning, bring the pot to a boil and add:
• 1 lb pork tenderloin or other pork (pork tenderloin is lomo de cinta and costs approximately Q20 per pound)
Boil gently until both beans and meat are done. The cooking time will be approximately 35-60 minutes, depending on the type of pot you use. Do not overcook the beans. They should remain whole. Take out the meat and drain the beans. While still hot, toss the beans with

• 2 tbsp vinegar
Cut the meat into small cubes, mix with the beans and set aside to cool.

While the meat and beans are cooling, prepare the following:
• Queso duro, to taste, grated (Queso duro is a salty cheese used grated like parmesan)
• ¼ Queso de capas cut in cubes (Queso de capas is a fresh cheese, similar to fresh mozzarella, found in the supermarket
• 1 bell pepper, chopped (Chile pimento Q1.25)
• 12 black or white butifarras (see below) boiled for 20 minutes and then sliced
• 8 ripe tomatoes, chopped (Q3/1b)
• 1 large onion, chopped (Q1.25)
• ¼ cup parsley, chopped (perejil)

Mix the above with beans and meat and season with the following:
• ½ tsp black pepper
• 1 tsp fresh thyme (tomillo) chopped
• 2 bay leaves (laurel)
• Salt, to taste
• Oil, to taste (about 6 tbsps)
• Vinegar, to taste (about 1 tbsp)

Refrigerate.
This recipe will serve 15 as a side dish,
or 6 as a main course.

*Butifarras are sausages, originally from Cataluña, which were brought to the new world during the Colonial era. They are made with ground lean pork, salt, pepper, bacon and spices. White butifarras are made with meat only and black butifarras are made with some pork blood. These can be bought in the small tiendas of Antigua, supermarkets, and the mercado.

Food photos by Rudy A. Girón

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

A chat with Vida Amor De Paz, Guatemala’s crusader for protecting the planet

Her smile is electric. Her energy is vibrant. Her achievements … inspiring. My brief interview with Vida Amor De Paz has certainly left me with a powerfully affecting impression. I am new to Guatemala and can claim no more than five months of exploring the country and its people of influence. I’m certainly no expert on De Paz and her prominent social repute. But learning about some of her most recent adventures and listening to her life’s mission not only moved me, but encouraged me to continue chasing after my own dreams. After spending time with her I felt rewarded—rewarded with renewed inspiration and motivation. And, as she recounted, that is exactly what she is after:

“I believe more in telling people: ‘Hey, you can be a good person. I trust you.’ What’s going to happen when I tell you that? That’s going to empower you. And you’re going to feel a responsibility to be able to live up to that. So that’s the way I think. That’s my philosophy of life.”

In just two hours, I quickly came to understand that De Paz is a true go-getter. As a former TV personality, a children’s songwriter, a regular columnist in the Guatemalan newspaper the Prensa Libre and the founder of two environmental organizations—one based in Guatemala and a sister foundation based in the United States—it is apparent she is a very difficult woman to “sum up,” let alone try to define or describe. Yet, in her own words, she is simply young at heart.

“I still think like a child … because I trust people. And I want to continue trusting people. Of course, I have two little antennas when something tells me, ‘Hey! Watch out!’ But I think we are missing the trust. When we grow up we lose the trust that we should continue having in others.”

And not just trust in others. De Paz has that rare and admirable quality of truly trusting herself. When the woman was first faced with the once-in-a-lifetime opportunity of traveling to the North Pole in 2007, it was essentially an opportunity for a “free ride” with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). But that chance to spin her lifelong message to protect the environment in a new, unique way quickly fizzled into a “no ride” when Russia rocked the boat of opportunity (pun-intended), claiming the North Pole as its own in July of that same year. Thus, world politics unraveled De Paz’s opportunity to go—at least with NOAA. Once the idea for such an adventure weaseled its way into her agenda, there was no stopping her. With persistence she tracked down a smaller expedition that was already conducting research in the North Pole. Though the TARA crew reportedly would not even host the likes of National Geographic, De Paz’s distinctive Mayan angle proved to be intrigue enough for the TARA scientists to invite her.

“Everybody was telling me I was crazy, that I was insane trying to get there. Some people didn’t even think that I was going to make it. … Honestly, I really wanted to know how it all converged. What the Maya were trying to tell us. What the scientists are trying to tell us. How that all converged. What was the parallel. And that’s what really took me.”

That and some expert fundraising. De Paz managed to secure €17,000 of funding from beauty brand Paul Mitchell as well as another €12,000 from the Guatemalan phone provider TIGO.

“Some people asked me if I was scared before we landed. And to tell you the truth, the landing could have been catastrophic. We could have died. But I was just not thinking about that. I was just not thinking negatively. I was thinking, ‘Wow! We’re landing at the North Pole.’ … I think the only other time I have experienced such excitement is when I gave birth to my kids.”

Such perseverance not only earned De Paz the adventure of a lifetime, but also the chance to share her message of environmental care worldwide, through a documentary of her trip. De Paz reports that her film, From the Maya to the North Pole, has already been featured in Poland and Barcelona and is scheduled to appear in Italy, Egypt, the U.S., Copenhagen and Argentina.

De Paz’s adventure and resulting film already make her stand-out. But the mission could very well have earned her an achievement of a true pioneer. The Guatemalan personality just could be the very first Latin American to reach the North Pole. Currently, a woman from Vera Cruz, Mexico, is making the claim. But her trip was completed one year later than De Paz’s.

“Still, I don’t know. I guess I should look into that,” De Paz remarked.

But for the moment she is too busy looking into transforming her documentary into a book as well as writing a science-fiction novel based on Mayan history. De Paz reports that she is also considering a television show and adds that she has every intention of continuing to develop more film projects. She is also helping organize a new campaign that aggressively urges Guatemalans to become more directly involved in protecting their natural habitat. De Paz asked me to keep the details “hush-hush” for now, but the project is scheduled to go live in about a month.

Still, all these plans are not enough. When asked, “what’s next?” The non-stop “grandmother” quickly asserted: The South Pole.

You can find a 10-minute preview of De Paz’s documentary on Youtube by searching for: From the Maya to the North Pole.

Given his age, 75, you’d think anthropologist Robert Hinshaw would want to settle back with one of those Scandanavian vodkas he occasionally enjoys and retire to his Colorado mountain retreat. Instead, he wants to make a difference in this world, as “payback” for all he’s received.

He explains: “Gilbert White, the late geographer and a great mentor, laid this challenge on virtually everyone he knew, telling us academicians we didn’t pay for our education; we all had fellowships—paid with taxpayer money. He’d say, ‘You’re more productive at the end of your careers. What right do you have to step aside, with the world in its condition?’ We knew we just couldn’t say, ‘We’re retired. We’re not doing anything now.’”

And so, Robert has decided to spend considerably less time in the United States and to live out his retirement primarily on the shores of Lake Atitlán in Guatemala, where he spent nearly half his academic career as an anthropologist. Recently he sold the family’s Rocky Mountain home, the place to which he retreated intermittently over the past 40 years.

He says he is “energized” by living in Tzununá, a village of approximately 3,000 Maya descendants who, “as recently as 15 years ago had no running water or electricity.” With no telephone lines, he and his neighbors use cell phones. No one he knows owns a computer or even a typewriter. Cable television is available but beyond the means of most families. There are no more than a half-dozen motor vehicles in the village. “We rely on public boats passing every half hour to get us to doctors, a pharmacy, the market and, in my case, internet access and a bank.”

It was in similar lake communities that Robert did most of his anthropological research and that inspired him two decades ago to begin a fiction writing project, resulting in his two novels: My Lake at the Center of the World (2007) and a sequel, The Rape of Hope (2008).

“The principal reason for undertaking the first,” he says, “was to make creative use of the oral histories of Mayas collected in the early 1940s by another mentor, Sol Tax, a University of Chicago anthropologist. To my knowledge, these stories represent the only extant record of Maya experience dating back to the government’s anti-vagrancy laws of the 1880s.”

Robert has been better known for his nonfiction writing as an academician. In 1975, his Panajachel: A Guatemalan Town in Thirty-Year Perspective was published by the University of Pittsburgh Press. In 1979 he was editor of Currents In Anthropology: Essays in Honor of Sol Tax (Mouton Publishers). And in 2006 Johnson Books released Living with Nature’s Extremes: The Life of Gilbert Fowler White, a publication Robert calls “the highlight of my career.”

He returned to fiction writing after a seven-year hiatus, deciding then to make it a two-novel project by adding the oral Maya histories he had collected between the 1960s and 1980s.“I delayed publishing the first novel until the second was virtually ready for publication,” he says. He believes his attempt at fiction is unique among Guatemalan novels for his use of what he believes to be “the only recorded memories of Mayas experiencing the worst of the racist and exploitative legislation of the so-called ‘Liberal Era’ of Guatemalan politics.”

Robert Hinshaw was born in 1933 in Wichita, Kansas to parents of Quaker descents who migrated from England in the early 1700s to what now is Pennsylvania. “My father was a Quaker minister in the Midwest before becoming president of William Penn College in Iowa. Mother was a homemaker.” A step-grandmother, Ruth Smith, was a Quaker missionary in eastern Guatemala a century ago, this ancestry contributing in part to the plot of the sequel novel. A member of the Society of Friends himself, Robert’s high school and college education was all in Quaker institutions. He graduated from Haverford College in 1955, before entering graduate study in anthropology at the University of Chicago, where he worked under Tax and earned a Ph.D. in 1968. Tax introduced him to Guatemala. “We worked together in the lake region for 30 years until his death in the early 1990s.”

Early in his academic career, Robert taught at the University of Kansas and the University of San Carlos in Guatemala City. He later served as president of Wilmington College in Ohio, chaired the Anthropology Department at Beloit College in Wisconsin, was academic dean at Bethel College in Kansas, taught at the University of Colorado in Denver and directed a six-college consortium in Kansas. He also was a Washington lobbyist under the auspices of the Quakers before returning to independent academic research and consulting in Guatemala.

His wife Linda is a Kansas City attorney. They met in 1990 as official U.S. observers of the Nicaraguan national election. The family consists of five adult children, 12 grandchildren and seven great-grandchildren.

“Linda and I are turning over some of our land to Amigos de Santa Cruz [a non-government organization] to provide a place for the women of Tzununá to have classes in nutrition, infant care, family planning, gender equality and empowerment and a more diversified income,” he says. Traditionally, “an entrenched conservatism” has impeded the town from taking advantage of social services available from within or outside Guatemala.

“They define their needs differently than do North Americans,” Robert says. “They subsist on food, clothing and lodging, almost all of which they grow, make or build. They are proud of their culture and aren’t easily convinced that they should be changing their lives in any significant way. After all, they have lived essentially this way for more than 1,000 years.”

The last thing Robert wants to do is to spoil that. “Linda and I are focusing on what we can gain from living with the Mayas. Any assistance we, as outsiders, can provide is not handouts, far less the building of schools and churches.” Too often, he laments, outsiders come in and decide what a community needs, then do it and leave consequences with which they don’t have to live. “An outsider’s role is to listen to peoples’ needs, show what options they have, step back and listen to what they decide then offer whatever possible assistance.

“I’m not down here to save the world,” Robert says. “I’ve just found a convenient rationale for arguing that this is the place to retire.”

Parked in a wheelchair across from Central Park, Sis García creates childhood images with the skill of a seasoned artist.

Art abounds in La Antigua Guatemala. Wanderers find galleries filled with paintings of romantic, colonial buildings around every corner. Jade jewelry seems to spill out of storefront windows. Tourists cannot escape the Maya children who persistently push their rainbow-colored, handmade goods. Yet one woman, Marcia Sis García, “stands out” by sitting … and drawing with her feet.

“This is my work,” Sis García said. “To go out and draw before the public. And I do it with my feet.”
Sis García was born with physical impediments that left her unable to move her hands and unable to walk. But, cradling her colored pencils in her malformed feet, the 28-year-old woman creates drawings that possess an impressively fine touch. Parked in a wheelchair in Central Park, Sis García creates childhood images with the skill of a seasoned artist.

“I can’t imagine how she can do it,” one passer-by commented. Sis García explains that, since she was a child, using her feet to grasp came naturally. It was Sis García’s father who bought her first crayons, sparking the skill that would become his daughter’s way of life. Her drawings of animals, butterflies and flowers provide the bread and butter for herself and her daughter.

“When work is going well, I’ll sell five or six drawings for 40 or 50 quetzales each,” she says. But she’s quick to explain that she doesn’t find such success every day. While she can sell larger drawings for Q100, Sis García says it is difficult to cover her monthly costs of rent, food and medicine. Simply coming and going from her house in Jocotenango to La Antigua costs the price of one drawing. Guatemala has no government programs to assist the disabled. Aid comes only from family, friends and donations.

“There are always a lot of people who want to help me and who give me motivation to continue,” she explains. “Most of those who help are the tourists and foreigners, people from the United States, who offer their support.”

Her drawings invariably depict nature. She says her favorite images to draw are those of animals. The national bird of Guatemala, the quetzal, is a common subject. Books and photographs also inspire her. The flowers, she says, are created from her imagination.

Drawing before the public is something she truly enjoys. She would rather work, she says, than simply sit inside her house, “feeling bored with nothing to do.” Above all, she says she hopes her work inspires young people, like her daughter.

“More than anything, I always want to inspire the children; I want to show them that they can move forward and think that everything is possible.” It seems Sis García’s work is making a lasting impression on one such child at least. Her daughter, Cristina Sarai Sis affirmed that her mother’s example has inspired her to think big. Sarai Sis confidently informed me that she plans on being a doctor when she grows up.

photos: Ángel Moscoso

In 1999, Marvin Byers had a millennial vision for something unprecedented. Guatemala City’s mammoth Hebrón Church, where Byers still pastors, had for decades boasted a school for parishioners and for anyone else who could come —and for some who could not. Some of Guatemala’s poorest children attended on scholarship and went on to cheat poverty.

In his vision, Byers saw the lights go out in the school’s 20-odd classrooms. The desks disappeared; the doors were double-locked; and the chatter ceased. But the school did not die. In fact, it grew. And it underwent a transformation apparently without precedent. Simply put, the entire Colegio Hebrón school “went home” and never came back.

By 1990, North America had become the international hotbed for homeschooling. The phenomenon exists there to a degree unapproached elsewhere but Australia. About 1.7 million American and Canadian children are now homeschooled, even though the practice remains controversial and, in certain jurisdictions, quasi-legal.

In Guatemala, it is not only legal and free of controversy, but government-approved. In 1999, Hebrón launched the first total transformation of a traditional institution into a homeschooling one. The major North American homeschooling institutions, like Calvert and A Beka, did not begin as traditional schools, or they remain schools that include campuses.

“We know of no other colegio anywhere,” says Josefina de Machado, Colegio Hebrón’s headmistress, “that effected the complete metamorphosis.” (A colegio is not a college but a private school.)
What is even more certain, according to curriculum coordinator Ángela de Barahona, is that Colegio Hebrón is the first complete homeschooling program in Spanish. Partial curricula have appeared in Chile and Colombia, but only Hebrón covers the full 12-year run of childhood education, plus preschool, and every subject recognized by national education ministries.

The name of the curriculum (and of the church) has significance for education, say the Barahonas. Hebrón is a city in Judea, part of what is also called the West Bank. Three thousand years ago, according to Samuel, it was the temporary capital of Israel. King David, the story goes, reigned there seven years before conquering the citadel of Jebus and renaming it Jerusalem, from which he reigned another 33 years.

Juan Carlos Barahona, Ángela’s son and right-hand man in curriculum development, explains that in Hebrón, “the young king prepared himself for the rest of his reign. We want to be ‘Hebrón’ for our students, so they can capture their own Jerusalems and ‘reign well’ afterwards. To be productive, to be forces for good.”

Families need not enroll in every subject. Secular and Catholic families who are sold on Hebron’s academic merits, but not on its Protestant bias, may exclude the curriculum’s religious portion. English-speaking families may opt out of the English component.

In 2001, Guatemala’s Education Ministry granted status as an experimental school to Colegio Hebrón. In 2004, Hebrón won official accreditation after meeting a long list of requisitos. Most of these were academic standards, says headmistress De Machado. But she believes that Hebrón scholars enjoy other advantages.

“They’re free of peer pressure, which is the downfall of so many kids, even bright ones.” She asserts that the nonacademic lessons are even more important than the scholarly element.

“We’ve seen children come of age under the program,” Ángela de Barahona says. “And we note no generation gap between these children and their parents. They understand each other completely. There is mutual respect and closeness.”

Hebrón laureate Alejandra Ligoria, 20, was among the first to complete the secondary courses. She only wishes that the program had been in place for her primary years.

“I have a bond with my parents that would not otherwise exist,” she says. “And even though I was schooled at home, I didn’t miss out on anything. I had friends, mostly other homeschooled kids. And I had no problem with my parents having a say in who they were. ”

“It was good,” she adds, “for the other teacher/parents, too. My mom even says that Hebrón was more for her than it was for me.”

Alejandra’s father, Rodolfo, acknowledged that “it was a hard decision to homeschool. It was an untried path, an adventure, and the children’s future was at stake. But we chose well.”

Alejandra’s mother, Brenda, praises the program for the time it saves everyone. “My children have extra hours, every day, to pursue sports, music lessons, hobbies. Alone or with friends. And teaching them to read made me feel like the most important person on Earth.”

“My mom is my best friend,” Alejandra agrees. Her sister Mariana, 11, and brother Gabriel, 9, are consequently enrolled. This time Rodolfo has no doubts.

Though parents must commit to a routine, they are limited in the work they must do. The curriculum is a turnkey proposition, such that ordinary students spend four hours daily in studies, with parents monitoring and helping. The books, clearly written and full of whimsical artwork, are available in color or, for families of limited means, black and white. Instead of lesson plans, there are workbooks and outlines; quizzes are also provided. Every two months, students must attend periodic examinations in any of several locations, including Totonicapán.

De Machado says that Hebrón is currently transitioning to a system that is even more hands-off for parents.

“We’re going digital. We’re putting lessons on DVD, to complement and further empower students and parents.” The DVDs parallel the written portion. At this writing, they are available for preschool through third grade.

“But we add a grade each year,” De Machado says. Ultimately, there will be DVDs even for high school chemistry. The recording is done at Hebrón’s Zone 13 campus.

She tells of one mother who had very little schooling herself. “She’s finishing her education—alongside her son. She’s taking the exams and earning her own diploma with our program.”
Over 800 Guatemalan children are currently enrolled. Another 500, in places as remote as Puerto Rico and Argentina, are also matriculated. Claudia de Gálvez, a mother of three Guatemalan girls, is in her first year.

“My daughters are so happy,” she says. “Often, we make day trips around town to complement the book learning. The girls are getting the most out of life. And we share it all.”

Maritza Cabrera, another parent, notes that her son Esteban, 10, often did homework as late as 9 p.m. before his enrollment two years ago. He had been bullied at public school and had become taciturn and withdrawn. Now he practices swimming in the afternoons and aids his mother in the kitchen—another learning experience.

“He’s changed completely,” his mother says. “He’s happy and adores learning.”

Colegio Hebrón’s English website is www.ministerioshebron.com

Janson enjoys a morning cup before heading out to his studio

Wildlife conservationist, photographer, author, adventurer, environmentalist and educator

The volcano Pacaya in Guatemala began erupting more dramatically than usual one day several years ago, and nature photographer Thor Janson rushed to the slopes to take pictures for his files.

“By 4 o’clock Pacaya was spewing molten lava several hundred meters into the air every 30 to 45 seconds,” Thor recalls. “The frequency and intensity continued, and by 5 o’clock the explosions reached a frightening ferocity. I was getting some great photos, but my friend was anxious to leave.

“By 6 p.m. hysterical villagers were running down the road—women praying aloud and men yelling at us to abandon the area. Pacaya was beginning to resemble a huge Roman candle. Every 10 seconds the ground shook and large quantities of lava flowed down the slope. We jumped in the jeep, threw it into reverse and backed off the road into the powder-fine ash. We were stuck, our main means of escape gone.”

Thor remembers making a futile attempt to jack the jeep out, while still snapping pictures. “As I grabbed my camera bag to run, a pickup loaded with stragglers sped toward us. Seeing our predicament, several jumped out, tied a cable to the jeep and freed us. We are lucky to be alive.”

Thor, who never has taken a course in photography, later published images of that harrowing experience in Guatemala, one of his 16 colorful picture books. Though he is best known for his photographic work, his life passion focuses on protecting the environment, he says. “I would rather be called a wildlife conservationist. Photography is only a tool I use in my conservation education efforts. Book sales provide royalties I need to support myself.”

I would rather be called a wildlife conservationist. Photography is only a tool I use in my conservation education efforts.

Born in 1953, Oliver Thor Janson grew up in suburban Chicago where his father, a Swedish immigrant, was a doctor, his mother a nurse. “I didn’t start out a troublemaker,” Thor recalls, “but after the Beatles hit the scene in the ‘60s, the world never was the same.” Like many of his generation, Thor began his lifelong struggle against the establishment.

He traveled in Europe and North Africa and tried medical school. But he had seen poverty in his travels, and his premed peers, as he puts it, “…only had eyes on making money. They felt no compassion for suffering people.”

Not yet 20, Thor dropped out in 1973, hopped on his motorcycle and headed south, attending an ‘inspiring’ conference in Mexico City on planetary ecology and the effect of human activity on climate and biodiversity. He continued to Belize, then to Guatemala and down to Lake Atitlan, where he stayed a month. “After feeling sad for a long time, I found a place that made me happy again,” he says. “It took Guatemala to get my smile back!”

Thor later crewed on a sailboat from Panama to New Zealand and eventually returned to Chicago to make some money. He headed back to Guatemala after the earthquake of 1976 to help with reconstruction efforts and decided to stay.

He connected with the University of San Carlos School of Biology and conducted a study of the manatee. “It was then—1978—I got into photography with environmental education groups and later became director of a new conservation group, Defensores de la Naturaleza.”

Thor’s hope to convince the Guatemala government to provide his group a concession to manage a forest reserve was realized in 1987. President Venicio Cerezo signed a special disposition, giving management of a section of the Sierras to Defensores, later known as the Sierra de las Minas Biosphere Reserve.

But by the end of that year, Thor left Defensores to explore and photograph remote areas of Caribbean Central America and to produce several photography books on nature. He describes his recently expanded and republished In the Land of Green Lighting as a 30-year collection of “my best photos of the Maya world.” Like the first edition, he says, the second has something of everything—wildlife, ruins, indigenous people and vistas.

The revised edition of Quetzal will be “the most beautiful book on the most spectacular bird of the Americas,” he boasts. “This is my favorite book. It has everything—natural history, Maya and Aztec mythology, cloud forest ecology, planetary ecology, and so on.” The new edition will “showcase new and innovative ways that humans can live in harmony with nature.”

Never one to stand still, Thor plans to gather material for two new books: Quetzals and Trogons of the World, which he calls “a tribute to two of the most beautiful families of birds on Earth;” and Beers of the World, “a world beer safari, a less scholarly review with photographs of picturesque watering holes from Alice Springs to Bora Bora to Munich to Timbuktu. “ It could be a very fun book.”

photos: Thor Janson

Frederick Siddartha Crocker Junior, or as he would sometimes introduce himself “Frederick, ‘The Enlightened One,’Crocker,” was born in Folsom, West Virginia, in 1914. His mother, Hazel McBride Crocker got a nickname of “Penny;” Pat got his as an infant from his Irish nurse. He graduated from the Carnegie Institute of Technology, Pittsburgh, in fine arts in the early 1930s. Then he and a friend went to the Philippines, where he worked for an architectural firm in Manila. After three years he returned to the U.S. and set off with his mother for a round-the-world cruise. The ship broke down in the Pacific and they ended up in Mexico, where they lived in Cuernavaca and Taxco.

In Taxco Pat became friendly with Bill Spratling of Spratling Artesanias S.A., who introduced the designing of silver and copper jewelery. Another friend was Bud Schlumberg, a screenwriter for Paramount and author of the screenplay Little Orphan Annie in 1938.

In 1940 he and his mother came to Guatemala, where Penny became a teacher at the American School and Pat started his costume paintings. He was encouraged to record indigenous textiles by an Americanlady with the surprising name of Tocsika Townley Roach. She and her husband, Jim, had resided in Guatemala since 1917. Her avocation was the collection of Indian textiles, and she opened the first textile shop in the city. She was concerned even in those days that Indian costume was slowly disappearing, and she collected some of the finest examples during her purchasing trips— many on foot to remote villages. Her collection was purchased eventually by the United Fruit Company and given to the Archeology Museum in Guatemala City.

On examining his watercolors of indigenous costume it is impossible not to be amazed at the intricate detail that he depicted.

His work of several years was exhibited in the entrance lobby of the first television station, Canal 3, in Guatemala. Some months after the opening of the station, fire destroyed the entire collection. One can imagine Pat’s feelings and admire his determination when he started all over again. After three years of labor the Frederick Crocker Junior Collection was exhibited in the Brooklyn Museum from 1943 to 1948, then taken to the Cotton Carnival Museum in Memphis, Tennessee, in 1948.

These very successful exhibitions (at which none of the paintings were for sale) led to the lithograph reproduction in two folios of six designs each with explanatory notes printed by Byron Zadik S.A. of Guatemala City. These sets have now become rarities to be sought after.

When the war came, Pat joined the U.S. Navy and served for three years in the Pacific, at sea off the coast of Japan when the destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki took place. After the war he returned to Guatemala and continued to record textiles and to produce paintings for sale to tourists to bring in some money when he needed it. But he told Dale Nichols, a fellow artist, that his love of detail made it impossible to put a saleable price that had any relation to the time it took to do them. He produced four large paintings of Indian dancers which were exhibited in the dining room of the Hotel Tzanjuyú, Panajachel, and later in the Hotel Antigua in Antigua.

He utilized not only the Tocsika Townley Roach Collection but also made journeys to villages where he posed and sketched Maya men and women to get the exact reproduction he desired. His work has been criticized because the faces of his figures were often entirely non-Maya. His intent, we must remember, was to record the costumes. Several of his faces were those of friends or enemies. His female standing figure in the Cobán lithograph is of his mother. Another is a topless figure of a woman at San Sebastian Retalhuleu with a profile of a Guatemala banker he disliked. This sort of thing was a source of great, if quiet, humor to him. Because of the detail and the large amount of textile in a costume, Pat used to say that he painted “by the yard.”

During these years Pat spent most of his time in Panajachel, where he constructed a small but elegant home in which he led an active social life. He became famous locally for his “Hat Parties.” Ed Crocker, Pat’s nephew, describes how he stumbled into one unannounced. It was an all-male party in which each guest wore headgear that was intended to identify someone well-known. He recognized a Napoleon, a Marie Antoinette with curls of blue ribbon, and a Lindbergh with flight helmet and goggles. At this stage Ed became embarrassed and left, no doubt to Pat’s relief.

Pat was a frequent customer of the Hotel Tzanjuyú. One night after a prolonged visit in the bar he came out of the hotel and fell into a very deep ditch that had been recently constructed and whose existence he had temporarily forgotten. He lay in the ditch and shouted for help without avail. Eventually the night watchman came up, stared at him for a moment and said, “Silencio, por favor, señor Crocker, la gente quiere dormir,” and walked away. Pat spent the rest of the night in the ditch and was rescued the following morning when he was found to have a broken arm.

In 1945, allegedly in the bar of the Hotel Palace in Guatemala City, Pat met the novelist Gore Vidal. They became friends and a year or so later Pat talked Gore into the purchase of the Casa el Carmen in Antigua. The price was $2,000. The church of El Carmen and the house had suffered severe damage during the great earthquake of 1773. The earthquake precipitated the evacuation of Antigua, the then-capital of Guatemala, and its ultimate transfer to Nueva Guatemala de la Asunción, now Guatemala City. Pat began the slow process of restoration to convert a colonial ruin into an attractive, livable home with modern conveniences.

During the years that followed, Gore and Pat did some interesting entertaining. Dorothy Parker, writer and poet, was a frequent visitor to the Antigua circle. Anais Nin was another visitor. At that time she was unburdening herself into her novel A Spy in the House of Love, finally published in 1954.

Gore Vidal himself was completing his homo-erotic novel, The City and the Pillar. On the final page of the typescript of the novel Pat had entered a number of editorial notes that changed the ending considerably —which appeared in the first edition. Later editions reverted to Gore’s original ending. Pat received a copy of the first edition inscribed by Gore “To Pat, the first person ever to read this—Gore.”

Restoration proved to be a slow, almost endless process that was continuing during 1956 when Gore sold the house to Paul Glynn. Pat lived in the house during Paul’s absence in Persia on a diplomatic mission and continued the restoration process. This was to be the first of many houses he restored in the years that followed.

However, at this time another influence entered Pat’s life. In 1956 the first season of the Tikal Project began. This project, under the direction of Edwin Shook, the archeologist, included the creation of the 576-square-kilometer Tikal National Park and studies of the flora and fauna of the area before the clearing of land for excavation began. Pat was contracted to lay out the paths and roadways with least destruction possible and also to design and build the Tikal Museum, dedicated in 1964 by Edwin Shook and J. Eric S. Thompson.

Pat must have had a busy life commuting between Petén and Antigua. While still working on Paul Glynn’s house, he was contracted to restore a house merged into two for Louise Willauer Jackson and Helen Trick, wife of archeologist Aubrey Trick, which came to be know as the Jackson-Trick House or the Casa Double. He was also restoring the Casa del Pirámide, recently purchased by Herman Van Zonneveld, a Dutch shipping magnate, and his American wife Marion.

Pat’s reputation as a capable architect and an interior designer of charm and inventiveness, sensitive to the Guatemala colonial style, brought him more and more clients. But the work was slow and painstaking. Renovation of the Casa Double, for example, begun in 1956, was not complete until 1962. Indeed, of the many houses in Antigua that Pat worked on, the owners, past and present, came to realize that improvement and preservation never comes to an end—there will always be new furniture to design, old furniture to restore, candelabras and fixtures to install, cupboards to change, doors and windows to replace, pictures to relocate and the continuous repair of plumbing and electricity and the maintenance of walls, exterior and interior—the war with “salitre”—that colonial Spanish architecture demands.

Pat and Louise Jackson exchanged a lengthy correspondence during the reconstruction period. Pat mentions his continual shortage of money—for with few exceptions his clients sent little or nothing to get the work started and then only sufficient to cover expenses that had been incurred and for which Pat had sent a bill. There were times when he had to borrow from friends in Antigua who were not his clients, simply to meet his payroll. In 1959 he writes: “These last two weeks have found me either feeling homicidal or suicidal. Begging money is not my forte and I have been so embarrassed I want to crawl into a hole”—particularly when he was refused!

The responsibilities in conducting the renovations in accordance with the wishes and budgets of his clients imposed an almost intolerable strain. In 1954 he was occupied with the restoration of six houses at the same time. In the early 1960s he wrote to Louise: “I am also having labor troubles. I am trying to get rid of some of the men who are being a nuisance—and a great many more who are being alright, but they have not been around long. The object is to reduce myself to a crew of about twenty trustworthy souls and keep them moving. I shall never again have ten houses going at once.” One can imagine the size of his work force and the challenges of management it posed.

Despite all these problems and demands, Pat found time for some social life. He loved to relate an episode that occurred at one of his dinner parties in Panajachel during the cocktail hour. One of the guests, Matilda Gray, an oil millionairess and owner and resident of a large property in Antigua, was chatting. Looking down her aristocratic nose, she referred to one of the guests, Elaine Hatch, wife of Orrin Hatch, later U.S. senator from Utah who was also present: “She’s in Tanguy Lipstick. That’s refined. I’m in crude.”

[At Tikal] Pat was contracted to lay out the paths and roadways with least destruction possible and also to design and build the Tikal Museum.

From the Casa el Carmen in 1954 to his death in 1972 Pat renovated over 20 houses in Antigua and several in Panajachel, at the same time continuing to produce his exquisite watercolors of costume and scenery. He was a familiar figure in Antigua as he walked from house to house supervising his work crews. He was a casual dresser, wearing an Indian shirt or coat and slacks with Mayan sandals and without a hat, and carried a bolsa típica slung over his shoulder in which he carried his materials for sketching and other essentials.

On examining his watercolors of indigenous costume it is impossible not to be amazed at the intricate detail that he depicted. His style of painting was unusual. Sitting on a low seat he placed the water-color paper on the floor or ground before him and, holding his brush about halfway along its length, rested his forearm against his knee. In this way he achieved the amazing degree of steadiness and control essential for the intricate patters he depicted.

In 1972 Pat became seriously ill and retired to one of his favorite restorations, the Casa Double. His friend Louise allowed him use of the front bedroom and the opportunity to enjoy the patio on sunny days. Pat died there on December 8 and was buried on December 11 in the Municipal Cemetery, Antigua.

On the origins of costume, his lifelong avocation, Pat wrote: Guatemalan costumes, like all really fine and distinctive works in the realm of the arts can be appreciated by the initiate. But where should one begin in the background of anything as fundamental as clothing? If the predecessor of modern architecture was a cave or the lee of a great tree; (if the predecessor) of music, the song of the birds and the beating of clubs on hollow logs; if (that) of all mechanical devices, the rolling of blocks too large for purely human endeavor; if (that) of painting, the handprints on the walls of caves, then the beginning of clothing must have been the fig leaf.

No. People have always covered their coldness before their modesty. Then of all environmental things that contribute to the growth of clothing, climate is the most important.”

Thus stated Frederick Siddartha Crocker, whose lifelong artistic achievements preserved for all time aspects of life now disappearing rapidly—Tocsiksa’s concerns were well founded—and whose architectural achievements made possible a lifestyle that married successfully the dignity of Spanish colonial ruins with the contemporary insistence on comfort and convenience, a dexterous conjunction of art and architecture.

Author’s note: It is my pleasure to acknowledge gratefully the
information and assistance provided by the following (listed alphabetically): Edward Crocker, Henry DuFlon, Paul Glynn, David & Cynthia Jickling, Kenneth Veronda, Don Willever.

This article was first printed in March 2003 (REVUE yr.11 #12)

Gabriela (Gabi to her students) leading a dance exercise

Restoring creative expression through direct action, Gabriela Cordón aims to transform Guatemala’s educational system via her youth arts initiative.

You’d be forgiven for thinking La Cambalacha is just another summer camp for kids. The place spills forth with color and laughter. On stage, a group of children practice a clown routine; another group makes crafts with empty cans and paint outside; another, the really little ones, are scampering around three instructors, learning a song, raising arms and turning circles together as best they can.

But La Cambalacha, which roughly translates as “the interchange,” is more than what it seems. Nestled inland from the lake in the village of San Marcos la Laguna, on the serene Lake Atitlán, the youth arts initiative is actually doing something quite radical. Something that its founder, Gabriela Cordón, hopes will transform Guatemala from the inside out.

Cordón is trying to restore creative expression to the local Mayan villages—indeed, to the entire country. “Children in Guatemala learn two songs in school,” she tells me, then sings one of them, “Vuela mariposa…” with more than a dose of derision. Even though the government passed educational reforms that require all schools to offer a course in expresión artística—and more children than ever are attending school —Cordón isn’t convinced: The teacher’s get a week of training to teach art, all forms. This reflects a general sentiment toward the arts in Guatemala, says Cordón. The Mayan arts traditions have been all but lost (one dance troupe, based in Sololá, performs the only known pre-Colonial dance theater piece). “The arts were lost during the colonial conquest but also during the religious conquest,” says Cordón. And conquest and conflict have left the country, still, she says, under a blanket of silence and fear, the enemy of free expression. Cordón is trying to lift that blanket.

“We have the right to recreation, to expression, to learn new things. You get to know yourself through art.” —Juanita Puzul

Not that it’s been easy. She struggles for funding and it’s taken her years to gain respect in the community. She’s faced resistance from parents and from the church, and after six years still only about 5 percent of children in San Marcos walk through La Cambalacha’s open doors. Which begs the question, how does Cordón get the children who do come? How does she win over their parents? “We don’t negotiate with the parents,” she tells me. Instead, La Cambalacha organizes a street parade through the barrios, inviting the children to join. The parade wraps up at the basketball court. “Then we announce to the children that every Wednesday at 3:15, we’ll be here,” says Cordón. “And they come back.” The workshops are free to young children, and about 30 kids and teens get scholarships to attend part time and full time. The children’s scholarships, Q150 a month, are for their families: “It’s the equivalent of the firewood they could collect in the time that they’re here,” says Cordón.

Lorena Roffé, a volunteer from Argentina who came for two weeks and has been there two years, tells me with complete sincerity that she’s seen La Cambalacha change lives. “They start not talking and they finish singing,” she says of the children. Cordón, who left her native Guatemala City for dance training at the University of Illinois and had her own company at age 19, says it can take months to get the children comfortable using their voices, moving their bodies. This is especially true for the girls, who grow up wearing the tight corte skirts and huipiles, unable to run easily or move their arms above their heads. At La Cambalacha, everyone wears sweats and T-shirts. For the girls, it’s the first time they’ve worn pants.

Juanita Puzul began with La Cambalacha in 2004 when she was 16 years old; now she’s an instructor and a natural performer. But kicking her legs up during a performance has meant defending her virginity afterward. “My family is like, don’t you have respect for your culture? I have friends who tell me I can’t enter the church.” She’s learned to shrug off the comments. “We have the right to recreation, to expression, to learn new things. You get to know yourself through art.”

“We’re trying to change behavior, to help these kids communicate, be more self confident, more expressive, stronger, more free,” says Roffé; Puzul nods, a radiant example. We’re sitting in the fire circle under an avocado tree, and a large one crashes onto the roof like a cosmic exclamation point.

Lorena tries to put this in perspective for me. “You and I had the opportunity to play, to be creative, to express our feelings when we were children,” she says. “That’s a need of all of us, to share that and give that opportunity.” As I’m taking this in, children from every direction line up nearby, and one of the volunteers calls out numbers, handing out piles of clothing: It’s 5 o’clock, time for the girls to change out of their sweats and back into cortes.

They take turns using their skirts as dressing curtains for each other, giggling. About 70 children attend La Cambalacha; 15 of them are teenagers and young adults, who, like Puzul, go out into the local communities to teach in schools. This is key for Cordón: She’s training a future generation of creative ambassadors. So far they’ve taught workshops to thousands of schoolchildren. And in partnership with Caja Lúdica, an organization with direct ties to the Ministry of Education, La Cambalacha can now offer teaching certificates to its graduates, so they can get jobs and further arts education in Guatemala. Fifteen will hold the certificate by the end of this year. She also hopes her alumna will strike out on their own and, like her, start new community arts initiatives. Says Cordón: “I want places like La Cambalacha all over the country.”

For more information: www.lacambalacha.org

Bette van Lunteren (photo: Jack Houston)

Bette’s education in ballet, modern and jazz dance led her to explore the five rhythms in meditative dance—flow, staccato, chaos, lyric and silence—like movements of a symphony. Not surprisingly, she was intrigued when introduced to the Mayan calendar, with its marking of time according to nature. Always ready for new adventure, she decided to learn more. “I’d never heard of Guatemala,” she admits. But, noting on the calendar that Guatemala was in the middle, “It sounded so safe!” So in 2003 she packed herself up, planning a stay of four months.

“Here I connected with nature. I climbed volcanoes and rafted in rivers. The signs and numbers of the calendar became less important, and I let go of the whole thing for a few years.” She was content with a job, enjoying her new experience. “Then I took on another challenge. I was ready to get back to the dancing. And I decided I wanted to work with children again.”

Currently Bette’s focus is on choreography of the upcoming production of How the Grinch Stole Christmas, which includes local children as well as members of the National Ballet of Guatemala, and La Antigua musician Arturo Rosales, who was influential in her job change.

How long will ballerina Bette stay in La Antigua? “I live here,” she answers firmly. “Holland is to visit. I feel good here because of the balance with nature.”

Donation, Q40 adults, children admitted FREE! Also, limited FREE transportation leaves at 3:30pm from La Antigua central park, opposite the cathedral, and returns after the performance.

Portrait of María del Carmen Escobar.

María del Carmen Who?

Good question. But the first question—the identity of Latin America’s finest—was quickly settled. My wife dropped the García Márquez and Allende books before finishing the first chapter. But her eyes became riveted to 49 Cents of Happiness, by “Who?” She almost finished it in a single sitting. When I read it myself, I frankly liked it better than 100 Years of Solitude.

So does García Márquez live in Fool’s Paradise? There are, it seems, a few folks who prefer the tiny proprietress of a now-shuttered bridle shop in Pasaje Rubio. In fairness to García Márquez, my señora is, like her new favorite author, Guatemalan. So patriotic bias may figure, to say nothing of the familiarity—shared by author and reader—with Guatemala City’s places and habits. But who, really, is María del Carmen Escobar?

She grew up in a house without books and, therefore, according to empirical studies, unlikely to become a recreational reader. In fact, she not only became a reader in a bookless environment; as a child she grasped her bootstraps and began to write. “I was such a reading nut,” she says, “that as soon as I had minimal literacy, I started writing stories—in order to read them.”

Nearly a lifetime later, this most approachable of Latin American literati still toiled at her day job but could look back on a steady thread of production, punctuated by local, if modest, successes.

The 1944 Liberal Revolution was, by the summer of 1954, living on borrowed time. But what was then the Ministry of Education and Agriculture announced a short-story writing contest among secondary students. Escobar, then 20, took first place, and saw the words of My Faithful Friend inked onto the pages of Nuestro Diario—next to her picture.
It was an auspicious start. But García Márquez claims on artistic (if not moral) grounds a readership in the hundreds of millions; Escobar’s books have sold only a few thousand, and her plays, as good as any that I have seen, have not been produced abroad.

Her talent notwithstanding, this is no complete mystery. The energy that drove her to write for herself as a child may have driven her to self-publish as a woman. Until recently, self-published fiction was a marketing anathema. And even though Thoreau argued that “all fiction is biography,” many critics disdain fiction that is narrowly biographical—which most of her work is.

Escobar is also captive to generosity and expectations of scale. She only orders small printings of her books, and is quick to share or even waive proceeds from her plays.

The take from her La Fuente de Palomar, which runs at downtown’s Teatro Universitario Popular (“UP”) each summer, benefited the Fundabiem telethon. This was the decision of director Fernando Erazo, but the playwright did not object. “Sometimes I get 10 percent of the proceeds. Sometimes just five. I really don’t know if I will get anything this time.”

Escobar’s indifference to lucre helps keep admissions as low as Q30, so she is comforted knowing that she has put high culture within everyone’s reach. She retired from her Pasaje Rubio nook in 2005, “because they were raising the rent.” But she is writing more, and her books now number eight.

María del Carmen Escobar may never, like García Márquez, hobnob with presidents. Her ship came in decades ago, but her passage was in a dormitory, not a first-class stateroom. But she welcomes an upgrade, if it ever comes.
“And it may yet,” she says.

49 Centavos de Felicidad and other books by Escobar should be available at your favorite bookshop in Guatemala City, La Antigua, Panajachel or Quetzaltenango.