Giveaways
FROM Guatemala City, I headed a short distance westward to Antigua Guatemala: the capital of colonial Guatemala from 1543 to 1773.
A UNESCO World Heritage Site, Antigua Guatemala — Antigua, for short — vies with the Mayan monuments of Tikal for the title of number one tourist must-see in Guatemala. This is because its long service as colonial capital, for 230 years, has left Antigua Guatemala full of beautiful baroque buildings and old cobblestoned streets.
The city’s graceful Santa Catalina Arch, built in the 1600s so that nuns could cross the street without having to mix the rest of the populace and later topped by a clocktower, is one of the first images that comes up when you start searching for information about Guatemala.
Here’s an aerial photograph of part of the downtown area northward from the central park, indicated on the map as Parque Central or Plaza Mayor. and the Santa Catalina Arch, indicated as El Arco de Santa Catalina. The blocks are only about 100 metres on a side for the most part, so the old part of Antigua Guatemala is very walkable.
I have put a marker on the Iglesia de La Merced, which is known in English as the Church and Convent of La Merced, a wonderful structure which has been undergoing restoration since the 1980s.
A large but extinct volcano known to the early Spanish conquistadors by its Mayan name, recorded as Hunahpú (‘place of flowers’) or Junajpú (‘one hunter’), dominates the southern skyline of Antigua.
In 1541, part of the rim of that volcano’s crater lake collapsed. This caused a flood that destroyed the previous capital of colonial Guatemala, Santiago de los Caballeros, now known as Ciudad Vieja meaning ‘old city’. The flood killed many people including the colonial governor who was, uniquely, a woman, Beatriz de la Cueva, who took over the office after the death of her husband, the previous governor.
Newly widowed, Señora de la Cueva called herself La Sin Ventura, meaning ‘the unfortunate one’ or ‘the unfortunate woman’: but her misfortunes were multiplied, and terminated, by her own demise in the flood, just a few days after taking office.
After that, the Spanish called the local volcano Volcán de Agua, ‘volcano of water’, in contrast to another volcano a bit further away which is still active and known in Spanish as Volcán de Fuego, ‘volcano of fire’.
It also seems that the misfortunes of the only female governor ever appointed to that role in the Spanish Empire were taken as an omen never again to appoint women to high office lest it cause a natural disaster, or something like that.
The Parque Central is a lovely spot of greenery in an otherwise fairly dense urban area. Its frontages include the partly ruined San José Cathedral (more about this building below).
And the Royal Palace of the Captains General, where the governors used to reside and which now houses the National Museum of Guatemalan Art, known as MUNAG from its Spanish-language name, Museo Nacional de Arte de Guatemala.
Here is a view looking down the colonnade of the palace at street level.
Antigua lost its status as capital, in favour of Guatemala City, after a devastating earthquake in 1773, which badly damaged Antigua’s San José Cathedral and the upper storey of the La Merced Church and Convent.
These buildings have since been partly restored, in ways that help to show off their Churrigueresque or ‘Spanish Baroque’ style, which is highly decorative: a bit like Wedgewood pottery.
San José is yet to be restored to the same kind of former glory.
I’ve made a video of some scenes that include my impressions on arrival, showing the town square and the Arch, as well as some nighttime scenes.
One thing you will see in my videos and photos from here on is a lot of purple cloth. This is because it was Holy Week, the Catholic celebration of the week leading up to Easter. During these special Catholic occasions, purple is the colour of piety and penitence.
This was definitely the time to be in Antigua, because you get to see the local processions and ephemeral, sand mandala-like ‘street carpets’ called alfombras. The usual ingredients of an alfombra include sand underneath and dyed sawdust on top.
I stayed at a fairly cheap place called the Volko Party Hostel, which had rooftop access and where I was able to cook my own food. This was cool, in both senses of the word.
Here’s a photo of a street market outside La Merced.
As I say, La Merced was partly restored, just in recent decades as it turns out. The restoration mainly involved reconstructing the upper storey, ruined in the earthquake of 1773 and various other earthquakes, I believe.
Here is an information panel describing the restoration, largely at the initiative of a young priest.
In the following video, I hike up to the roof of La Merced and venture out onto it for a view over the town. You can also see Volcán de Agua/Hunahpú/Junajpú in the distance. Unfortunately, when I was there, the air was too polluted to allow it to be seen very clearly. The video ends with an indoor scene of beautiful singing.
Here are some photos of my rooftop visit.
Here is the cupola, which dominates the roof.
You can see the volcano now known in Spanish as Volcán de Agua in the following views from the rooftop of La Merced, views that include the Santa Catalina Arch. The volcano is often photographed behind the Santa Catalina Arch from a viewpoint closer to the arch, to make a two-in-one shot like the one that I have included in last week’s post.
I also spent time exploring the streets and the mounting festivities. Here’s a photo of some colourful street food! I am not sure whether the beetroot is an aspect of Holy Week as well.
The next photo shows an altarpiece with a reddish-purple curtain behind. Most of the flowers are a deeper purple.
And here are a couple more alfombras.
And here are three angels I saw on a float in a nighttime parade.
In the next video, I show scenes from the Holy Week parades, as well as the alfombras. The people who are formally engaged in the procession, in purple robes and often carrying the heavy processional floats, are called cucuruchos: a Spanish word that refers to the conical hats often but not always worn by the processionaries as a form of disguise, so as not to draw attention to themselves while doing penance by taking part in the procession.
There are at least five Christian Holy Week processions; I wonder whether elements of Mayan custom have been absorbed into the festivities in this part of the world as well.
As far as I could tell, the cucuruchos were all men. The female pilgrims tended to wear black. There were lots of people camping out in the streets for Holy Week, the associated festivities of which stretched out for a fortnight in fact, from the 14th of March to the 28th this year.
There is a lot of Mayan art in Antigua, as well. The next photo shows some Mayan sculptures, or castings of them, arranged on the rooftop of the old palace (i.e., MUNAG).
Here is one of the pieces, an altar in the form of a stone head:
And here is a ‘zoomorphic head’, by the side of the road.
I also photographed a more modern representation, in MUNAG, of what I believe was the ‘Flayed God’, a symbol of seasonality and rebirth who sheds his skin and regrows it like a snake. This was primarily an Aztec deity, adopted by the Mayans just before the Spanish arrived.
The first Spanish priests found that many themes of the indigenous religions of Mexico and Central America resembled Christian concepts. For instance, the resurrection of the flayed god, after he suffers and then grows new skin, could be thought of as resembling the torments and resurrection of Jesus. And so, to this day, many Christian celebrations in the area have Mayan elements and overtones: a form of syncretism probably not too different from the way the midwinter festival of lights became Christmas and the festival of rebirth in spring, Easter, during the initial spread of Christianity across Europe.
Other Mayan customs and costumes remain common as well. Here is another view of the Parque Central: you can see a woman in traditional Mayan attire, at the left.
Below the roof, MUNAG has a ‘Prehispanic Room’ dedicated to indigenous art.
This panel displays the chronology. The Mayan civilisation, prior to the arrival of the Spanish, is often defined into preclassical, classical, and postclassical periods.
The museum also had a really amazing collection of modern art as well. It is not just old stuff! An information panel described its various rooms and exhibitions, which seemed to take up most of the former palace.
Here are some artistic souvenirs I saw in a shop, many of them also Mayan in character.
The following photos show generally colourful street scenes and views of the lovely downtown parkland, where jacarandas are conspicuous.
Downunder, we think of the purple-flowered jacaranda tree as Australian, but it is native to Central and South America, Mexico, and the Caribbean (there are many species). It seems appropriate that it is in bloom in Holy Week as well.
One thing I couldn’t help noticing was the amazing cobblestone paving everywhere, a subject for photography in itself.
Here are a couple of photos of houses hard up against the footpath with rather secure-looking doors and barred windows. They probably have lovely courtyards in behind, I would imagine.
Here is a hostel in the same general style.
And some more picturesque buildings and corners that caught my eye.
You can get around by tuktuk, if you get tired of strolling. I don’t know why anyone in this town needs to drive a car on its streets, but they are doubtless a status symbol.
Here’s a taste of the night life.
Another thing about Antigua is that, because it is so touristy, all the shuttle services and guided tours come and go from there, and not so much from Guatemala City.
And that is so, even though Guatemala City has sixty times as many inhabitants, at 3 million versus Antigua’s 50 thousand. On the other hand, Antigua Guatemala gets 500,000 visitors a year, outnumbering the local population ten to one.
The highest point in Antigua, geographically speaking, is Cerro de la Cruz, meaning peak of the cross. There is a park on top, where you can get a more distant lookout over the city than you get from the top of La Merced.
Atop the cerro, there is also a statue of St James the Great: the disciple of Jesus known in Spanish as Santiago, who serves as the patron saint of Spain, Galicia, Guatemala, and Nicaragua, and who has also had a great many towns named after him throughout the Spanish-speaking world. In this statue, Santiago has been carved in the style of a conquistador.
This rendering of Santiago was donated by the Government of Spain in 1971, which is to say in the days of Franco. Will it one day join the ranks of those statues considered un-PC, I wonder?
As a final tip, if you are planning to visit Antigua during Holy Week (or fortnight), it pays to book your accommodation in advance. I arrived there quite by accident at that time, and was very fortunate to find anywhere to lay my head.
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In my next post about Guatemala, I head further west, to Quetzaltenango and Lake Atitlán.
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