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The following excerpt is from a March 6, 2010 article published by The China Post. To read the article in its entirety, please click here.
TAIPEI, Taiwan — Jaime Vinals Massanet, the first Central American mountaineer to have reached the world’s seven summits, is in Taiwan to scale the island’s highest peak, Yushan (Jade Mountain), a national park source said yesterday.
Vinals, 49, a Guatemalan national, is scheduled to scale 3,952-meter Yushan on March 7-8, said Chen Lung-sheng, head of the Yushan National Park Administration (YNPA).
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Vinals, the first Central American ever to climb the world’s highest peak, Mt. Everest, was invited by Taiwan to drum up publicity for Yushan, which has been nominated as one of 28 candidates in a worldwide contest to choose the Seven Wonders of Nature on the planet…
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The following excerpt is from a March 4, 2010 article published by SF Gate. To read the article in its entirety, please click here.
Marco Pappa scored to help Guatemala beat El Salvador 2-1 Wednesday night in an exhibition. Jhony Brown also scored for Guatemala, which hasn’t lost to its neighbor in nine years.
Pappa, who plays for the Chicago Fire in MLS, scored from 31 yards out in the 45th minute after El Salvador struggled to clear the ball off its back line…
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The following excerpt is from a February 24, 2010 article published by Today Online. Click here to read the article in its entirety.
Some 1,700 years ago, the great Mayan civilisation chose this country in Central America to set up their most impressive structures – it was on these sacred grounds that their priests would ascend the steps to speak to the gods. Today, Guatemala continues to draw the awe of travellers to the country with its rich history and quietly majestic landscapes. Its most-visited townships lie at the base of towering volcanoes, or alongside great lakes that invoke in travellers a sense of serenity as they would a sense of foreboding.
Visitors to Guatemala have two things to check off on the country’s to-do list – scaling the active volcano Pacaya in Antigua, and visiting the country’s most famous Mayan site in the northern city of Tikal.
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The following article is an excerpt from the Vancouver Sun on February 22, 2010. To read the article in full, please click here.
GUATEMALA CITY – Guatemalan indigenous Maya people held religious and cultural ceremonies Monday to mark the start of the year 5126 under the ancient Mayan calendar.
 Culture Minister Emilio Ajquejay said that under the Mayan calendar, 5126 marks Kej, year of the stag or deer.
The four-legged creature symbolizes four cosmic points of strength and power, said who said that this is likely to be a year in which “world powers will be strengthened,” he said.
Director of Indigenous Affairs Maria Quezada said the stag reflects the four energies of life: physical, mental, spiritual and emotional, as well as mankind’s dominion over other beings on earth.
In the Mayan faith, the new year is ushered in after the end of Wayeb — a five-day period of reflection, meditation, planning and goal-setting — and to mark the event ethnic Maya leaders held vigil services across Guatemala overnight Sunday into Monday.
Roberto Cajas, director of a confederation of indigenous groups said the new year celebration offers Guatemalans the chance to express their “profound gratitude to Nature” for having provided humans all the essentials needed for life.
To read the rest of the article, please click here. To read more about the Mayan calendar, check out our review of the MY2K blog, which focuses on Mayan symbols in Guatemala.
This is excerpted from an article in the Latin American Herald Tribune on February 13, 2010.
GUATEMALA CITY – Spanish researchers from Valencia University presented in Guatemala a book analyzing the meaning of drawings and incisions on a Mayan architectural decoration in the form of a mask dating back to between 300 and 600 A.D.
The publication “Los Grafitos Mayas” (Mayan Pictographs) has been prepared by the team of Spanish and Guatemalan researchers who last January announced the discovery of a stucco mask at the La Blanca archaeological project in the province of Peten in northern Guatemala.
The book, according to Spanish academic Gaspar Muñoz Cosme, who has directed the project for the last six years, “seeks to spark interest and vindicate the importance of pictographs, which are normally seen as a minor art” within the Mayan culture.
The decorations on the mask, Muñoz said, “are of great quality, and show that whoever sculpted them were true artists,” since they were able to immortalize the cultural characteristics of that ancestral civilization.
The type of wall paintings known as pictographs or pictograms are typically found inside Mayan constructions.
Interested in Mayan Culture? Check our profile of the MY2K blog on Mayan glyphs by following this link.
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The following excerpt is from a February 11, 2010 article published by America’s Quarterly. To read the article in its entirety, please click here.
On a smoggy Thursday afternoon in late January, Mark Camp, director for U.S.-based Cultural Survival Project, drives a big red truck with Massachusetts plates through Guatemala City traffic toward Congress. Camp—who looks more like an insurance salesman with a ponytail of gray hair, suit and polka dot red tie—has organized volunteers from community radio stations to flood the legislature’s halls on this big day for Guatemala’s community radio movement. Some have traveled almost two days by bus to make it in time.
“This is a historic occasion—years of trying and frustration have never brought us this far before,” said Camp nervously waiting outside the steps of Congress. “We think we have a real opportunity this year to get a law passed that will recognize the right of communities to have their own radio station.”
For the first time in 12 years of attempts to pass a law to legalize and to grant frequencies to community radio stations, the National Movement of Radio Stations—represented by these cell phone-wielding radio volunteers ready to broadcast live in a Mayan language—have scored a win. The bill, called “The Law of the Community Radio Number 4087,” has received support from the President of Congress’ Pueblas Indigenas Committee and is now being sent back to the General Assembly. If passed, the bill would guarantee the use of at least one FM frequency …
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The following excerpt is from a February 10, 2010 article published in The Milwaukee Journal Sentinal Online. To read the article in its entirety, please click here.
Guatemala and Renaissance music do not go together in many people’s minds.
Nevertheless, Ensemble Lipzodes will explore that correlation at their concert Saturday, presented by Early Music Now.
Spain’s New World colonies had a thriving arts scene in the 1500s. Ensemble Lipzodes’ repertoire comes from 15 volumes of musical manuscripts from Guatemalan churches now housed at Indiana University.
The group comprises musicians at IU who were excited at the prospect of resurrecting previously unknown music. Most of the compositions do not specify instruments, but it will be performed on shawms and dulcians, the Renaissance predecessors of the oboe and bassoon….
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 We’ve all heard the dire prediction: 2012, the end of the Mayan calender also signifies the end of the world. When there’s a movie about it with John Cusack, you know it’s getting serious.
The MY2K blog takes a closer look at the symbols that make up the calendar (known as ‘glyphs’) and the meanings behind them. They take the form of books, carvings on rock and drawings. The blog explores the Mayan culture in many incarnations: from modern art to ruins, from 2012 comic strips to ancient customs. It is incredibly readable because it doesn’t take itself too seriously while still conveying new and interesting information.
The blog’s author, Susan, first became inspired by Guatemala in the 1970s when she backpacked around Central America with her soon-to-be husband. That was her first experience with the glyphs: seeing someone do a rubbing of a small stelae type monument in the middle of the jungle, though they were hardly a rarity there. Later, she read a book about the Mayans which made a reference to the infamous doomsday date and made her realize the sophistication of the Mayan civilization.
The blog doesn’t follow strict guidelines when it comes to source material; instead, Susan uses most any literature that inspires further questions for her to consider. The fact that the entries make sense of a broad spectrum of material is the aspect of her blog Susan is most proud of.
The response from the public has been very positive; like Susan, they are fascinated by the subject material. Although many blogs exist on 2012 and Mayan culture, her’s remains popular because she chooses to focus on the historical realities of the Mayan culture rather than capitalizing on the sensationalism of an end-of-days prediction.
She doesn’t think the world will end in 2012, but the hype surrounding it will be enormous, which won’t hurt her blog’s success.
To continue reading about the MY2K blog, please follow this link.
The following excerpt is from a February 7, 2010 article published by The Washington Post. To read the article in its entirety, please click here.
IPALA, GUATEMALA — Red-shirted mariachis stroll singing and strumming into the dusty yard of a whitewashed villa where roosters crow the dawn. The lyrics of their serenade compare a maiden’s beauty to the shine of the moon, as homemade fireworks explode in the lightening sky.
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Jennifer’s smile flashes on and off, as if she were groping for the proper response to all the attention. She is thinking about her mother, who was born in a shack around here and left as a famished farmer’s daughter 18 years ago. Now her mother cleans houses in suburban Maryland. And Jennifer has returned: A queen. An American citizen.
This is her day. She hopes her Spanish doesn’t fail her. “I kind of get stuck on big words,” she says.
Such great expectations have been invested in her, such dreams. She is proof of the future available to the children of those who strike out for a better life in the north. But her presence also speaks of a companion dream: The possibility of return, the possibility of never leaving at all.
Jennifer contains both. She is origin and destination. The whole aching drama of immigration might be distilled in the story of one transnational teenager on her special day in the pueblo of her mother’s birth…
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The following excerpt is from a February 2nd, 2010 article published by Guatemala Daily Photo. To read the article in its entirety, please click here.
Luna De Xelaju: The Famous Guatemalan Waltz.
“Moon of Xelajú”, has to be the most popular Guatemalan waltz played on marimba and quite possibly the most famous Guatemalan marimba song. “Xelajú” (pronounced shay-lah-HOO) is the old Mayan name for the Guatemalan city Quetzaltenango, still often popularly called “Xelajú” or “Xela”.
Enjoy!
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The following excerpt is from a January 25, 2010 article published by Reuters. To view the article in its entirety, please click here.
GUATEMALA CITY (Reuters) – Archeologists have discovered a huge Mayan sculptured head in Guatemala that suggests a little-known site in the jungle-covered Peten region may once have been a significant city.
The stucco sculpture, which is 10 feet wide and 11.5 feet tall, was buried for centuries at the Chilonche ruins, close to the border with Belize.
The recent discovery of the head, which dates from the early Classic period between 300 to 600 AD, means the site is much older than previously thought. The Maya often constructed new buildings using older ones as foundations.
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The following excerpt was taken from an article published on NewsOK.com on January 17, 2010. To read the article in full, please click here.
CHICHICASTENANGO, GUATEMALA-It’s hard to miss the handwoven tapestries and delicately carved wooden masks that appear in the hundreds of wooden stalls that line the streets of this southwest Guatemalan city. On Thursdays and Sundays, its even harder to miss the thousands of tourists who flock to the city to shop.
Chichicastenango is the host for one of the world’s largest outdoor textile markets, famous for its handwoven textiles. You’ll find textiles aplenty alongside food, flowers, incense and even livestock.
Outdoor markets are a common sight in Guatemala, although the narrow streets of Chichicastenango offer a special challenge. It can be hard to navigate through the throngs of people that set up their wares. If you aren’t careful, you might get knocked to the side by men carrying tables or sacks of grain, often weighing hundreds of pounds, on their backs.
It’s also hard to say “no”. Vendors often strayed from their stalls, draping scarves around the shoulders of anyone who looked like a tourist. Vendors who didn’t have stalls set up goods on the sidewalk or carried them with them. They would follow groups of tourists through the streets to try to sell their goods.
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More cultural insight! This is an article published about the national archaeological park, Tak’Alik Ab’aj. I encourage you to set aside time to read this fascinating article!To read the article in its entirety, please click here.
Guatemala – The ancient history of Tak’alik Ab’aj is one of the most fascinating of Mesoamerica. The traces of the remarkable events that occurred at this site and which affected the evolution of the cultures throughout the region can be found by the archaeologists in the remains of the materials left by the early inhabitants. Among the most important of these materials are the monuments sculpted in stone, the sacred buildings constructed of clay and faced with cobbles, the ceramic vessels and the stone and obsidian tools.
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The following excerpt is from a January 12, 2010 article published by Antigua Daily Photo. It provides an interesting look at a unique part of the day in Guatemala. To read the article in its entirety, please click here.
There are two ‘official’ snack times in Guatemala known as refacción; one in the morning and one in the afternoon. I have shown you the morning refacción before, but this is the first time, I believe, I show the afternoon refacción.
Refacción, however, is much more than a simple snack time. Refacción is the time where workers get together to gossip and catch up with personal details. Refacción is the time when couples in love get together for a quick snack along with hugs and kisses; such was the case of the man and woman in the foreground crossing the street that arrived in horse-pulled carriage (see refacción can also be romantic).
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To get a taste of a Guatemalan Christmas celebration, filled with parades, song and dance,
you can visit the following website.
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