Chichi on Market Day

The Wall Street of Central America.

Families come piled onto the back ends of pick up trucks with their handmade fabrics, earrings, carvings, their spices, fishheads, incense, ceramics...whatever they want to sell.

In makeshift kitchens, hungry vendors, locals, and tourists crowd onto wooden benches to consume bowls of soup, fried chicken and potatoes, and rice.

The bargaining is hard and swift, but the atmosphere is calm nonetheless, as if everyone knows that the right buyer will come along eventually, and if he's a typical tourist, he will be sure to spend too much and the vendor will be glad for the earnings.

So much color, intensity, and smells all at once!

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The best part about our time in Chichi, however, was not the market itself, but an encounter we had with two brothers, Juan and Mario, who manage an art gallery called Proyecto Guggenheim. Here, they not only display breathtaking paintings that capture the indigenous essense of Chichicastenango and the further reaches of Guatemala´s western highlands, but they also run an art school that provides classes for the town´s youths, often with the help of foreign volunteers.

Juan was eager to read to Ashleigh and me our Mayan horoscopes, so we watched as he looked up our birthdays in his Mayan calendar. We learned that Ashleigh is Aaj, which is the Mayan diety of spirituality and pedagogy, and I am Aq ´ab ´al, the diety that represents newness, light, and the dawning of a new day. Aqabal also represents duality, the earthly element of fire, and the chance to strive for peace and harmony anew. Aqabal represents the escape from routine and monotony, and the beginning of a ¨nuevo rumbo.¨ My personality enables me to achieve what I propose, once I dedicate myself to the task, as I tend to look forward and never backward once I am on the path to something. Aqabal is a leader, but more likely to be so from the shadows, being the power behind the scenes. I am realistic about life, and I become frustrated when I don´t finish what I start. I am exremist. I am very likely to live a life of poverty (economic, that would be). I maintain my youthfulness throughout my life. I am protected by what could be called an invisible force while I am realizing activities.

Juan and Mario are trying to develop an artistic consciousness, with a focus on the beauty of indigenous Mayan culture, in a place where about 1 percent of public schools have any artistic curriculum, and where for centuries indigenous communities were discriminated againsts and forced to assimlate as much as possible to the colonial standards. But with will, anything is possible, if people come together to make it a reality.