Coban is my favorite town. It's totally a working class town, people running around with large objects on their head, buses driving like maniacs through the streets, tamales and coffee sold by the dozen on the street corners, people are busy here. There is a huge mayan population here, sean and i went to the indigenous market and it was the feeling of being in chinatown but even a step above that craziness, if you can imagine. Mayans are much friendlier and open than the chinese. Their was plantains, and corn being roasted, tons of vegetables and fruit, raw meat just sitting out in the open, flies where all over it!, traditional clothes, cd's, shoes, live turkey's tied together, 50 lb bags of beans, spices, candles, mayan accessories. Part of the market was under a barn like structure that contained hundreds of booths of merchants, children were running around everywhere, smelled of animals, BO, children, spices and life. Sean played his bones throughout the market it made all the girls giggle and be in awe of this large white gringo in a cowboy hat. The electricity was out all day so once the sun started going down we could hardly see what was happening. We walked out to the street and found this family band playing ranchero music. Which when i heard it i thought it was mexican but i was corrected, the country of guatemala was a larger area and encompassed southern mexico and this is where the ranchero music was born. This family was so beautiful, and was lovely to see women getting to sing and play instruments, this isn't always the case.
It was a rainy day, it's rainy season in guatemala. We got caught in one downpour but were blessed with meeting this lovely mayan women who was selling some beautiful handmade textiles. We ducked into a tienda with her and was amazed with all her beautiful work. Guatemala has the most amazing handmade crafts that i have ever seen. No country compares to the weaving, the pottery, and embroidery.
We started this day at a university with a workshop, we were suppose to have a concert as well but that got cancelled due to the swine flu. It was the first time the university has ever made efforts to connect with the US. There has been a lot of tensions here because of the years of US backed politics in this region that has led to a lot of fighting and death. So it was big day in history. Juan Jose Guerrero Perez runs this school and is quite amazing. He is not only the director of this school of 1400 kids but also is a surgeon and a writer. He wrote a book on the history of this region, from the perspective of the people. He took us on a tour of the catholic church in town called Templo El Calvario. This church is special because it has excepted both the catholic religion and the indigenous mayan religion. As we walked up the 136 steps to the church there were mayan offerings with the catholic offerings. in the church there was a back room with 2 crosses decorated with feathers glued to the cross with wax. it was a dark grey room unadorned but there was writing with chalk. The front of the church thee were some saints and jesus with tons of candles and corn as offerings. It felt really good to be in there. Outside was a fire circle where the mayans hold their rituals. It smelled of incense and fire. THere was a man named Fray Bartolome de las casas.He was a very important man in helping save the indigenous people from slavery and death. By converting the Indians it gave him a place to argue against the Spanish idea that native people were inferior and should be pacified forcefully. And of course many people wanted to kill La Casas for these ideals and they started riots but he was successful in the passage of the New Laws (1542) abolishing the encomiendas. La Casa's was a child when Christopher Columbus began the practice of capturing and sending natives back to Spain as slaves in order to repay the funding for his expeditions. Christopher Columbus is the one who started the Encomiendas which was to give land to spanish colonist along with native slaves to work the land. He was a great and smart fighter against the mistreatment and genocide of the natives by the Spainish.
The Catholic Church has really helped the poor and indigenious people in Central America and still does fight for the rights of these people. Most of what we hear is how many bishops and priest were killed and the reason is because they were trying to help the poor groups of poeple. I never knew how vocal and political the catholic church was and is. Just as a side note i was watching CNN and in Chicago there are a lot of young black men getting killed like 200 or so in the past few years. The catholic church hung the american flag upside down as a symbol and frustration that the police are not taking this matter seriously and more needs to be done to help the black communities that are suffering. He was a white priest. I'm pretty enlightened by all of this information.
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