Traditional Chichicastenango, Guatemala

Brush with Mayan traditions in the highlands

By Andrea Davoust

Of all the Central American countries, Guatemala is the one where the indigenous culture remains most alive. Nowhere is it more readily visible - in the clothing, rituals and language of the people - than in Chichicastenango, a small, sleepy town in Guatemala's western highlands, which springs to life every Thursday and Saturday during its arts and crafts market.

My friend and I reached Chichicastenango late one rainy afternoon - with much relief. From the sprawling, polluted streets of Guatemala City, it had been a three-hour ride in a converted, brightly-painted American school bus, deeper and deeper into the mountains. And what a journey!

The bus charged through crowded intersections, roared down steep hills, swung at breakneck speed around hairpin turns, chugged up roads nearly concealed by rolling clouds before dipping into yet another lime-green valley, but at last it screeched into Chichicastenango. We tumbled out onto a nondescript street, still unsteady on our feet from the eye-widening ride, and seconds later the bus tore off.

The next morning, we set off bright and early to explore the place. The town itself was fairly unremarkable. While most of the one-story buildings were painted bold yellows, oranges or pink, many were just plain concrete. For a place which was supposed to be home for 50,000 souls, it also seemed rather small.

After strolling just a couple of blocks, we had already reached the main square, where very few of the stalls were open, as everyone obviously was waiting for the next day's big market. Nonetheless, there was a pleasant, quiet feel to the place, with few cars driving through the unevenly paved streets.

I also loved the way the women dressed: in a riot of colours. They all wore thick dark blue or dark grey skirts, with fine vertical stripes of darker purple alternating with lighter grey motifs. Their blouses were heavily embroidered with enormous roses or diamond patterns in blazing pinks, yellows and blues. Every single bundle they carried was wrapped in rough striped blankets, again drawing from every hue of the rainbow. It was a natural kaleidoscope, definitely not a show put on for tourists.

After visiting the square, we hiked up the pine-covered hill just south of town to Pascual Abaj, a shrine to the Mayan earth god Huyup Tak'ah. The shrine was little more than a foot-tall ring of blackened stones with a Christian cross in the middle of a clearing, but again, the traditions proved very much alive, as we observed an elderly couple burning some herbs as a sacrifice.

As we were heading back to the center, it started to pour, so we found refuge under the makeshift roofs of the food stalls in the center of the market and ordered two mugs of scalding hot watery coffee. Women were expertly patting corn dough into tortillas, then slapping them to cook on grills. The gesture is common all over Central America, but we were surprised to see dark tortillas. "They are made with black corn," explained the woman, pointing to the different sacks of grain.

Corn is an essential staple here, to the extent that it forms part of Mayan mythology. "The gods created man out of corn," the woman reminded us. "I am from Europe, so was made from wheat," I joked back. She immediately shot back with the eternal where-are-you-from question. My travel companion came from El Salvador - the country literally next door. Yet the woman had no idea where it was. "How many hours by bus?" she asked. As to my home country, France...judging from the uncertain look on her face, I might as well have come from Jupiter. It occurred to me that she had probably never had the chance to venture outside her mountains, a poor campesina selling tortillas every day of her life.

The next day for the artisanal market, the town was so bustling it was barely recognisable. The stalls on the square were bursting with carved masks, jade jewellery, cloth dolls with button-eyes, bags and purses of all sizes and of course blankets. We pushed our way through the crowds, trying not to step onto the women who had simply spread their baskets of fruit on the ground between stalls. A few other pale-skinned tourists stood out in the crowd, all at least a head taller than the Guatemalans.

On the steps of the 500-year-old Santo Tomás church, sellers had covered every available inch with buckets of irises, chrysanthemums and lilies. A young girl read the paper, her legs wrapped in a red and green blanket, while a very matronly woman pottered around, carrying three live chickens. A grey-haired man in corduroys and a sweatshirt, kneeling at the top of the steps, was swinging a pot of incense, shrouding the whole scene in thick scented smoke.

I felt privileged to be witnessing such an authentic scene. Guatemala styles itself as "the soul of the earth" and indeed, up in Chichi the townspeople have not yet sold out to the small trickle of tourists coming their way.