colonial church tour

we went on a colonial church tour with ivan. it was just arna and i in the company car. he asked if we wanted the tour in spanish but we weren´t quite ready for that. i had read about this church in san andrés xecul and was definitely curious. i call it the crazy church and had to see it. the tour was a little more than just seeing churches though because that sounds a little strange. who wants to go look at old churches all afternoon?

first we went to the town of salcaja, which was 10 minutes outside of xela. the church there was called iglesia conquistador because it was the first church built in guatemala, by the spanish conquistadors. it was pretty simple and small but old. the church was mostly white with some yellow and red. there were bananas painted on the front to symbolize how they first got people to go to church. the people were all mayan and when the spanish brought catholicism to guatemala they had to bribe the people to church by giving them bananas when they left. i thought that was funny, but it probably would´ve worked on me. ¡) it was built almost 500 years ago and the foundation is still mostly intact and has survived a number of earthquakes and wars.

next to the church was a random door in a building. ivan knocked on it and a lady opened up and we climbed the narrowest stairs up to the textile making shop. a man was working on a weaving machine with these traditional guatemalan/mayan textiles. it is hard to explain but there were maybe a thousand threads on the machine with a certain pattern of black and white. ivan explained the process as starting with long white threads. they tie little strings in certain places to make a pattern and then dye it, like tie-dye. we looked at these so-called patterns and they looked very random. the weaver was showing us a pattern of 3 women that he created by using different colored weaving threads. he even let me try my hand at it! it was hard because you use both legs (to switch from one set of strings to the other) and both hands (to slide the colored thread back and forth). even with the best concentration i messed it up and i let the colored thread slide all the way out of the machine! oops. it was pretty fun though. he said he makes about US$7/day and it takes him 2 months to create a whole roll of the fabric. very monotonous work but in the end it makes a beautiful textile. downstairs we tried some of this fruity rum-liquor made from local fruits. it was good and tasted like dessert wine i suppose.

the next town we visited was san andrés xecul. the church here is called iglesia amarilla (yellow) because it is painted bright yellow with vines, saints, angels and animals on the front. this church is not as old but the story behind the crazy colors is that the catholics let the new mayan church goers paint it to depict heaven. in the mayan culture, nature is thought of to represent heaven. i thought it was a pretty interesting thought, especially since the mayans adopted catholicism pretty widespread throughout. there are churches everywhere and the mayans seem to have integrated catholicism into their own religion and tradition. some mayan ceremonies include the sign of the cross. another interesing thing we got to see was san símon, a religious statue that originated as maxímon, a mayan god of sorts. he is worshipped for many things now and people make offerings of all kinds (money, cigars, clothes, candles, beer) and he is very popular. we saw him after the church and it was a very strange sight. i was not expecting a white man with a moustache but that´s precisely what he was! he was sitting on a chair with a cowboy hat and cigar in his mouth, with different kinds of clothes and some candles burning. around him were pictures of catholic symbolism as well as more offerings. it was cool to see how the mayan and catholic religions merged in this culture.

the last town we went to was san cristobal (saint christopher) who is the saint of travelers. they were setting up for a week-long festival and it seemed the town was very eagerly awaiting it, so much that they started setting up and selling things already. we tried some banana chips, sliced longwise and deep fried. there isn´t much that isn´t better deep fried! the church itself was magnificent, probably the nicest of the 3 and we walked inside as well. it was very large and just beautifully ornate, i guess like most catholic churches.

it was a very fun tour and we could ask ivan anything since we were the only ones on the tour. we took as long as we wanted and took tons of pictures (to come later of course). it was a great way to spend the afternoon, away from the city and learning a bit about the arts and history of guatemala. now i fully appreciate all the work that goes into the making of the skirts that the women in guatemala wear. he said they last for long time and i can guess they don´t own too many but everyone wears them. there are some women in western clothing but that is mostly in the city and still not too many. the men mostly all wear western clothes.