Translating the Maya Popol Wuj
It’s the 20th of December and we are in Chichicastenango for its Fiesta Patronal. Just after 3:33 A.M., we are woken up by powerful explosions right above the Hotel Pop Wuj where
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Country: Guatemala
Rituals of Resistance
When I first passed along the Guatemalan lakeshore to the Cofradía Santa Cruz, where Maximón spends much of the year, I was out walking. I didn’t know where I was…
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A Quest for Contemporary Maya and Aymara Spirituality and Identity
I remember Coba, Quintana Roo, as a remote and sleepy Maya village in the 1990s, which had to be reached by a good hour-long drive on a narrow road inland from Tulum. We stayed at the Villa Arqueologica, an upscale hotel, at that time the only tourist hotel in Coba…
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Picturing Calixta
My longtime friend Calixta Gabriel, a Kaqchikel Maya poet and spiritual guide had decided the time had come to unbury her past. As she revealed her history to me, I discovered
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Guatemala: Slow-Motion Collapse
English + Español
Guatemala is in the middle of the Pacific Ring of Fire; a country the size of Tennessee, it is threatened by four tectonic plates and has almost 300 volcanos. Here, we have all grown up with tremors, and some of us remember the last “great” earthquake: that of 1976, which…