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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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 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…
Maya women were the artisans who invented a panoply of ancient beverages and sauces containing cacao. This association between cacao and women extended to an association with certain Maya goddesses. While originally introduced from South American, the…
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One early morning in September 2017, I bought a bean tamale for two quetzals, equivalent to a U.S. quarter. The middle-aged vendor wore a multi-colored cloth skirt, snug above the waist and falling to mid-calf, and a knit mesh crop-top over a purple tank. Her skirt…
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