Chichicastenango

Chichicastenango – the name drops off the tongue like marbles spilled on a tile floor. It has in it the excitement and rhythm of Latin dance music, although, strangely, it means ‘City of Nettles’, a name which it was given by the Spanish Conquistadores. This town of about 66,000 is our destination on Thursday, December 1^st, when we get in the van at the Bigfoot Travel Agency in San Pedro at 8:30 AM, together with about ten other travellers. It will take us about an hour and a half to get there, and once again we will tackle the road we descended a few days earlier. It seems less hair-raising this time. Is it due to the fact that we are now on our way up instead of down, or have we got used to the idea of steep slopes, tight curves and big holes in the road so quickly?

Once we are at the top of the hill in Santa Clara La Laguna we soon gain access to the highway. The country is relatively open, with fields of cabbage and beans, corn and squash, and roadside stands offering vegetables and fruit are frequent. Suddenly I think I can’t trust my eyes: apples! We haven’t seen apples growing anywhere since we came to Central America; melons and pineapple, papaya and mango are the fruits of these lands. Apples belong to the moderate climes of much more northerly or southerly countries. Yet there is no denying it: the red, golden and blush fruits arranged carefully in neat piles on rough tables are indeed apples. How can this be, at almost 2500 m elevation? This altitude, I guess, is exactly what does make it possible: the average temperature and the humidity are lower this high up. Soon I see the apple orchards, too, the trees, unlike most others we see, leafless – harvest is over, and the trees are enjoying their winter rest, just like they are at home.

Chichi, as it is called here, is a beautiful old town with cobbled streets, and according to our travel guide it is interesting because pre-Christian rites are still practiced here, parallel to the Catholic faith. The bus driver drops us off at the entrance to the market, not far from the church on whose steps the pot seller in the postcard does her trading, Iglesia del Santo Tomas, built around 1540. Unfortunately we don’t have time to explore Chichi’s non-commercial features further: Thursdays and Sundays are market days, and that’s what we have come for today. We are supposed to meet the bus at this corner again four hours later – that sounds like a long time ...

At first glance it all seems a bit overwhelming, and I take a deep breath mentally before I immerse myself in this melee. A sea of colour stretches out in front of us, a moving, throbbing mass of people almost filling the space between stalls on both sides of the streets, tourists, looking as dazed as I feel, locals in traditional dress, hawkers and buyers – it is all I would have ever imagined a market to be, and more. Pick-pocketing is supposed to be quite common here – no wonder, with everybody pressed so close together – and I try to remember to stay aware of my camera as well as my wallet. It is hard, though, because there is so much to see. I finally put the camera in the purse with the wallet and decide that looking is more important than taking pictures, which would be difficult in this seething mass of people anyway.

How will we ever be able to find anything here, when the offer seems limitless, and every seller tries to attract our attention as soon as we slow down for a moment? We feel exhausted after the first twenty minutes and push through the crowds without stopping anywhere, eager to find a quieter street, to regain our bearings. Finally we have arrived at the outskirts of the market area and find ourselves in front of a beautifully carved door leading into a cool courtyard with well-kept beds of roses, a sign announcing this to be the “Maya Lodge”.   

This is exactly what we need at the moment: some breathing space, a cup of coffee, and welcome shade. There is even music: a Maya musician is playing the marimba in the center of the courtyard, three macaws sitting on perches above him. We saw marimbas in a museum of musical instruments on our coffee tour in Antigua, and now I hear it played live here – what a treat! The marimba is a traditional Guatemalan instrument, originally built from rosewood, with gourds of different sizes used as resonators. The player plays two different rhythms with the right and left hand, which makes it sound quite complicated, and I watch, fascinated, how he gets back into it after he takes short breaks to give his listeners the opportunity to place a tip in the bowls ‘guarded’ by the Macaws.

Marimba player

We finish our coffee, and now feel ready to tackle the market in earnest.

 We’ve been told that we NEED to barter – it is expected, the ritual part of the sale. This is something I am not good at, I know that much; how am I going to do it? How do I know where to start? If I start too low with my offer I might hurt the seller’s feelings, and if I start too high I won’t be taken seriously – but then, that’s a good possibility anyway, and I’m sure we’ve been indulged by the locals in other ways already, thinking we were doing something right, yet showing how little we know about the customs. I suppose there is only one thing to do: plunge in.

Johann, who isn’t very fond of shopping at the best of times, felt little inclination to even enter this market madhouse, but when Kurt starts bartering for a carved mask he, too, is starting to pay attention. There is a whole wall of them in the stall where we stop after looking around a bit, fist-sized to half a meter long or more, painted or just polished to a dull shine. The designs, too, vary, but many have the traditional Maya symbols in different configurations. Ever-important is corn, because the Maya believed that’s what they were created from, there is the jaguar, the snake, the turtle, and others. Gerda has her eye on a medium sized black mask and Kurt, the assigned barterer, makes his first offer, about half the asking price. The middle-aged seller smiles, revealing several missing teeth, and shakes her head. Though I don’t understand quite what she’s saying I can see she tells him that this is way too low, and makes a counter-offer. It goes back and forth for a while, the woman getting ever merrier, and when they finally come to an understanding she is laughing. She has had fun doing this, I realize. And so have we!

It’s my turn next, trying to acquire a small carved wooden owl for my mother. I am much too timid, of course, and I soon have my owl, for less than the asking price, at least. Maybe I’ll get the hang of this yet. I don’t have Johann’s thick skin when it comes to this skill, have trouble offering a low price when I see how much work went into making something. Yet, my next transaction takes a little longer, and the cloth merchant throws in four napkins with the place mats I bargained for.

Johann, meanwhile, is starting to enjoy himself, and now is looking for a project of his own. We have passed several stalls with antiques, both so-called and real: knives, machetes, tea pots, etc. Most of them have rusty blades and all have been used at some time, I’m sure. Some come with simple plastic hilts, others with ones carved from antlers, and there is one decorated with a brass cock’s head he quite likes. He barters a bit with the woman who sells them, but can’t get her price low enough for his liking. When he walks away, a toothless old man approaches him: he, too, has machetes for sale, and among them is a real beauty. It has a brass jaguar head, an antler hilt, and a well-worn elaborate leather scabbard. The price is exorbitant: 600 quetzales, about $80, and Johann waves him off. The man, however, wants Johann to make an offer. Finally Johann offers him 200 quetzales, which, of course, is not acceptable to the man. Johann walks away – that’s that, then – but the man doesn’t give up easily. He follows him around, asking him again and again to make an offer, until Johann finally relents: okay, 250 quetzales then. No, the man says – and again Johann walks away. This game lasts for a long time, the man following Johann, by now joined by several other hawkers who also want to get rid of their wares, and in the end they agree on 260 quetzales, both of them very happy.  

There are other transactions, like the two panama hats Johann and Kurt buy for the price of one, and others that don’t work out: when I walk away from a jewellery seller because the price for his earrings seem too high he just lets me go, and when Gerda offers too low a price for the liking of a woman who sells bags she just packs her things away and ignores her, turning away, thus giving us a taste of our own medicine.

Much too fast time passes. We have had a lot of fun, but there are situations where I have to fight to stay firm, too. Once I make the mistake of looking at a beautiful red and black cloth, traditional motives woven in, part of a bundle a young mother is carrying around. I don’t want to buy it, just admire its beauty. I shouldn’t have! She now follows me around, telling me her price, then lowers it continuously, starting out in Spanish, later switching to a few words of English, while I try to ignore her all the while. Finally, half way across the busy market, still following in my tow, she pulls her last trump card: für die Schwiegermutter! she implores me, in German –for the mother-in-law. ...

I leave Chichi both exhilarated and slightly sad. This place is so alive, there are so many encounters, so much excitement, such wonderful art is created by these people who are yet so poor. They start out each Thursday and each Sunday with such high hopes of selling most, if not all of the beautiful pieces of art they have worked on during the week, often longer. How often, I wonder, do they have to pack in much of what they spread out in the morning at night again? How many of them have to go hungry sometimes? How many of the children we saw don’t get to go to school?

There is no way to tell from our short visit, even though we find ourselves in the part of the market not frequented by tourists at one point, the part where locals have come for centuries to buy their vegetables and spices, bread and meat, clothes and utensils. We buy a bag of buns - not bartering this time - and return to the main market at the next intersection, once again looking at the face Chichicastenango shows on postcards and photographs, the face it shows to the world.