Trips to Guatemala

CHICHICASTENANGO

Chichicastenango, whose name chichicaste comes from the plant (nettle), plant that abounds in the region, is a surrounded of valleys, located city in the western mountainous region of Quiche'. More is than 2.070 meters on the level of the sea and is famous by its market that surely between is visited and outdoors colorful of Latin America.

In this compact and traditional city of paved streets, red houses of adobe and tile roofs, the daily tranquility twice breaks per week due to the market of Sundays and Thursday: Sunday usually is more boisterous. The market attracts hordes of tourists and salesmen, as well as Mayan weavers, who arrive coming from the center of high earth.

For the Mayan population Chichicastenango it constitutes an important religious and cultural center. The zone was inhabited by cakchiquel long before the arrival of the Spaniards and, with the passage of the years, the Mayan culture and the catholicism folkloric have gotten to coexist respectfully. Nowadays, the Mayan city has an incredible collection of objects, parallel governments Mayan and judeo-spanish, and a church that its acceptance of little conventional pagan cults does not hide.

The holidays in the city (14 - 21 of December), Easter and Sundays, a handful of brotherhoods still dress the traditional suit and take to spectacular crossings of silver and censers. Although she is not most spontaneous, the celebration is spectacular, since there is a great procession, bands, traditional dances, incense clouds, liters of chicha (spirit elaborated from the fermentation of the sweetened water maize), fireworks and the flying wood (in which some men hang themselves tied with cords of a wood of 20 ms). During the celebration of Year End, all the children born during the year are taken to the church to be baptized.