🇬🇹 Guatemala, “the land of many trees", and the Festival of Santo Tomas
Learn a bit of Mayan, spot Star Wars, see the Mexican Empire, hear about United Fruit Company and how they destabilised Guatemala and a modern day genius that comes from here!
As always, let’s start the tunes!
The largest country in Central America, Guatemala is around 100,000km^2, approximately the size of Ireland, Iceland or South Korea, and is home to 18 million people, 45% of which are Mayan - an indigenous people group.
The indigenous Mayan identity is evident everywhere - for example the Guatemalan currency is called Quetzal - after the amazing green and red bird whose feathers were used as currency in the Mayan days.
Ancient Civilizations
You may have heard of the Mayan Empire - so let’s start there. There is no such thing as Mayan and there was never an empire - only similar cultures across a large number of cities
In fact, Mayan is a modern word - there was no such strong unity among the indigenous groups before.
Moreover, without animals like Ox, Horses or Llamas, they created huge 25m+ temples, religion, astrology, irrigation, and agriculture that allowed them to dominate and thrive in the land. It was so distinct that it inspired Star Wars as a filming location.
Grouping them into a cohesive people group, there was a huge amount of technology and culture shared - including crop cultivation (corn and chocolate), architecture (pyramids, arches and stadiums to watch the Maya ball sport) and written communication with paper and ink or by chisel into rock.
Let’s learn how to read
This is the symbol for chocolate:
There are three parts
the fish-like thing (in red) pronounced
ka
,the green two dots noting that you repeat it twice, so
kaka
the hook tail thing (blue) pronounced
oo
So it is approximately kakaoo
or cacao
- a word that we use today!
[Huge thanks to https://www.worldhistory.org/article/789/how-to-read-a-maya-glyph/ who taught me this!]
The beginning of the end
In the 9th century, multiple Mayan cities collapsed during a period of numerous wide-scale droughts which stressed the cities, coalitions and ultimately caused failures in agriculture too.
Though many survived, there was no large group or organised nation - instead a variety of towns and trade markets.
16th century, Spanish Conquest
Over the 1500s, while the Aztec empire fell to the Spanish Conquistadors (Cortez et al), Pedro de Alvarado was sent to Guatemala to do the same to the Mayans.
The strategy? Support one indigenous group in battle against another and then turn against them later. Divide and conquer.
While traveling, the Spanish were surprised to find huge cities and pyramids that were left to ruin. Being unable to believe the trade markets and towns were related to the fantastic architecture, they hypothesised alternatives, such as other europeans had arrived a millennium earlier.
By 1697, there were no longer any Mayan-ruled cities - be it through the Spanish or the Spanish diseases. In the name of devil worship, Mayan books and culture was burned, leaving only 3 Mayan books surviving to today.
This left Mayan culture to survive only in remote regions and small villages.
1821, Independence?
Guatemala became independent from Spain by forming the Central American Federation with El Salvador, Honduras, Nicaragua and Costa Rica, and a year later joined the first Mexican Empire.
Then a year later the empire collapsed and hence they returned to being the Central American Federation.
Then another year later they fell into war and formed (roughly) the nation states we see today.
United Fruit Company
Guatemala is an incredibly fertile land.
The American United Fruit Company found this and capitalised in the 1950s.
As they built their monopoly in the land they bought and owned a huge proportion of Guatemala’s fertile land, while also owning the railways and phone lines too!
In fact, only 2% of Guatemala’s people owned 72% of Guatemala’s land and the largest land owner was United Fruit Company. What is worse, they didn’t productively use the land.
The Árbenz government wanted to redistribute land to the masses to make the land more productive. They compulsory purchased a lot of land, 40% of United Fruit Company’s land was included.
To give a fair price, they used the reported price of the land in the previous years tax declarations.
The United Fruit Company claimed their land was worth 25x more than they reported it for taxes.
By the way, United Fruit Company still exists, now known as Chiquita Brands International - the blue and yellow sticker one!
The US
The Arbenz government was not communist, but Arbenz did undo a law allowing communists to have their own party and began moving land to be more fairly distributed across the people.
This worried the US government. It also angered United Fruit Company - who had strong connections in the government and CIA that it lobbied for action.
At this time, Europe was a mess after WW2, the Cold War was hotting up, and the US saw itself as the future of freedom.
Successive policies such as the Monroe Doctrine, the Roosevelt Corollary and the Good Neighbour policy empowered the US forces to be a new world police - largely to stabilise the regions (for commercial gain as much as any other target).
This started with the US banning European powers from colonising, interfering or reclaim debts from the Americas as a whole - despite it continuing to grow its borders, control and interference.
Then the Truman Doctrine stated that the US would interfere if democracy is being attacked.
United Fruit and ‘concerned’ viewers of a ‘potentially communist leaning` Guatemalan government lobbied the US government hard - blocking imports to the Guatemalan government.
The Civil War
The Guatemalan government tried to buy arms for their military from the US and its neighbours but the US and its allies said no.
They finally got a deal with Czechoslovakia (which the US knew was happening) and when it was confirmed the US pointed to this as evidence of communism.
The CIA quickly organised a coup.
The CIA heavily supported a small militia by dropping bombs, guns and leaflets as well as broadcasting radio messages from the US embassy posing as the militia.
Only 15 government soldiers died but Arbenz, the leader of government, stood down believing his party could continue their work if he did.
Less than 6 months later the government was overturned completely - replaced with a right wing US-supported military dictator.
Within 6 years the country would fall into a 36 year civil war as a result, where over 200,000 people were murdered or ‘disappeared’.
Modern Guatemala
In 1996, the civil war stopped, land was redistributed once again, and economically the country began to grow.
This year there was an election where a left leaning candidate won (who happens to be the son of a left leaning president from before the Civil War).
Despite this positive indication, an attempted coup has been happening in the last few weeks. Listen to more here.
According to data from 2019, around 59% of the population in Guatemala lives below the national poverty line, and around 23% live in extreme poverty.
To help relieve poverty, wealth distribution and access to education are key levers. Luckily, a Guatemalan is focusing on it…
Luis von Ahn and Duolingo
What, now? Well, I didn’t know how to add this, but an incredibly influential and thoughtful tech leader and fantastic role model comes from Guatemala. You may know a few of his products:
ESP or Google Image Labeller
Basically two random players are shown a picture and they have to give one word answers that will match. A fun game but also a great way to build data sets to train computers.
Game’s with a purpose (GWAP)
Building on ESP, Luis made a program at Carnegie Mellon designed for building more games that would help build training sets for computers that can recognise shapes, search music, and teach computers what beauty is!
reCAPTCHA
Building on GWAP, Luis solved translation and transcription of old newspaper text while solving how to ensure online users are real people.
Duolingo
So a theme of games that teach computers, of course the next step would be to build computers that teach us!
21 Dec, The Fiesta de Santo Tomas of Chichiastenango
So what are we celebrating?
Well, a celebration that is mixed between the Guatemalan, Spanish and Mayan cultures.
It is the Spanish Catholic festival of Saint Tomas (the saint of the city) that is blended with Mayan celebration of the Winter Solstice (the longest night), which results in festivities and dances of colour, music and markets.
To celebrate they make all types of masks and parade the streets.
Anyone can wear the masks, but there is a special group who perform a symbolic bull fight, where one dresses as the infamous Spanish mascot as it fights and ultimate kills the group - its been suggested as a retelling of how Spain dominated the region.
I also cannot ignore the most extreme and uncommon aspect - the Palo Voladores or Pole Flyers. In short, they dress up as a monkey and a jaguar, climb a huge (75ft+) pole and swing off it. The aim? Just to prove you have the courage to do such a thing!
Food
Pepián de Pollo
A national dish of Guatemala - a nutty stew with chicken.
Atol de Elote
A warm sweet corn (?!) drink.
Platanos en Mole
Bananas (plantains) in chocolate (mole) sauce.
Movies
Guatemala: heart of the mayan world.
If Attenborough did country drone footage…
Apocalypto
While the plot revolves around a brutal hunt during the fall of the Mayans, it offers a glimpse into their culture, customs, and rituals. I will say this is a triller and heavy one at that. It has also been criticised for being incredibly violent, doesn’t reflect the Maya people and doesn’t reflect the technology and innovation of the Mayans either.
The Road to El Dorado
So… an odd suggestion. El Dorado was a Spanish invention and this movie blends the Aztecs and the Mayans - but there are a lot of elements directly taken from the Maya and I have to give a more family friendly option.