Market
pigs for sale
Chichicastenango, located about 140 km and 2-3 hours drive northwest of Guatemala City, is home to what is surely the most colorful native market in North and Central America, perhaps in all the Americas. Market days are Sundays and Thursdays, and draw not only the K'iche' Maya of the surrounding region, but vendors from all over Guatemala, representing many of Guatemala's linguistic groups such as Mam, Ixil, Kaqchikel and others, each hawking his or her products in a riotous cacophony of color, dialects and costumes, smoke, and smells.
how do they get them all to walk in the same direction
sheep
butcher stands
Vendors begin setting up portable booths in the main plaza
and adjacent streets of "Chichi" the night before and set-up continues in the
early daylight hours. Cohetes (homemade rockets) carrying aloft loud bombas
(firecrackers) commence early in the morning and continue sporadically through
the day, adding the smell of fireworks to the incense burned in copious
quantities on the steps and in the nave of the 400-year old church of Santo
Tomás.
In Chichi one can see traje, that is, beautiful traditional native costumes, from all over Guatemala. Those knowledgeable of the textiles can tell where the wearers are from, because many of the costumes are village-specific or group-specific. While many Mayan men, especially those from towns in the central part of Guatemala, have forsaken their traditional dress for cheaper and practical western-style clothing, many men of Nahualá and Sololá continue to wear traje.
a stunningly-dressed Ixil woman from Nebaj, who has come
down from her town in the
high Altos Cuchumatanes mountains to sell her wares to tourists at Chichi.
beans
brooms
fruit
