Enmanuel, a native of Guatemala, lives in San Antonio Aguas Calientes with his mother. After opening a paper store for the students in the area, Enmanuel has plans to develop a multi-sports field and playground on land he already owns. His vision is to provide a free and safe space for the children in the community to play. Alongside the volleyball/soccer/basketball field, he would like to build a playground and concession stand. In the spirit of his father, Enmanuel hopes to become an active leader in the community by supporting the healthy development of the children of San Antonio Aguas Calientes.

Escuela de Katchiquel

Olga, a true entrepreneur at heart and in practice, owns and operates her own bakery, is helping her son to open a laundry mat, and, on occasion, hosts Peace Corp volunteers in her home. Professionally, she works as a Spanish teacher at a school in Antigua. Olga has hopes to transfer her skills as a teacher into opening her own school in San Antonio Aguas Calientes. Her mission: to teach Katchiquel (a Mayan language) to preserve and share her Mayan heritage. Olga’s school will be the first of its kind in San Antonio, and she is working to attract not only tourists interested in learning Katchiquel, but also the youth in the community, as knowledge and use of the language is diminishing.

Branding and Marketing Initiative

Irla, a driven and uniquely talented weaver, supports her family’s artisan business through her San Antonio market stall. As a highly zealous and bright mother of two, she sought to develop a brand and marketing initiative promoting her family’s exceptional crafts, as well as offer an array of distinct Mayan activities to the culture-hungry traveler. Recently, Irla had the memorable experience of hosting a foreign student in her home, and looks forward to the opportunity to share her family’s traditions with more interested travelers. Natural herbal medicines derived from the family’s garden, the language of Katchiquel taught by Irma’s father, and lessons in the preparation of naturally pigmented thread made from their cotton tree are just some of the many unique Mayan activities Irma and her family offer. After naming her business IXEL K’IEM (a nod to the Katchiquel god of weaving), and with the support of business cards, a comprehensive brochure in both Spanish and English, and an email address, Irma and her family hope to gain the publicity their remarkable business warrants.

This week was a tough one to attract participants to our workshops because everyone is either participating in or preparing for this weekend’s festivities, in celebration of San Antonio de Padua (the town’s patron saint.)

However, we kicked off our workshop series with English workshops. Below are spreads from a booklet that students designed, printed, and colored in by hand, with the colors and basic words in English and their phonetic translation to teach pronunciation.

Yesterday morning, two of our Parsons students and I met with the designer for the municipality, Jeremias. He was actually hired as a computer technician, and has ended up also designing all the marketing materials for the local government and its events.

He was interested in our feedback on his design for a vinyl banner promoting a local artisan women’s association “Caminemos Juntas.”

Our students did a terrific job in taking him step-by-step through a graphic designer’s decision process, emphasizing less is more, the importance of white space, and the cardinal rule of not stretching typefaces.

BEFORE:

AFTER:

Jeremias was very happy with the end result, but was not sure if the client would be OK with removing the two oval images next to the main heading.

I’ll report back once it gets printed!

Miss Universo Guatemala 2009 and Miss Reina Maya 2009. Who truly represents Guatemala?

Students organized a successful information session for Monday afternoon. It was promoted via posters that were taped around town, flyers they handed out, word of mouth by walking door to door, and via a man on a tricycle with a megaphone who rode around town broadcasting the purpose and time of the meeting (video on that coming soon.)

During the meeting teams of students facilitated small groups of San Antonio citizens who were asked to discuss the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and challenges of the town. We now have this list which establishes a framework within which we will run workshops about culture preservation in tourism.

The meeting ended with a digital storytelling workshop in which the members of each team had to describe San Antonio through one of the senses – “San Antonio tastes like…”, “San Antonio smells like…” One of the students rapidly edited a movie from everyone’s clips, so that we ended the day with the participants seeing themselves talking on a large projection.

Last Friday we had the fortune to attend the election of the Reina Flor del Cafe 2009 in San Antonio. It was really wonderful to see how the concept of a pageant was adapted to an indigenous community, with an emphasis on the preservation of their culture and traditions. The 7 contestants had to wear a variety of traditional dresses, explain their origin and symbols, dance typical dances, speak the native dialect Kaqchiquel, and deliver a short speech on a topic of their choice.

The candidate in the video is the winner, for whom we were all rooting after her speech, which we found so moving & educational. Enjoy!

A 2-hour debriefing session yesterday afternoon with all of the students led to some specific decisions in terms of how we want to be working here in San Antonio, and with the artisan groups that we met on Wednesday. We’ve decided to move forward under the budding local program of Community Tourism. San Antonio’s mayor shared that this is a priority of his office, and he would be interested in whatever feedback we can give him.

So, the students have decided to move ahead with this, and not only focus on community tourism, but invite as many people from San Antonio to participate in defining these terms for their municipality, and in terms of what roles they can play.

Our students have designed flyers to promote two information sessions – Friday and Monday at 3pm, during which we will present the idea and facilitate a brainstorming session on how this initiative can impact the community, and how each person can prepare, and benefit from, a potential influx of tourists. Currently, tourists are dropped off on the main square, in which they sit for a while, before wandering into the one artisan market that exists in town, and then return to sit in the park, before hopping on a bus to return to the touristy city of Antigua.

Some potential deliverables and activities for next week may include:
[]Working with workshop participants to develop, design, print, and distribute a multilingual map of San Antonio that orients tourists in the town and points to some interesting destinations and activities
[]Creating a media kit about San Antonio (the place, the people, their traditions) via a digital storytelling workshop using Flip cameras
[]Teaching a pricing and design strategy workshop for artisans to keep in mind what types of products are more likely to sell (while still receiving a fair wage for their work), as well as what types of services could be offered (spend the morning cooking with a local family, learn how to weave, walk up the mountain and chop some wood, etc.)
[]Developing guidelines for the municipality, and its residents, to keep in mind when adapting their activities to tourists (making sure they are not demeaning themselves nor their culture, and not artificially creating culture)
[]Running a workshop on how to exploit tourists – possibly the most controversial of our ideas, students are very interested in making our community collaborators very aware of how tourists may try to exploit them, their culture, or even their image

Silvia, one of the women who attended our first meeting yesterday, invited us today to join her and her family to learn how to cook “Pepian,” a typical Guatemalan dish. We’ll share the recipe that they taught us, but in the meantime enjoy these shots from the day.

After shopping at the butcher and a couple of vegetable markets, we started the cooking in their outdoor kitchen, a shack in which they have a wood-burning stove. All of the surfaces on which they cook are black ceramic, handmade in another region of Guatemala.

The pepian sauce has chilies, tomatoes, and onions which are blended after being cooked on the wooden stove.

We also participated in making (or trying to make!) tortillas, which could be clearly identified as the not perfectly round ones during lunch.

This is what the final dish looks like – rice (with carrots and peppers), beef rib which was cooked in water for hours with cilantro, and a lot of the pepian sauce.

It was wonderful to spend the day with the three generations of this family – they were all so welcoming and really made us feel at home (we started at 10:30 am and left at 2:30pm!)