Upscaling Guatemala

Tme to take a brief pause in my very desultory and delayed attempt to give a chronological narration of my work this trip, and discuss my immediate surroundings -- a brand-new multi-level centro comercial (shopping center) right smack in the middle of Cobán, which is I think the fourth largest city in Guatemala. Cobán is the capital of the department of Alta Verapaz, where there has been a series of conflicts with indigenous communities over land rights. I was here with the Guatemalan Human Rights Commission Emergency Delegation in 2018, and we visited a community not very far away, Chotún Basilá, where a peasant farmer had been killed by the security guards of a company that was trying to force people to sell their land. The 2022 delegation (which I haven't gotten around to writing about) also went to Cobán, very briefly. We met with members of one of the main national organizations representing indigenous people, the Comité Campesino del Altiplano or CCDA (Peasant Committee of the Highlands), as well as people from two communities that had been forcibly displaced from their communities. One community is in the department of Alta Verapaz (Cobán is the capital) and one is in another department. For reasons of security, I am not going to name the communities or the people these are people who have outstanding arrest warrants on what we believe to be spurious charges, and one was the object of an attempted assassination, so this is not an idle precaution.

In any case, we were pretty much in and out of Cobán. We got here at night, had dinner, went to bed, and then had meetings one after the other in the morning, and then we left to head to Rabinal, a town in the department immediately to the south, Baja Verapaz. We didn't really have time to explore much, and although I went for a run in the morning and we must have run right past it, I didn't really take notice of the shopping center until I came back here and was talking with the manager on duty at the hotel where I am staying, just to orient myself. It was a hotel where I hadn't stayed before so I wanted to orient myself in relationship to the Parque Central. He took me up to the roof of the building and pointed out a huge multistory building with a La Torre supermarket sign very visible (La Torre is a national supermarket chain), at opposite end of the Parque  Central from the church. 

After divesting myself of my suitcase, I decided to go out and explore on foot -- only to have the heavens up with a deluge of rain, I made it to the corner across from the mall (about 2-1/2 blocks from my hotel) and decided to venture inside. The first thing I noticed was the ethnographic display cases, one of which is pictured above. There were three or four, all on the first floor. The next thing I noticed was that there were escalators and elevators -- somewhat of a rarity in this part of town, where a lot of the buildings are older. 

The stores in the Centro Comercial are a mixture of typical fast food (Pollo Campero, a national chain that specialized in fried chicken, usually called pollo dorado, which literally means golden chicken; it's not generally called pollo frito or fried chicken) and somewhat newer and more "artisanal" places, like an artisanal fruit-based ice-cream shop, a couple of places where you can get decent espresso drinks. And then there are some very utilitarian businesses, like a dentistry office, an optician, the office of a local cooperative, and of course the supermarket. 

As I've sat here this afternoon, trying to get some work done (there are a lot of tables that are not attached to specific eateries, and decent wifi, and no one seems to bother you if you sit and chat with a group of friends, or sit alone as I am doing, for a good amount of time. The clientele seems to be a mix of people whom I would classify as "professional" (based on their clothing and the fact that they are conversing in Spanish) and those who are dressed in traditional attire (the women, of course -- indigenous men in most parts of Guatemala have long since given up traditional garments). There may be indigenous people among the professionals but they are not dressed in garments that mark them as indigenous. There are some family groups -- women with infants in their arms, both parents shepherding small children around. In most of these families, only the mothers are dressed in traditional garments. Children of both sexes are usually wearing jeans and shirts. You won't see many people in these photos, however, because I didn't have a chance to ask permission, and it would have been hard to explain what I wanted the photos for.  

Why do I take this detour? Because this place seems indicative of how a sector of the national elite (I'm assuming that La Torre is owned by Guatemalans) is inserting itself into urban spaces, as well as the way in which international brands like Taco Bell, McDonald's, Walmart, and Starbucks, are also inserting themselves into the Guatemalan landscape. This isn't an isolated phenomenon -- you can hardly drive along a Guatemalan highway as it passes through one of the major cities without encountering a McDonald's, Dunkin' Donuts, and their ilk. And there are upscale malls in or near most major cities --some of these have been around for a decade or more (J.T. Way has written about Tikal Futura on Avenida Roosevelt in Guatemala City in his book The Mayan and the Mall ). But there's been a noticeable expansion since I was here last, and in at least one place that is not exactly on the main tourist path -- Santa Cruz del Quiché. 

Returning to Cobán, there is one stretch of the road leading into the city from the south where there have been some upscale shops and U.S. fast food stores for quite a while. But the Plaza del Parque is recent.  I don't know a hell of a lot about Cobán but I do know a few things. In the nineteenth century, German capitalists invested in Guatemala, and developed the coffee industry here. I think they also invested in the commercial production of cardamom (which is often mixed with coffee, and also with chocolate -- several places sell coffee with cardamom, and cardamom-flavored chocolate - both for drinking and eating).  Much of what is grown here is exported, although there are vendors at the market under the arches at the plaza, where I saw plenty of local Maya people shopping for güipiles and other textiles, who sell artisanal chocolate and a few were selling bags of coffee. There are still German-owned coffee companies (Disseldorf is the one that comes to mind). Additionally, Cobán is on the road to some popular tourist destinations in the farther northeast, like Semuc Champey and Tikal, so while it isn't swarming with tourists in the way that la Antigua, Panajachel or Xela are, there are some. 

 

Returning to Santa Cruz del Quiché, when I stopped over briefly a few weeks ago and went out for dinner with a dear old friend, I noticed that the area around the Parque Central, which had always had some commercial establishments, had been somewhat gentrified. Before, there was the church and the traditional covered market on one side, a few banks and pharmacies (well-known national chains that have been there a while), one big store selling housewares (a national chain), a few modest restaurants and one bakery. Now, there is a two-story upscale bakery/café, and a few blocks away, on one of the streets leading off the square heading west, a fancy restaurant where my friend and I ate. The restaurant interior would not have looked out of place in the U.S. -- track lighting, sleek surfaces, one wall covered with a multicolored array of mugs. Nor would a good portion of the menu: panini, salads, fajitas. Guatemalans still haven't gotten around to the idea of side salads, however, in most places. Most of the time if you want a salad you either need to make that the meal, find someone with whom to share it, or if you order a salad and something else, resign yourself to either stuffing yourself, leaving food on the plate, or seeing if the restaurant can wrap up the leftovers. 

There seems to be a new aesthetic afoot, also. I've seen lots of places -- including the hotel where I am staying, which is not the swankiest place around -- that have similar decorations. Old bicycles hung from the ceiling or hung on the wall. Wooden cabinets containing manual typewriters, old-fashioned (i.e. 1940s-era) rotary dial phones. Antique wooden sewing machine tables emblazoned with the Singer logo. The photo alongside this paragraph is from a very unassuming roadside eatery somewhere in northeastern Guatemala. 

Perhaps we might refer to this as the panini-ization of Guatemala. Nearly everywhere you, restaurants offer panini on their menus, even if the rest of the menu contains Guatemalan staples like a desayuno chapín (eggs, plantains, a slice of cheese, some black beans, a dab of crema -- Guatemala's version of sour cream, and tortillas; sausage or some kind of meat if you want) or pepián.  And crepes -- both sweet and savory -- have also become somewhat ubiquitous. I don't know if Chinique (total population of the municipality 13,000 as a generous estimate) has any restaurants that serve panini, but they do have a new pizza restaurant. 

And while there are no bicycles hanging from the wall, there is a similar aesthetic that is tied to the products of twentieth century (early to mid-20th century) consumer culture. 

But in general, from what I've heard and seen, social and economic inequality is worsening in Guatemala, so while there is a small Maya middle and professional class, and somewhat larger non-indigenous economic elites, one wonders who these upscale locales serve.