Loving Linguistics in Latin America

After nearly six months of travelling through South and Central America, I have experienced a number of distinctly different cultures, from the heavily European influenced Chile and Argentina, the indigenous Quechua communities of Bolivia and Peru, and the indigenous Mayan groups in Mexico and Guatemala, as well as the ´ladino´mix of indigenous and Spanish that exist throughout the entire region. But I recently encountered two completely different and distinct cultural groups in the Caribbean that I found absolutely fascinating.


A couple of weeks ago I found myself in a small town called Livingstone, on the Caribbean coast of Guatemala, close to the borders of Belize and Honduras, and it was here that I first encountered the Garifuna culture. They are black, descended from Africa, and speak Spanish as a second language, with Garifuna as their mother tongue.


I´d never even heard of the Garifuna people before, but they have a fascinating history that has meant they have a unique cultural heritage and identity today. Way way back in the early 16oo´s a couple of Spanish ships carrying Nigerian slaves crashed into the Caribbean island of St Vincent. They then intermarried with the two indigenous tribes from the island at the time and became known as the Black ´Caribs´.


About a hundred and fifty years later, there was a war between the British and the French over the island of St Vincent. Both groups wanted control, and the Black Caribs fought on the side of the French. Eventually the British won and took control of the island, but they had a problem. The island was mostly populated by Europeans who traditionally kept African slaves, and they didn´t want a bunch of free black men running around the island, so they rounded up the Black Caribs and basically shipped them off the an island in Honduras, knows as Roatan, and from there they moved to the coastal regions of Belize, Honduras and Guatemala. They then went on to intermarry with local indigenous Mayan people, and so the culture that developed was an intriguing mix of African, European and indigenous elements, with a strong emphasis on dance and story-telling. The religion is similarly an amalgamation of aspects of all these influences, a mixture of Catholicism with aspects of traditional African religions and Mayan indigenous beliefs as well.


In Spanish speaking Guatemala you might imagine that they would seem out of place, but Livingstone doesn´t really feel like Guatemala. It was such a chilled out place, accessible only by boat, which contributed to the remoteness, and the lazy nature of the town. I only stayed a day, but the town was interesting to me because it was so different from any place I´d seen throughout my travels. I spent a lot of time just people watching on the main street, and honestly, there was some amazingly beautiful people to watch. Both the men and women had poise and grace, they seemed like giants after spending so much time with the indigenous folk in the highlands, and the had the innate rhythm that seems to come with black skin and African roots.


But I was on my way to Honduras, so I didn´t get to stay and experience life in Livingstone for more than a day. My destination was Utila, one of the Bay Islands also off the Caribbean coast of Honduras. As a keen scuba diver, I was determined to make the most of the tropical waters and the beautiful reef and marine life to snorkel and dive to my heart´s content. I hadn´t really read all that much about the island before arriving, all I really knew was that it is the cheapest place in the region to dive, that was enough for me. I hadn´t even thought about the people of the island and the culture.


So I was pleasantly surprised to find a delightful mix of people living on the island. Descended from a mixture of American, English, Dutch and other European settlers, the main language of the island is English, spoken with a charming Caribbean accent. The islands were the property of Britain until the 1870s or so, but the people from the island were left almost completely to their own devices. People from the island look very European, any of them could pass as tourists from Britain, but they, and their parents, even grandparents and great grandparents were born on the island. The current population of the island is around 6000, most of whom have European ancestry.


It was only a few decades ago, when the Honduran government made Spanish the mandatory language of instruction in schools, that the islanders even started to learn the language. Except they speak Spanish with the same thick Caribbean accent that they use to speak English! The younger generations are bilingual, but older Utilans are mostly monolingual English speakers. Although calling it English might be stretching it a bit... Whenever the locals were speaking to me I could understand every word, but when they started speaking to each other it was a different story.


As a linguist, I found their interactions fascinating, and I spent many evenings covertly observing groups of locals sitting around the streets and listening to their conversations. IThe youngsters I found much easier to understand, and I found them linguistically fascinating. They had a wonderful linguistic phenomenon in their speech known as code-switching. As complete bilinguals they would alternate between Spanish and English, and intersperse the two in all their conversations. The older generation I found incredibly difficult to understand, and I had to strain and use my considerable imagination to even guess the general gist of the conversation. I would love to have stayed longer to properly study their intonation and mode of speech and document more of what I observed, because five days wasn´t nearly enough to begin to make sense of it, let along learn to speak it! But I did find myself affecting a Caribbean nasal drawl to my vowels when I addressed the locals, except my attempt at the local accent had me sounding rather cockney, I fear.


All in all, Utila was a gem that I hadn´t expected. I came down with food poisoning on my first night on the island, so I couldn´t dive as much as I had hoped. I spent most of my time lounging around the hotel, relaxing, sleeping, reading, and generally being anything but active, which happened to be exactly what I needed at the time. And through this, I found an even richer cultural experience, as it gave me ample time to observe and interact with the local people of the island. I left feeling charmed by the people, their laid back slow pace of life, and their delightful Caribbean English.

Holy Week AKA Semana Santa... In which Tracy goes a-hunting processions!

Holy Week, also known as ´Semana Santa´is by far and away the biggest celebration in Central America, and it seems that people do one of two things. Either they participate in the Easter festivities, which, in true Catholic tradition, are grand and elaborate, or they ignore the religious aspect entirely and head to the regions tourist hotspots, making the most of their five-day vacation to relax and enjoy themselves. Either way, wherever you want to go in Semana Santa is likely to be crowded and busy.



Antigua is the centre of the Easter celebrations, and is widely regarded as THE place to experience Semana Santa. It is a beautiful colonial city in Guatemala, full of churches and plazas and brimming with tourists. In Semana Santa is really comes alive, with daily processions and ceremonies. People from all around Central America make a pilgrimage here every Easter to be part of the celebrations. Tourists from around the world flock here, and it is said that you need to book a room in the city up to four months in advance to be guaranteed a bed to sleep in. AND the prices are hiked up in the true spirit of capitalism, a combination of ´whatever we can get away with´and ´supply and demand´. You can pay as much as US$40 for a room in a dormitory, in hostels which normally charge $6.



Between my sudden trip back to Australia, my grandfather´s funeral, and being robbed, I hadn´t even realised that it WAS Semana Santa, so I was horribly unprepared for the holiday. The idea of seeing a real Easter procession in Antigua was so exciting and compelling, and I had been finding it hard to break through the loneliness and find the motivation to travel and be excited about new things that I was determined to go to Antigua, despite the fact that it was going to be over-crowded and pricey. Originally I was optimistic about my chances of finding a bed the city, but after searching the internet and calling every number I could find in the Lonely Planet I determined that there was NO empty beds in the entire town.



Meanwhile I decided that I would experience the start of Semana Santa in another place sacred to the highland Guatemalan people, Lake Atitlan. A beautiful lake set amongst volcanoes and traditional villages, it is a dream tourist destination... I arrived on the first Sunday of Holy Week, so avoided the bulk of the tourist crowd which was apparently scheduled to arrive en masse on Wednesday. It was plenty crowded for me, though, and the main town on the lake, Panajachel, reminded me a lot of Kao San Road in Bangkok... A tourist strip with shops, restaurants, bars, hair brading and dreadlocks, with a suspicious lack of local people. Despite the beauty of the surroundings, I didn´t like it very much. So I decided to get out of there pretty damn quick and visit the surrounding villages, two of which were supposed to have some unique local traditions that they practise throughout Semana Santa, and I was eager to observe the combination of Mayan traditions with Catholocism.


The highland villages in Guatemala were generally quite charming, and the thing that I loved most about them was the genuine indigenous presence. The people wore traditional dress, and maintained their traditional lifestyle and beliefs. Catholicism is the predominant religion throughout the region, but in the highlands it has a decidely indigenous feel. Catholic church ceremonies in the highlands can contain anything from offering coke to the saints (also thought of as the Mayan gods) sacraficing a chicken, Mayan chants, and more.


The item most of interest to me in Lake Atitlan was a deity known as either Maximon or San Simon depending on who you are talking to. I´m not entirely sure who exactly he is supposed to be, the Lonely Planet describes him as some sort of combination of Mayan gods, the Spanish conqueror of Guatemala, as well as Judas from biblical times, but that just seemed too weird to even contemplate. Whoever he is, the local people certainly believe in his power, because while I was on my way to the lake I ended up almost unable to breath in an extremely crowded chicken bus full of Mayan dressed men and women on their way to make offerings to him in San Jorge, one of the lake villages. I decided that it would be a ritual worth seeing, so the next day I decided to go exploring and hopefully catch a glimpse of the ellusive San Simon. The lady next to me on the bus had explained that they parade an effigy of him around the village and people chant and make offerings throughout Semana Santa, so I just assumed that it would happen every day. But when I arrived at San Jorge, the village that had been so full of life and colour yesterday, I found a town practically deserted, with no sign of San Simon anywhere. When I asked where the procession with San Simon was, they looked at me like I was mad and told me that it was the previous day...


So I wandered around the village from top to tail, which took about ten minutes in total, before deciding to move on and try to spy San Simon in one of the other villages that worship him. The Lonely Planet described the ritual of the village of Santiago Atitlan, who apparently parade San Simon around throughout the whole of Holy Week so I thought that I might have more luck there. I took a ferry over to this village in the afternoon, and I found a bustling market full of tourists and locals. It was charming, and I bought myself some mango, a couple of local cakes and sat and had a coffee for about 20 cents in a lovely local coffee house. But when I tried to find out about San Simon, the locals once again looked a little blank and said, ¨you should have come in the morning, they took him out then¨. So I missed San Simon again, but did enjoy the village and the boat trip on the lake was also lovely.


On the Monday evening I decided that I wasn´t going to let a lack of hotel rooms in Antigua stop me, so I booked a one way bus ticket for Antigua on the Tuesday, with the idea of leaving my luggage for the day in a travel agency and spending the day in the town before leaving late in the evening to stay in Guatemala City, which is about 45 minutes by car from Antigua. I left early in the morning so I could make the most of the entire day in Antigua and see as many processions as possible. I arrived in Antigua by about 8am, and stashed my backpack in the office of the bus company and set out to explore the town centre.


The town was alive with colour, people and life, and I just loved walking along the old, cobblestone streets. Every building in the city had purple drapes hanging from their windows, and dried flowers, which appeared to be the appropriate decoration for Easter. I found my way to the main square and picked up a list of the processions and a map describing the exact route. It was double-sided, and I found the list of processions for Tuesday and so went procession-hunting... The first procession said that it left from the ´Iglesia de la Merced´ (Church of the Mercy?) but I really couldn´t work out how to follow the map at all. I am usually pretty good at navigating, not through any innate skill, but more because of years of practise throughout my travels. Give me a map, and I´ll be able to take myself around any foreign city, guaranteed. So I was somewhat disconcerted to realise that the map I was looking at made no sense and did not seem to correspond to the reality of the town. The main plaza was on a different place on the map, and the street names where all wrong. It made my head hurt, so I gave up looking at the map and decided to ask locals for directions to the Church of the Mercy instead. So finally I found La Merced, was was a beautiful structure, except that it was.... empty. I waited but there was no sign of a procession anywhere... Feeling a little confused, yet still not deterred, I found the next procession in the list, which apparently left from Iglesia de San Francisco. The map still didn´t make any sense, so I asked locals again and directed myself to San Francisco, still optimistic that I would locate my first procession there... only to find the church empty as well.


I started to be suspiscious at this point, and weaved my way through the streets back to the main plaza and the tourist office where I had got the map in the first place. I found one of the tourist police, and all but shoved the map at him, complaining that it didn´t make sense, that I had been to both the churches on the list but there were no processions anywhere.


And once again, I was looked at like I had grown an extra ear or something, while the policemen patiently explained that there WERE no processions in Antigua today, it was the rest day. But it´s right here, I said, pointing at the map and list of processions, and as I pointed I noticed the heading in large purple letters ´PROCESSIONS IN GUATEMALA CITY´.


I had been guiding myself around the wrong city looking for processions that didn´t exist! I couldn´t believe that after all my time travelling I made made such a rookie mistake... and after the failed attempts in Lake Attitlan you would think that I had learnt my lesson!


I think I would have found it rather amusing, except I was bitterly disappointed that I had chosen the one day that had no processions as my day trip to Antigua. It was still a lovely place, but I couldn´t seem to find the energy to explore, so I did what all good women do when a little down in a new town. I went shopping! Retail therapy definitely works wonders, and by the time I left the market I had made a whole in my wallet, and added approximately 6 kilograms to my luggage, but I was cheered immensely... until I had to carry the backpack that is!


Anyway, I definitely learnt a valuable lesson through days of futile searching for efigies and processions that didn´t exist, and that was the importance of talking to local people when planning my excursions. Any of them could have told me where and when to find San Simon if I had asked, or which days were the best to visit Antigua. I definitely learnt the importance of conducting a little research in advance, whether it be through the internet or even better by talking to locals.



I eventually found some processions, on Good Friday, in the city of Coban. Coban is an ordinary Guatemalan town, with limited international tourists, but large enough to host a couple of grand processions. So I got to experience a very authentic Good Friday celebration, without the tourists, which was probably the ideal situation I could have hoped for I think.


I got up early friday morning to watch the local people preparing, creating ornate carpets of sawdust and flowers, known as ´alfombras´. These really looked like carpets on the road, some were quite simple, others amazingly complex and detailed, but all were made with love and reverance. Some were made by family groups, others by businesses, yet others by volunteer groups, such as the volunteer firefighters, which was my favourite alfrombra, probably because of the cheeky guys who were making it.


The alfombras lifespan is short, however. Generally the streets are only allowed to be blocked one or two hours before the processions, so groups have a very short window in which to create their masterpiece, and generally it requires a large number of workers to complete it in time. Less than a couple of hours after they begin, the alfombra is destroyed as the procession passes over top.


The processions are nothing like the parades that we are used to in Australia, with clowns, floats, marching bands, dancers... Rather somber in nature, they tell a story. From the Sunday before Easter there are daily parades that go through the Easter story, each portraying a different aspect of the last week of Jesus´ life, from palm Sunday, when Jesus entered Jerusalem on a donkey, to the miracles of Jesus, such as raising Lazarus from the dead and other miracles, the betrayal of Judas, the last communion, the cruxifiction on Good Friday, then the burial, and finally the resurrection on Easter Sunday. Thousands of men and women walk along with the procession, dressed in purple church robes, except for Friday afternoon, which is the burial, and everyone is dressed in black. It literally takes hours for the procession to move past any given point, the march is long and slow. Finally, the pinacle of each procession is a float, or a number of floats, that are also carried on the shoulders of devout followers, who literally march up to, sometimes even more than 12 hours around the streets of the city.


The reality of the procession process is that after the rush to complete the alfombra in time, the parade itself comes incredibly slowly... After you´ve stood in the same place for two hours in what you thought was a prime position just outside the church, only 100 metres away from the entrance, and you are STILL waiting for the finale, you can be forgiven for a moment or two of boredom.... But when the float passes by and the crowds swell, there was no feeling like it.


The emotion I felt at that moment was quite indescribable. Observing the thousands of people parading, then finally Jesus on the cross and the weeping virgin, flanked by ladies dressed in black, really brought a tear to my eye. It was so beautiful, so spiritual, and I had gone through so much in search of the procession that it was like a dream come true. I found the entire process inspirational, momentous, serene, beautiful, and a number of times was moved to tears...



While I stood, squashed up against people on each side with everyone straining to catch a glimpse of the procession moving past, I felt a sense of completion, and so grateful that I was able to witness that moment. I felt a sense of knowledge that moments like these were the reasons that I travel and through the Easter experience I think I have come to appreciate being here again. It truly was an experience worth waiting for, and I was not a bit disappointed by the reality. I have to say that it is one of the highlights of my trip, something I have never seen before, and am unlikely to ever see again.