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I prefer not to spend my time looking for good links so
I have just listed a few sites which for one reason or another I find
especially wonderful. At the bottom of the page
is a list of sites which have really good lists of links on topics
which might be of interest to people visiting this site. Links for
more sites and sources of Guatemala textiles
are in the Textile section. If you find a link which no longer
works, please email me so I can correct it. |
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 The
Lords of Atitlán is a website
with photos and text by Bill Muirhead. "The natural splendor of Lake
Atitlán and its environs has inspired Aldous Huxley and others to
declare it “the most beautiful lake in the world.” Yet it is the
region’s inhabitants, their custom, color, and ceremony, and their
astounding character and correctness which grace Lake Atitlán with a
beauty beyond the reach of Becoming. I don’t know if what Huxley said is
true. Certainly claims can be made for Lake Como or Lake Geneva. I
myself, an Illinois farm boy, remain tied to my own Lake Michigan. But
what I think makes his claim irrefutable is the rich cultural diversity
of the many villages and hamlets that rim the lake and dot the
mountainsides surrounding it. The real beauty and grandeur of Lake
Atitlán is its people, the Maya Kaqchiquel, Tzutujil, and, through later
migrations and colonizations, the Quiché." |
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MiMundo is
undoubtedly the best and most complete site of photographs of Guatemala. |
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 Aluna
Joy Yaxk'in, a spiritual teacher, has written many articles about the
Maya calendar
on her website. She runs a spiritual center,
Center of the Sun, in Sedona
Arizona and conducts sacred site spiritual pilgrimages. |
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 Mahiya Norton, an Australian
woman who studied at Casa Rosario Spanish School, has been one of the driving forces behind
their program to pay for schooling for poor Maya children. She is now working
on another program in one of the poorest towns around the lake, San Pablo la
Laguna, and she needs
volunteers. It is a program which will provide ovens for the Maya women. This will give them a healthier cooking environment, and at the same time it
will cut down on the amount of wood needed
for cooking. You can learn more at her website
Friends of Australia and New Zealand
and to volunteer contact Mahiya directly at:
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 Indigena Imports
is the best
source for the most beautiful, highest quality traditional Maya traje
available in the United States. If you
want the finest, Indigena Imports is the one. They also carry contemporary
style clothes for the western market which are made of hand woven Maya fabrics. |
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 Endangered
Threads Documentaries has produced their first DVD narrated by
textile expert Margot Blum Schevill about the Maya weavers of
Guatemala. Unlike most documentaries on weavers which concentrate on a
few weavers, this one has footage of and commentary by many weavers
from different communities. See also: sources
and books in the Textiles section |
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 Guatemalan
women suffering from spousal abuse have no recourse because the police
and Guatemala courts refuse to help them or hear their cases, and
worse still return them to the abuser. Rodi Alvarado fled Guatemala to
the United States after ten years of abuse, certain that her husband
would kill her. The United States immigration service has refused to
grant her asylum arguing that it would open the floodgates. The Case
of Rodi
Alvarado has been taken on by the Center
for Gender and Refugee Studies at UC Hastings, in hopes of
obtaining asylum for her and changing the attitude of Guatemala
towards the problem. |
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 The
Arte y Literatura de
Guatemala website lists and has biographies of the best know writers
and poets of Guatemala. Nobel prize winner Miguel Angel Asturias is
shown in the photo to the right. There is a separate homepage for
Guatemala's artists. Juan Carlos Escobedo Mendoza who
created this site, also has an excellent site on the
Popul Vuh,
the Maya creation story and one of the few Maya texts to have escaped
being destroyed in the first centuries after the Conquest. Both sites
are in Spanish as I write this (05/23/06), with the goal of being
translated into English. |
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 Richard
Morgan runs a very nice small inn, Los
Encuentros Lodge, in Panajachel. Richard is a very interesting and
well informed person. He had written a highly praised (Rough Guide to
Guatemala & REVUE) book about the eco-cultural dimensions of the Lake
Atitlán region. He
has also done more than anyone else in the area to encourage the
Tz'utuhil Maya artists. He is friends with all of them, so if you want
to know more about these artists, this would be a wonderful place to
stay. |
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 I
used to save images of Guatemala postcards until I found Guatemalan
Postcard Photographers which has done a much better job than I
have time to do. |
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 Project
Guatemala: The
National Folk Festival website has exceedingly beautiful
photographs of the traditional Mayan masked dances. This project can
use help in preserving and promoting this important part of
Guatemala's cultural heritage. |
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 Sacred
Road has a website devoted to Mayan spirituality. The article on
Chichicastenango by the Mayan ajq'ij [Mayan priest] Manuel Pan Ju Lux
is exceptional. |
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 Arte
Maya of course thinks that San Pedro la Laguna is the best place in
Guatemala to study Spanish and highly recommend Casa
Rosario Spanish School. The scene at right is the view from one of
the cabañas in the garden where most students choose to study. |
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A list of the best Spanish
Language Schools in Guatemala. David Unger has put this list
together.
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 Pueblo
a Pueblo has a project to reconstruct the hospital in Santiago
Atitlán which was a casualty of the violence in the 1980's. If you
want to know more about it or to help go to their website. [Note,
10/05: The hospital had just been reopened when a mudslide covered
the aldea [small village suburb] of Santiago Atitlan where it
was. The residents of the aldea, perhaps more than 1000,
were buried by the slide. The hospital was covered up to fifteen feet
deep with mud. It is not sure if it will be structurally sound if it
is dug out. One room with some of the most expensive equipment was
spared.] |
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NISGUA, the Network
in Solidarity with the People of Guatemala, is an organization of
people in the United States to assist in defending human rights of the
people of Guatemala, especially the Indigenous Mayan population. (For
many years, especially during the early 1980's, the Government of
Guatemala with the help of US funds was waging war on much of the
Indigenous Mayan population.) It publishes four times a year "The
Report on Guatemala" the BEST English language publication on the
current situation in Guatemala. |
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 Mayan Epigraphic Database Project
is an outstanding
website about Mayan glyphs and the writing system of
the ancient Mayan texts. This is a very exciting site,
because it is only in the last few decades that we have begun to been able to read the ancient
Mayan texts.
The project supports a good list of websites of interest to Mayanists. |
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Native Languages of the
Americas is a small non-profit organization dedicated to the
survival of American Indian languages. I quote their description of
their website: "Our website is not beautiful. Probably, it never will
be. But this site has inner beauty, for it is, or will be, a compendium
of online materials about more than 800 indigenous languages of the
Western Hemisphere and the people that speak them." |
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 Todd
Fry, an anthropologist, has some very beautiful photographs of the
Maya in the Yucatan on his website in the Visual Artist section. |
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 The Diggers Archive is an
incredible site and resource about the San Francisco Diggers who
during the Summer of Love inspired many people through their
actions, activities and philosophy. I don't think it would be
stretching things to say that among the good things to come out of the
summer of love were a strong interest in indigenous cultures, ecology
and of course creating peace on our planet rather than war. It includes such sections as the
Kaliflower
Commune and their ideas on doing things for free. |
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 The Planet Drum
Foundation's promotes a bioregional, ecological approach to dealing
with the problems of our planet. Their Eco
Ecuador section documents how they are working with one town in
Ecuador who decided to become ecologically sustainable. |
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 The
No Penny Opera promotes free
theater in San Francisco, a tradition started by the Angels of Light. |
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 Porkopolis
is a delightfully serious and funny site devoted to pigs, especially
paintings of pigs. Miguel Angel Sunu is one of the Tz'utuhil Maya
artists featured on the site. |
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|
 Amit
May Fine Arts is a resource for people of all backgrounds and
nationalities to view, appreciate
and acquire contemporary art from diverse
cultures. |
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 The
Savy Collector has
paintings by Tz'utuhil Mayan artists from Santiago Atitlán as well as
fine art, southwest art and Native American art. |
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Some sites which maintain lists
of links on related themes:
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Other related sites:
- Amazon sells the childrens book, "Trouble
Dolls: A Guatemalan Legend" illustrated by
Tz'utuhil artist Diego Isaias Hernandez and written by Suzanne
Simons.
- Vincent Heptig wrote a book called A
Mayan Struggle.
- A page about the human rights struggle in Santiago
Atitlán
- Bear's Lair a personal
website with much information about the ancient Southwest Indian
cultures, especially the Anasazi.
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To contact us write: Arte Maya Tz'utuhil, P.O. Box 40391, San
Francisco, CA 94140. Please Note: I will be
away from January 13 to February 12
of 2010. At this time I take a much needed vacation from my computer including
email. I will respond when I return. Telephone: (415) 282-7654
Email me at
All paintings and photographs Copyright © 1988–2009 Arte Maya Tz'utuhil
Todas pinturas y fotografías son Derechos Reservados © 1988–2009 Arte Maya Tz'utuhil
|
The
Lords of Atitlán is a website
with photos and text by Bill Muirhead. "The natural splendor of Lake
Atitlán and its environs has inspired Aldous Huxley and others to
declare it “the most beautiful lake in the world.” Yet it is the
region’s inhabitants, their custom, color, and ceremony, and their
astounding character and correctness which grace Lake Atitlán with a
beauty beyond the reach of Becoming. I don’t know if what Huxley said is
true. Certainly claims can be made for Lake Como or Lake Geneva. I
myself, an Illinois farm boy, remain tied to my own Lake Michigan. But
what I think makes his claim irrefutable is the rich cultural diversity
of the many villages and hamlets that rim the lake and dot the
mountainsides surrounding it. The real beauty and grandeur of Lake
Atitlán is its people, the Maya Kaqchiquel, Tzutujil, and, through later
migrations and colonizations, the Quiché."
Guatemalan
women suffering from spousal abuse have no recourse because the police
and Guatemala courts refuse to help them or hear their cases, and
worse still return them to the abuser. Rodi Alvarado fled Guatemala to
the United States after ten years of abuse, certain that her husband
would kill her. The United States immigration service has refused to
grant her asylum arguing that it would open the floodgates. The Case
of Rodi
Alvarado has been taken on by the Center
for Gender and Refugee Studies at UC Hastings, in hopes of
obtaining asylum for her and changing the attitude of Guatemala
towards the problem.
I
used to save images of Guatemala postcards until I found Guatemalan
Postcard Photographers which has done a much better job than I
have time to do.
Project
Guatemala: The
National Folk Festival website has exceedingly beautiful
photographs of the traditional Mayan masked dances. This project can
use help in preserving and promoting this important part of
Guatemala's cultural heritage. 
Todd
Fry, an anthropologist, has some very beautiful photographs of the
Maya in the Yucatan on his website in the Visual Artist section.
The
No Penny Opera promotes free
theater in San Francisco, a tradition started by the Angels of Light.
Porkopolis
is a delightfully serious and funny site devoted to pigs, especially
paintings of pigs. Miguel Angel Sunu is one of the Tz'utuhil Maya
artists featured on the site.
The
Savy Collector has
paintings by Tz'utuhil Mayan artists from Santiago Atitlán as well as
fine art, southwest art and Native American art.
