Tag: Guatemala City

  • Majestuoso Tecolote, Ciudad de Guatemala

    El Majuesto Tecolote, Ciudad de Guatemala, Guatemala

    Looking to cross a majestic Big off your list and grab a competitively-priced home loan for your Guatemalan chalet at the same time? Then head to any branch of Banco Industrial, where you might find El Majestuoso Tecolote, a festively-decorated owl of epic proportions, right next to the ATM.

    I’m talon you, it’ll be worth the trip!

    Twenty-two of these enormous creatures were created by sculptor Sebastián Barrientos and art critic Christian Cojulún as part of the 2016 TecoArte exhibition, with each decorated by a celebrated local artist. They were funded by the generous bankers and captured the hearts of all Guatemalans – a wing-wing situation for all involved!

    This particular species of Giant Tecolote, found perched in the trendy neighbourhood of Zona 14, was embellished by the enigmatic, offbeat, and always-controversial Lauro Salas – quite a feather in his cap.

    The tecolote – the indigenous name for the nocturnal birds of Central America – represents luck, prosperity and abundance in Guatemalan culture. The locals even store their heard-earned money in ceramic owl banks rather than piggy banks. Sadly, there were no Big Coins to be found inside the Big Bird – cheepskates!

    Irritable Owl Syndrome

    Guatemala City is a zesty metropolis of three million that is, unfortunately, often overlooked in favour of trendier tourists spots like Antigua. For dedicated Big-thusiasts, though, it proves to be one of the world’s great destinations.

    El Majestuoso Tecolote is not owl by himself, with El Quetzal, Priscilla la Silla, Monumento a la Paz, El Diente Gigante and many other Bigs nearby. Ebony y Ivory, a set of brash hummingbirds, are just an hour’s drive south – or less if you can fly! – so it’s certainly no birden to visit Ciudad de Guatemala.

    Hoping to take a happy snap with all the Tecolotes? Then you may spend more time in the city than expected. Unlike Chinute Chinute the Big Owl, who has guarded Darwin’s Supreme Court for many years, the Giant Tecolotes are migratory birds, fluttering between Banco Industrial’s hundreds of branches nationwide.

    Each spends a few months standing proudly in front of a bank, attracting parliaments of budget-conscious admirers, before being loaded onto a truck and whisked, as if by magic, off to another corner of this mystical land.

    The only way to find them all is to glide, heart aflutter, into each and every Banco Industrial location in the country. The owls are endangered, with less and less to be found each year, so it’s nest to look for them as soon as possible. Don’t scowl – go see an owl!

    Beware of searching for Tecolotes in the city’s more dangerous areas, however. You’d hate to be the victim of a drive-by hooting!

  • Priscilla la Silla, Ciudad de Guatemala

    Priscilla la Silla, Ciudad de Guatemala

    Guatemalans are, statistically speaking, the tiniest people on the planet, so it should come as no surprise that their chaotic capital city has been built around an effigy of a high chair.

    Priscilla la Silla, as she is known to the eclectic mix of street urchins and aristocracy who gather at her feet, serves as an opus to the hopes and aspirations of the deeply spiritual hoi polloi, who are forever looking to the skies, daydreaming of a better life.

    Bereft of grandiloquence and with a haughty, bordeline-alturistic aura, Priscilla combines the ribald optimism of Mayan folklore with the mischievous spectre of Spanish colonialism.

    The giant chair‘s four legs, each of equal length, represent Guatemala’s quartered and eternally fractured narrative; the ancient, the awakening, the present and the unfolding.

    Surreptitiously obscured betwixt a jaunty thatch of evergreen ferns, this remarkable piece marks the zenith of Guatemala City’s famed Zona 14, where sun-kissed coffee shops filled with the magniloquent noblesse hang like incandescent baubles before antediluvian volcanoes.

    Priscilla, Queen of Guatemala

    The name, Priscilla, was chosen amongst much conjecture. It’s an ode to the much-loved yet ever-controversial Priscilla Bianchi, whose range of wholesome hand-spun quilts and associated haberdashery have become dernier cri for Central American glitterati, and lionised the Guatemalan diaspora.

    The seat’s sublime design, though impractical, is not condescendingly so, and thus boasts a sanguine vivacity that will satiate the peccadilloes – no matter how audacious – of even the most fervent scholar of the Bigs.

    Priscilla offers a discreet place to sit and ponder the nature of things, after a life-affirming day spent wandering through the city, admiring El Quetzal, Joaquin the Dog, and the sumptuous Gran Grifo.

    Reminiscent of the early works of Alexander Calder, Priscilla eschews astringency in favour of benevolence. A soliloquy to a simpler time, perhaps?

    My colleague Gordon, ever the malcontent, offered his own conclusion. “Maybe,” he pontificated, caressing Priscilla la Silla’s oblique intersections with a single flocculent hand, “it’s just a really big chair.”

  • Monumento A La Paz, Guatemala City

    Monumento A La Paz, Guatemala City, Guatemala

    Give peace a chance! Oi, thicko, I said give peace a chance, or I’ll knock ya bloomin’ teeth down ya throat!

    Tee-hee, how did you like my tough guy impersonation? I workshopped it for months with my acting coach Reuben, before boarding the Land of the Bigs private jet for my visit to the machismo-fuelled Central American hotpot of Guatemala. The region’s earned a bad reputation for gang crime and kidnappings but, thankfully, the only thing the local Chapins stole was my heart.

    Oh, and my wallet.

    Guatemala’s frenzied capital, with its crumbling churches, endless traffic and sweeping views out over bubbling volcanoes, is also home to a fistful of beautiful Big Things. Most notable are the Monumentos a la Paz, several sets of enormous hands scattered throughout the citadel.

    The original Monumento a la Paz was unveiled beside the National Palace of Culture on December 29, 1997, to much applause. Created by local artiste Luis Fernando Carlos León and cast from bronze, it took five months to build and cost 125,000 quetzales – a figure that must’ve caused much hand-wringing.

    Two silken appendages, raised towards Guatemala’s eternal azul skies, seem poised to release a dove as a symbol of peace. The dove, sadly, was never actually installed at the original location – although I’m sure there’s a former government official out there somewhere with a lovely bronze bird sitting in the middle of his living room.

    The base features 16 intertwined arms that symbolise the united people of Guatemala after years of civil war and bloodshed. Much like the counterfeit Nike shirts that are freely sold throughout Guatemala, reproductions of the Big Hands could soon be seen on street corners throughout this tropical paradise.

    Hands up if you love Big Things!

    Huge hands are popular across the glove – sorry, make that the globe! – with massive mittens to be found in Uruguay, England and the United States. None, however, are as Guatemazing as the Monumento a la Paz.

    I encountered this particular set of clappy chappies in a well-manicured garden in the notorious Zona 1. Whilst it’s not the original version, it is the most spectacular, with dozens of chubby-cheeked Chapins lining up to place white roses upon its carefully crafted base.

    The park the piece is perched within is, sadly, far from peaceful, with trucks and cars whizzing by. I found it quite difficult to pose for these photos with all the cat calls and offers of dates coming from the passing traffic.

    Honestly, hombres, grow up! Until América Central moves past being a society sautéed in toxic masculinity and patriarchal hegemony, she shall never reach her full potential.

    In saying that, Juan Pablo, you can pick me up for shucos and dancing at 8pm!