GUATEMALA CITY, GUATEMALA–(Marketwire – Jan. 21, 2010) – Agriculture Minister Gerry Ritz led an agricultural trade mission to Mexico, Colombia, Guatemala and the United States to create new market opportunities for Canadian farmers.
“Step by step this Government is working to expand and create new trade opportunities for Canadian farmers and processors,” said Minister Ritz. “Trade is a key priority of Canada’s Economic Action Plan and that’s why Canada is working to level the playing field and give industry the opportunity to be stable and profitable.”
In Mexico, Minister Ritz announced a $5 million investment to boost the Mexican appetite and raise consumer awareness of Canada’s safe and top quality food. The Canada Brand initiative, part of Canada’s Economic Action Plan, will drive promotional activities in Mexico for a wide range of Canadian products, including canola. Canadian agriculture exports to Mexico totaled $1.6 billion in 2008.
“Mexican families are looking for top quality and healthy agricultural products such as Canadian canola oil when they go to the grocery store,” said Minister Ritz. “This initiative will further connect the Canadian maple leaf and our commitment to quality to our Canadian agricultural products.”
Minister Ritz also met with Secretary of Agriculture Francisco Mayorga and Secretary of Economy, Gerardo Ruiz Mateos and stressed the need for an expedited scientific process that will reopen the Mexican market to Canadian over-thirty-months (OTM) beef.
Minister Ritz took the opportunity to stop in Colombia to reiterate the Government of Canada’s dedication to implement the Canada-Colombia Free Trade Agreement (FTA). The Minister met personally with Colombian Minister of Agriculture Andres Fernandez, Minister of Trade, Industry and Tourism Luis Guillermo Plata, and Colombian Agriculture Institute General Manager Luis Fernando Caicedo. The FTA will provide preferential access to the Colombian market for Canadian agriculture and non-agriculture products and is an important market for Canadian wheat and pulses. In 2008, Colombia imported $123 million in Canadian wheat, durum and barley sales and $72 million of pulse and specialty crops.
GUATEMALA CITY (Reuters) – Archeologists have discovered a huge Mayan sculptured head in Guatemala that suggests a little-known site in the jungle-covered Peten region may once have been a significant city.
The stucco sculpture, which is 10 feet wide and 11.5 feet tall, was buried for centuries at the Chilonche ruins, close to the border with Belize.
The recent discovery of the head, which dates from the early Classic period between 300 to 600 AD, means the site is much older than previously thought. The Maya often constructed new buildings using older ones as foundations.
“It could be an imaginary being, something from the underworld, perhaps linked to a Mayan deity,” Polytechnic University of Valencia professor Gaspar Munoz, part of the team of archeologists that found the head, told Reuters.
Unlike Guatemala’s famous Mayan cities of Tikal and El Mirador, little excavation has been carried out at Chilonche.
Looters, looking for artifacts to sell on the black market, had dug a small tunnel passing the buried sculpture, which is similar to others decorating a solar observatory at another site, Uaxactun.
Guatemala’s Peten region is home to dozens of Mayan ruins, but the largely jungle-covered area is plagued by looters, poachers and smugglers taking cocaine to Mexico.
The town of Santiago Sacatepequez in Guatemala, in Central America, celebrates the All Saints Day on the first of November every year. The day is known locally as the Day of the Dead. It is a three-thousand-year-old custom developed from a mixture of local religious practices and Christianity.
These are not normal kites. While they are constructed simply out of bamboo, cloth, paper and wire, they are amazingly durable even in strong winds. These kites are designed in a circular shape and usually with a religious or folkloric theme. They are also gigantic — most of them are with a diameter of 24 to 30 meters. The biggest ones are with a diameter of 36 meters!
All Saints Day is dedicated to the dead but for the living it is festival time. Families gather together to have picnics and cook great traditional food of the country. It is a great day to get together with friends and family.
Just in time for the 2012 craze, CNN reports on a brand new massive Mayan pyramid discovery, including an amazing stone frieze showing the Maya sacred creation story.
I have been doing a lot of writing on the Mayan culture in the past couple of weeks for several college papers that I have been writing on. The course is Cultural Anthropology, and the Mayan culture fits right in my studies. In my research I came across a file I had tucked away called the faces of the Mayans, so I thought I would share with you some of the pictures.
This picture was from the church in Chuchuca.
This little girl was in a church we were working on in the highlands around Patzun
According to national statistics, 21% of the population living in the Patzún area (almost all of them are members of the Mayan ethnic group Kaqchikel) are below six years old. 64% of the population are classified as living in poverty conditions and a quarter of those as living in extreme poverty. Child and family maltreatment are a prevalent reality.
I took this picture while we were at a home in Xatzán, what peace
This little girl just loved to play hide and go seek with the camera
I hoped you enjoyed these pictures for today’s post. These pictures are very special to me, I hope you enjoyed them.
If you have a moment please drop me a note and let me know your thoughts.
I was going through some of my pictures from past visits with Escuela Integrada.
Kidergarten Graduation Day at Esceula Integrada
This picture was when we were visiting during a Kindergarten Graduation celebration. These children may have a hope in this war torn country with getting a good education from this awesome school.
Girls playing basket ball at Chuchuca Escuela Integrada
While visiting the Escuela Integrada school in Chuchuca Guatemala I was able to get this photo taken of these girls playing basket ball. The girls are so camera shy, some may have never seen a camera before. If you notice the girls all wear indigenous dress everywhere they go.
Lake Atitlan is recognized to be the deepest lake in Central America, its bottom has not been completely sounded. The lake is volcanic in origin, filling an enormous caldera formed in an eruption 84,000 years ago. It is renowned as one of the most beautiful lakes in the world.
Lake Atilan Sunset
The lake itself is rich in animal life which provides a significant food source for the largely indigenous population.
The lake is surrounded by many villages, in which Maya culture is still prevalent and traditional dress is worn. The Maya people of Atitlán are predominantly Tz’utujil and Kaqchikel. During the Spanish conquest of the Americas, the Kaqchikel initially allied themselves with the invaders to defeat their historic enemies the Tz’utujil and Quiché Maya, but were themselves conquered and subdued when they refused to pay tribute to the Spanish.
Santiago Atitlán is the largest of the lakeside communities , and is noted for its worship of Maximón, an idol formed by the fusion of traditional Mayan deities, Catholic saints and conquistador legends. The institutionalized effigy of Maximón is under the control of a local religious brotherhood and resides in various houses of its membership during the course of a year, being most ceremonially moved in a grand procession during Semana Santa.
Mayan girl selling at the maket in Pana, Guatemala
This young girl really touched our hearts while visiting in Panajachel. She was telling us that her greatest hopes was to someday be able to read. This has stuck with me for all these years. I can remember vividly the conversation with her. My friend Andrew stayed in contact with her and her family for many years. Unfortunately she lives to many miles away for her to attend one of the Escuela Integrada schools. She is also the person in the home that makes money to put food on the table. At the time of this picture she was 18 years old and had never attended school.
This picture was taken this past year while in Chuchuca Guatemala. Our family and a friend of ours was their doing some work on Escuala Integrada School. The school was in bad shape and needed a lot of work done to it so it could be back in safe operating order for the children.
Becky speaking to the students at Chuchuca Guatemala Escuela Integrada school. The school year just beginning and students excited about going back to school. Andrew and Becky Loveall run both this school and Escuela Integrada in Antigua Guatemala. If it was not for these two schools several of these Mayan children would not have a education.
I really value your feedback on my post. Please leave a comment, I would appreciate it very much.
The Quetzal has been said to be most beautiful bird in the world.
The Quetzal (pronounced ket-sal), makes its nest about 20-40 feet off the ground, where the birds will lay its eggs and raise its young.
The growing chicks are fed mostly small invertebrates, amphibians, and reptiles, but begin to eat fruit as they mature. Less than 20 percent of the young survive to leave the nest. Toucans, jays, squirrels, and weasels are some of the predators that young quetzals have to avoid.
The beauty of the Resplendent Quetzal has been admired for centuries. It was an important element of early Central American mythology, and Aztec royalty wore headdresses with the beautiful tail feathers on them. Guatemalans so revere the Quetzal that they chose it as the national bird, and even named their money the “quetzal”.
This famous bird has a long history, as it was the spiritual protector of the Mayan chiefs. It is said that the Quetzal would accompany them everywhere, aiding them in battle, and dying when they died. Legend has it that when Spanish Conquistado Pedro de Alvarado and his Spaniards attacked the Mayans in 1524, the Quetzal appeared crying out and pecking at Alvarado.
At the exact moment when Alvarado pierced Tecum Uman [the chief], the sacred Quetzal fell silent and plummeted to earth, covering the body of the regal [Mayan] with its long and soft green plumes. After keeping a deathwatch through the night, the bird that rose from the cacique’s [chieftan’s] lifeless body was transformed. It was no longer the pure green of jade. Its breast had soaked up the blood of the fallen warrior, and so, too, became crimson, the shade of Mayan blood, as it has remained to this day (Maslow, p.19).
EL MIRADOR, Guatemala (Reuters) – One of Guatemala’s greatest ancient Mayan cities may have died out in a bloody battle atop a huge pyramid between a royal family and invaders from hundreds of miles away, archaeologists say.
Researchers are carrying out DNA tests on blood samples from hundreds of spear tips and arrowheads dug up with bone fragments and smashed pottery at the summit of the El Tigre pyramid in the Mayan city of El Mirador, buried beneath jungle vegetation 8 km from Guatemala’s border with Mexico.
Many of the excavated blades are made of obsidian which the archaeologists have traced to a source hundreds of miles away in the Mexican highlands. They believe the spears belonged to warriors from Teotihuacan, an ancient civilization near Mexico City and an ally of Tikal, which was an enemy city of El Mirador.
“We’ve found over 200 of the obsidian tips alone, as well as flint ones, indicating there was a tremendous battle,” said excavation leader Richard Hansen, a senior scientist in Idaho State University’s anthropology department who is pushing the pyramid battle theory.
“It looks like this was the final point of defense for a small group of inhabitants,” told Reuters.
El Mirador is one of the biggest ancient cities in the Western Hemisphere and is thought to have been home to between 100,000 and 200,000 people at its height. Historians believe it was built up from around 850 BC and flourished for hundreds of years before it was mysteriously abandoned in 150 AD.
Many archaeologists think the size and elaborate stucco decoration of the buildings in the city are to blame as the inhabitants used up stone, trees and lime plaster in their construction until their resources were entirely depleted.
Hansen’s team believes a group of some 200 people, thought to be the last remnants of the royal family, stayed in the ruined metropolis until they were attacked by warriors from Teotihuacan.
They believe the invaders were allies of Tikal, around 60 km to the southeast, which resented being dwarfed by the enormous pyramids of El Mirador and was eager to make sure the enemy never recovered. They think Teotihuacan warriors trapped the survivors in a siege before a bloody battle that sealed the city’s fate.
MODERN THREAT
Hansen’s archaeologists found graffiti they believe was left by Teotihuacan fighters who smashed up carved Maya monoliths and left crudely etched skull drawings, known as Tlalocs, on the rock as proof of their victory.
“The Tlaloc is the war god image of the highland Mexicans (and we found it) crudely pecked on these monuments, suggesting that perhaps a hostile event had taken place here,” Hansen said.
The team sent excavated spear tips to a lab in Missouri where scientists are trying to extract blood samples for DNA tests. They expect to find one DNA type in blood on the obsidian objects and a different type on the Maya-made flint fragments, suggesting a battle between two racial groups.
El Mirador is home to one of the world’s biggest pyramids by volume, La Danta, named after the tapirs that roam the dense jungle that hid the pre-Columbian treasures for decades until the site was discovered in the early 20th century.
American archeologists who made an aerial survey of the El Mirador Basin in Guatemala’s northern Peten region in the 1930s mistook the tree- and vegetation-covered pyramid for a volcano.
Hansen has worked with teams digging at El Mirador for some 30 years. The site is at risk from looters, poachers and loggers trying to make a living out of the forest, as well as drug traffickers seeking to move cocaine into Mexico.
Last year, President Alvaro Colom announced the creation of a huge park in the Peten region to encompass both El Mirador and the already excavated Tikal, a popular tourist site.
The park will include a silent propane-powered train to lug tourists to the El Mirador ruins, currently only accessible by helicopter or a two-day hike through the jungle.
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The Quetzal has been said to be most beautiful bird in the world.
Quetzal that they chose it as the national bird, and even named their money the “quetzal”.
