Amatenango Workshop Participants

Steaming Mound of Wood & Earth

This smoking pile has been outside my bedroom window for several days. It is the handiwork of Don Victor, who is making charcoal from tree stumps that were uprooted by Hurricane Stan. It smells great.

Nature is Incredible

Actor, Dancer & Juggler

These photos are of Ivan Ramirez, a very talented local performer. If you have been following my blog for a long time, you might remember Ivan from the cast of Señor de la Tierra. This winter he is in a dance production called La Senda de las Maya.

Feathers of an Angel

This piece of art was created by this San Cristobal de las Casas artist named Angel. A stunning array of local feathers.

It´s My Daughter's 30th Birthday Today

I would love to wish my daughter an excellent day & will help her celebrate when I get home in December. In the meantime, I am going to Guatemala tomorrow for a long weekend, so you can expect some more photos after I return on Sunday.

Doors

As I was walking to the second workshop I gave today I thought I would take some photos of the inviting doors of San Cristobal de las Casas. The last door is the door to the house in which I gave the workshop & the bougamvilla is in the yard of the house.

Making Masks

I have been teaching two women from the San Cristobal de las Casas theatre group FOMMA how to make masks. We are modeling them in clay & then covering the clay with latex in the case of the older people portrayed & covering them in papier mache' in the case of the young people portrayed. We will also make the jaguar mask out of papier mache'. FOMMA stands for Fortaleza de la Mujer Maya, which translates as Strength of the Mayan Woman.

These are photos of the masks in progress & the women who I am teaching to make them.

Grafitti from the Streets of San Cristobal de las Casas

My sentiments exactly!

Helping Local Guys Build with Local Materials

These are the local Mayan guys from Amatenango, who speak Tseltal & build in the traditional way. This is Tomas the dad & Silviano, one of his sons. I helped them for two days, learned a tiny bit of Tseltal & had a memorable & much fun time of it.

This is the structure we were building. It is being built of twigs cut locally & nailed to both sides of posts. This coming week they will create a mud of dirt dug just meters from the house, & dry pine needles collected from the local forest. They will then throw this mud between the twigs & create mud walls for this structure, an Earth Ship that Santiago, the son of my friend Luis is building for himself on their ranch.

This is the front porch of the ranch house. And following is the kitchen that we cooked in by candlelight, since there is no electricity there, except what can be collected by one solar panel feeding a batteried generator, which is mostly used to charge cell phones & operate Santiago's computer.

And this is where I slept, upstairs in the ranch house. The sun flooded in each morning at 7, waking up the cell phone bird, who promptly woke me. The cell phone bird is some form of grackle or magpie that has learned to reproduce the sounds of many things, but chose the cell phone ring with which to wake me each morning.

And now I am back in San Cristobal, my friend Alejandra is home & a new week begins. Hasta luego.