Antigua and Guatamala

From: Alice Rooney

greetings from guatemala! this is your self-appointed gringo trail
correspondent here checking in from antigua, or 'not-guatemala-really´as
it is also known. beautiful city! beautiful people! beautiful decayingly
grand colonial buildings! only the odd reminder that you are in a
developing country, and not a crumblier version of madrid with cheaper
food and 300% more copies of lonely planet/ north face allweather
jackets/ young and attractive israeli men per capita and/ or square metre!

anyway. guatemala is great, both the real version and the not real. my
favourite things so far are chicken buses- looking at them, not being on
them. i have developed an irrational dislike of anyone who professes to
enjoying being on chicken buses. im sorry, anyone who actually enjoys
sitting helplessly on a vehicle held together with blutack and rubber
bands as the driver overtakes on a blind corner at 70 miles per hour
*does not like being alive nearly enough*. i have never seen the appeal
of recreationally dicing with death. having someone else dice with death
*on your behalf* is even less enjoyable. translation of the religious
stickers which bedeck 99% of all chicken buses- "jesus christ got *my*
back, so fuck all y´all.¨

anywaaay. the reason i started telling you all this- ive discovered the
new Spanish Kazoo Hardcore! in my limited knowledge of latino musical
genres the best way i can describe it is a vastly sped up version of
merengue, with a big fuck off kickdrum and a grunty man rapping. it is
similtaneously the very worst and the very best music in the entire
cosmiverse. i asked a friend if they knew the name of it, and they said,
um i dunno, its just really fast merengue with grunting i think. i like
to call it merengabba. it came into its own for me on the 12th, where as
part of the fiesta of the guadelupe a group of around 15 guatemalan
children in cartoon character outfits danced in formation in the square
led by a man dressed (worryingly) as inspector gadget. it was an
extremely fast and energetic dance involving lots of high kicks and
shimmying and the children put themselves to the dancing of it with a
grave determination you just dont find in your average pringles-lumpen
goggle-eyed brit kid. the incogruity of a group of kids dressed as
chipmunks devotedly knackering themselves by leaping about in a
regimented fashion to sped up merengue music was lost on everyone in the
audience but me, i think. it was a grim-faced yet joyous spectacle which
will stay in my brain for many a week to come.