La pintora del Lago Atitlán
Sunsets are all fast and sunrises are all slow. How to die and be born. The sun when we begin to understand that it goes away is about 15 minutes before that happens. dim the light, reddish tones and a last line that fades into the horizon. Sunrise is different. First you are startled by the arrival of a light that breaks the darkness of the night. It's a sudden change. Do you think that the sunrise will be imminent?, you hasten to jump out of bed and yet they may remain 45 the 60 minutes until that happens.
I thought of all that, sitting with my cup of coffee and my camera ready, while I amused myself listening to the sound of boat engines and counting the wakes, that were like scattered strokes, that were produced in the waters. I learned to identify total calm in my work of useless things. There it was totally calm, certainly.
At the Lomas de Tzununa hotel, on the side of a mountain reached after climbing 350 steps, Lake Atitlan, or the world, it has an overflowing simplicity. From that watchtower the landscape obtains a dangerous harmony. The image does not need sweeteners or poetry. A lake. Small towns scattered on its slopes. Taxi boats cross from one side to the other. three volcanoes. One, to my left, the most distant and still active, release a puff of smoke. The ash, when ascending to heaven, mixes between the yellow tones, orange and red horizon. The noise of the boat engines increases. life begins. it has dawned.
he went to the end of the world to get lost to see if he could find himself
That morning, however, we decided to leave Lomas de Tzununá to go to something less remote and with more life.. Elegimos un bed and breakfast, Jenna's River, in Panajachel. Discreet, cheap and with a cheerful owner who, like so many immigrants, went to the end of the world to get lost to see if she could find herself.
We then decided to take the bus boats to tour the towns on the lake.. San Pedro la Laguna, San Juan la Laguna and Santiago de Atitlan. It was in the second town, San Juan, where we find the painting workshop of Angelina Quic Ixtamer and her husband Antonio. your pictures, with aerial perspective, they caught our attention days before in the city of Antigua. He paints the world seen from above in a mixture of colors and routine images of peasants picking coffee or corn.
"Since I was a child I liked to draw, but thank God I met Antonio and he taught me how to mix colors. He worked another style. A day at Cerro de la Cruz, here in San Juan, I sat and saw the view below and then I started to think. Then I asked my husband Antonio for the favor of going up to a house with a terrace with some children and that's where the idea of the bird's eye view came up», Angelina explains to me.
what do you want to express? “When I was a little girl, my beautiful dad would wake us up at 07 hours to water tomatoes and other vegetables. Afterwards we would go to school and my brothers and I would arrive for lunch. Then we would go back to the fields to work or collect firewood and then we would do our homework and I would spend all my time drawing. That was my life». Paint that? Also to the fishermen, travelers or a delivery in a canoe. A pregnant woman of 8 months they took her in a canoe to the hospital, but she did not have time and had her son with the help of the midwife in the middle of the lake».
had her son with the help of the midwife in the middle of the lake
What is the lake for you? “It is an enchanting natural beauty. A wonder that inspires me to paint», Angelina tells me.
I don't know if a space like that can be summed up well in words, but i know she can paint herself like she does. all your voice, his gestures, they have the calm of the places that have plenty of time. We asked him then about Maximón, the pagan saint of those waters. and she laughs, tells us that she is catholic and that she doesn't like those things too much. “Is there a house around here that has it”, affirms us with the fear of touching profane subjects and avoiding the uncomfortable subject.
The reality is that we had read that in Santiago de Atitlán there is a house that every year, They take turns, has the pagan saint. It is common in this part of the world to worship images that repeat the figure of Judas Iscariot and to which to go to ask for the impossible. A deformed religious syncretism with which the original population avoided the prohibitions of the Church to carry out their ancestral cults. Maximón was a Mayan saint who survived the Catholic tsunami.
In Mexico, with a huge preaching between narcos and marginal neighborhoods, that figure is called Jesús Malverde. A Robin Hood to whom hitmen and non-hitmen go to ask for help. Days after the encounter with Maximón, in the Chichicastenango market, I talked to a vendor who sold the Mayan saint but with the unmistakable figure of Malverde (his face is that of the famous Mexican actor Pedro Infante). It is seen that both pagan cults are confused in the markets.
After arriving at the pier of Santiago we went straight to the chapel of Maximón
After arriving at the pier of Santiago we went straight to the chapel of Maximón. worship is true, at Easter he is worshiped and has parishioners from the lake who come to ask for miracles, but there is also an obvious business with tourists. We paid I think two dollars to enter.
Inside the "chapel" the image was almost comical. Three types, one obviously drunk who talked a lot, surrounded the wooden statue of Maximón with his hat and full of handkerchiefs and ties. candles in front, in soil, and some bills tied to his chest. On the right, a coffin with what looks like Santa Muerte and small colored lights. "You can do no more than 10 Photos", the chaplains tell us something sweetened by the party. If we do 600 It doesn't look like they'll be able to distinguish anything..
Maximon, the mayan saint, he smokes and protects the inhabitants of the lake with his presence. beyond folklore, the saint is a sample of that clash between two worlds that is seen in that special lake where mansions and luxury hotels coexist with humble people and lost tourists. We leave Santiago and return to Panajachel. The beginning of the future night catches us in the waters. How can such a violent way be silent?
