Here is what it says according to a pretty lousy internet translator, but it gives you the gist. I will save you the time of translating this. Even I can decipher that this is some type of spiritual centre. We are also confronted with this banner which has Jesus in the middle flanked by his mom on one side and I presume, San Simon on the other. Guatemalan politics is nothing if not interesting. Alas, poor Sandra lost again and was charged with corruption almost immediately by the new President who had run on a promise to “Lock her up!”. Always viewed as corrupt herself and with investigators on her tail, the Presidency would make her immune from prosecution. Morales found that running a country was no joke and by the time his term was up he was apparently both corrupt and a thief. In a move even Hilary has not thought of, she promptly divorced her husband Álvaro Colom and ran again in 2015, losing to a comedian, Jimmy Morales who ran on the slogan “Neither corrupt, nor a thief”. The only problem was that the Guatemalan constitution forbids relatives of the sitting President to run in subsequent elections and the courts ruled against her.
She wanted to succeed her husband to the Presidency and tried to run for President in 2011 and replace him when his term was up in early 2012. But like Hilary Clinton, being second fiddle was not enough. This is Sandra Torres, former first lady of Guatemala from 2008 to 2012.
Tacked to a telephone pole at the end of the lane is this poster and there’s a fascinating story behind it that’s not apropos a visit to San Simon. Immediately on stepping off the bus I can smell the acrid fumes of what could be burning rubber. Our local guide Tony tells us that there is a permanent temple or shrine to San Simon here that draws pilgrims from all over Latin America.Īctually we never seem to come to a town, but all get out on a country road where there is a lane too narrow for our bus to enter that apparently leads to the shrine. We are headed to the small village of San Andrés Itzapa which is about five miles (8 kms.) off the Pan-American Highway near the city of Chimaltenango, to find out more about this mysterious character. Is it just a coincidence that October 28th is also Maximón’s feast day? Maybe not. Now he fits the bill as the cigar-smoking, money grubbing, hard drinking, womanizing rascal we might rightly describe as a playboy or more accurately perhaps, a roué or wastrel. In the last post we met Maximón, tucked away in his moveable shrine in the village of Santiago Atitlan. Simon or San Simon as the Spanish speaking world would call him? Now the title of this post refers to a playboy saint and the guy up above doesn’t fit that bill at all. So far, so good – just another proselytizing apostle who met a grisly death. One of the many explanations for his death in England, Egypt, Persia, Armenia or Iberia (take your pick) was that he was sawn in half. Here is a sculpture of him in the ancient Saint John Lateran basilica in Rome by Francesco Moratti with saw in hand. Well if you were a practicing Christian, you would probably say he was one of the more obscure apostles who was given the moniker Simon the Zealout to distinguish him from Simon Peter, the alpha apostle and from a brother of Jesus also called Simon. So here we go to visit San Simon in the village of San Andrés Itzapa. Our group saw it again with the cult of Maximón in Santiago Atitlan and when our local guide Tony mentioned that there was another, quite different shrine between Lake Atitlan and Antigua we all said we need to see it. During our stay in the market town of Chichicastenango where the population is overwhelmingly Mayan, I got my first glimpse of the syncretic religious practices that incorporate Catholicism with traditional Mayan gods. It is the only one in Central America where a significant number of the population are Indigenous Mayans. A few days ago we arrived in Guatemala from Honduras and I have been blown away by this very unique country. This tour is a specialized one-off designed by Victor and will include all seven countries that make up Central America. By we, I mean a group led by expert guide Victor Romagnoli for Canadian travel company Adventures Abroad with which we have travelled many times over the past twenty-five years and never been disappointed. At the end of my last post on beautiful Lake Atitlan I wrote that I would see you next in the city of Antigua, but we’ve decided to take a detour to see something that wasn’t on the original itinerary.