All posts are about lifes.
Canopy tours One of the most popular and readily accessible adventure sports is ziplining, also known as a canopy tour. Modern canopy tours were invented in the 1970s, when botanists and ecologists began looking to the mostly unstudied rain and cloud forest canopies and strapping on climbing gear to get close to them. Over time,…
INSIGHT: CRAFTS Despite the efforts of the conquistadors, the Maya and other Indigenous groups of Central America carry on many craft traditions from their ancestors. Unique styles of textiles, ceramics, carving and jewelry have developed across Central America, many dating from the days of ancient civilizations. Many cultures have their own form of ceramics, such…
THE MARIMBA Developed by African slaves in Central America, the marimba has become the most important folk instrument in the region since being introduced in the 16th or 17th century. The instrument was descended from an ancestral balafon, which consisted of a set of wooden bars, arranged like keys on a piano, struck with mallets….
BORN AGAIN The strength of Evangelical churches was reinforced when General Efraín Ríos Montt came to power in Guatemala. Montt, who had become a born-again Christian in the 1970s, was the first Protestant president of Guatemala. Although condemned for the vicious counter-insurgency war that he fought in the countryside, his stern, uncompromising message of bringing…
RELIGION From Indigenous beliefs and the Spanish push for Catholicism to the recent rise of Evangelicals, religion has helped shape Central America. ‘The first aim of your expedition is to serve God and spread the Christian faith,’ were the orders that the Spanish crown gave to conquistador Hernán Cortés on his expedition into Mexico to…
Racial hierarchy In many places in Central America the melting pot has been so thoroughly blended that locals are unexpectedly homogeneous. Wealth tends to be concentrated in the hands of the lighter skin, more European-looking residents, alongside those of newcomers from North America and Europe that are quickly establishing themselves among the elite. In many…
MAYA HEARTLAND DECLINE There’s still no definitive explanation for the breakdown of the Classic Maya civilization, roughly between AD 800 and 900. It now seems that it was not caused by cataclysmic natural forces. The latest evidence now suggests that a prolonged drought caused harvest failures, almost certainly due to man-made environmental over-exploitation. In turn,…
PEOPLE The people of Central America are as diverse as the natural landscape in which they live, but collectively they share a distinct Latin American heritage. Latino (ladino or mestizo) culture dominates Central America and competes with the US for cultural hegemony. The influence of the rest of the Latin world is very evident throughout…
Hurricane Mitch At peak intensity, Mitch sustained winds of 285 km/h and had one of the lowest barometric pressures for any Atlantic hurricane. The hurricane weakened as it reached the shores of Honduras, yet moved so slowly across Guatemala and Nicaragua that it dropped historic amounts of rainfall. Deaths due to catastrophic flooding made it…
MIGRANT WORKERS The US is home to millions of immigrants from the Northern Triangle countries of El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras. While many are undocumented and lack legal pathways to bring the children they left behind to the United States, the desire to reunify remains strong. Upticks of instability throughout the region increase the drive…