Crushing Disappointment, Cultural Elevation

Yesterday, Friday, was my big cita (date, appointment) with the Instituto de Turismo to apply for my residence visa. It turned out to be an object lesson in humility. Yes, I had all the proper documents, and yes, all the required translations were in good order, and all was well, EXCEPT that the dates on my health statement and my criminal record check (oh, I am a bad girl...) would soon outlive their six-month lifespans. And unless I could produce newly minted originals, notarized, with apostilles from the Pennsylvania State Department in Harrisburg by the end of next week, my hoped-for review in October would be pushed back, and more documents would expire, leaving me up a woeful creek with no visa.

Let me say only that I marshaled my forces back in the Mother Country, and I will not sleep very well until I know that the documents have been created, notarized, received their apostilles, and have been FedEx-ed by Tuesday (at tremendous cost in miles and misery to brother Jack).

After my defeat at the hands of INTUR, I and my crack legal team headed off to the Palace of Culture for my promised tour, and very soon my mood lifted, thanks in large part to the patient and knowledgeable guidance of Ivan's law partner, Noel.

As mentioned previously, the Palacio is a neoclassic building that survived the 1972 terremoto intact, and it is a lovely spacious place with a two-story cloister design of roofed walkways giving on to galleries to one side and a beautiful central courtyard to the other. The galleries compose a generally chronological account of the history and culture of what is widely accepted to be some of the youngest terra firma on the planet.

Dinosaur bones and mammoth jaws, millennia-old tree trunks preserved in volcanic ash, and footprints of ancient man held forever in petrified earth are here, in the first galleries,




There are displays of early weaponry and hunting culture, as well as some fine pre-Columbian ceramics and metallurgy, including this tiny figure of a dog (god, backwards) rendered in pure gold.

I enjoyed the explanation of the culture that arose around the cultivation of corn.The grinding mortars to the left are of the sort used in those early kitchens of the maize culture. Also on display were large clay pots used to store corn and to ferment corn spirits!

Corn must have been revered as such a life-sustaining gift of the corn gods (dogs, backward!) that the mortar held a prominent place in religious ceremony and custom, but these mortars were fancy, with animal heads to signify some sacred acknowledgement of their powers. Or not. I cannot pretend to understand all the nuance of these objects, but I think they are powerfully evocative of ancient times.

Does the date 1492 ring a bell?  A large display centers on the fateful voyage of Christopher Columbus when he discovered Hispaniola and sailed on into the Caribbean Sea to find what would soon thereafter be considered the southern Atlantic coast of Guatemala , but is now the east coast of Nicaragua. The Spaniards streamed into Central America, as well as Florida, Mexico, etc., looking for gold, and had their nefarious ways with the indigenous residents of these lands, as we well know. I was struck by the sheer violence of this replica of an etching showing the sport to be enjoyed by setting vicious dogs upon native people to avoid getting blood all over their cute outfits and pretty swords. Just look at the posturing of the Spaniards. 

To be continued: