Volume IV, Issue 4

Throughout the 1980s, as Guatemala was experiencing the worst years of its long and ghastly civil war, few foreign photographers, writers or journalists chose to make this country their home. And with good reason. The nation was terrorized by an ongoing conflict and a brutal, repressive regime that unleashed upon its citizenry some of… »

Fuck. I needed some money. Three days prior I paid rent with the last of my crumpled bills and was now down to zip. Nada. A few nickels, dimes and pennies in a change jar; that was it. I had already gone through the quarters.

My stomach growled. “Fuck you, stomach,” I said.

I went to… »

The road to Media Luna is twelve kilometers of thick banana trees heavy with green fruit on one side and wide leafy palms on the other. It is a graded road past Entre Rios on your way to Honduras in the northeastern part of Guatemala where United Fruit once owned much of the land,… »

It is standard-issue humor amongst education professionals that the three reasons teaching is a great job are “June, July and August,” and throughout a 13 year career, I wouldn’t have disagreed. I’ll never understand the “two weeks vacation for your first five years” insanity of most professions in the States. Madness. Complete and utter… »

I once commented to an economist friend that “the easiest job in the world has got to be: Fellow at a Free Market Think Tank.” Really. All it takes is ONE thought, applied asshattedly to any and all situations. And that thought is this: if left on its own, the free market will solve… »

On my first night in Guatemala, I sat at the circular bar in El Portal, a little café on Antigua’s parque central, watching women in long skirts with complicated patterns make their way from bench to bench selling necklaces. Lights illuminated the pillars of the white cathedral, and water arched from a fountain in… »

The Uncharacteristically Civil Bartender loves a good old-fashioned donnybrook, but there’s one going in Gotham City specifically, and around the United States generally, that actually has him worried. Further, the word from friends in Europe is that the same madness is brewing over there. Anti-Islamic sentiment is on the rise,… »

Sorry for the delay in getting around to posting new stories on the website. Your Editor-in-Chief recently had to spend some time in Gotham City in order to wrap his head around the nerve-rackingly premature arrival of two nephews and the crazy-making departure of a dear friend from this mortal coil. We apologize for… »

People who live in glass houses should not throw stones. And God knows, despite all the religious rubble of our colonial town, Antigua is one giant glass house full of flagrant, lawbreaking reprobates — beautiful, lawbreaking,  romantic, deranged and damaged reprobates of which most are good company and even better friends.

So it is with… »

Accidently born in the United States, intentionally raised in Brazil and Mexico, New York-tempered and Guatemala-residing photographer, Gg, (pronounced GiGi, or G.G.) recently sat down with La Cuadra after returning from a trip to find something of the heart of Havana.

From our conversations, we gather that Gg’s worldview dances with her politics somewhere near the… »

With the exception of my first few years, I grew up in a neighborhood essentially devoid of ethnic diversity. When I was really young my family lived on lower Mary Street, one of the few blocks of Binghamton, NY that could reasonably be considered a multi-racial ghetto. Yet, by the time I’d turned five… »