Little PracticesPoliticsHeritage 2018

The Practices and Politics of Heritage in Antigua Guatemala
Author(s): Walter E. Little

Source: Anthropological Quarterly, Vol. 91, No. 4 (Fall 2018), pp. 1269-1302
Published by: The George Washington University Institute for Ethnographic Research
Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/26646266
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SPECIAL COLLECTION
WORLD HERITAGE AND THE ONTOLOGICAL TURN:
NEW MATERIALITIES AND THE ENACTMENT
OF COLLECTIVE PASTS
The Practices and

Politics of Heritage in
Antigua Guatemala
Walter E. Little, I lUNY Albany
ABSTRACT
This article addresses tensions between two dominant heritage practices in
Antigua Guatemala, one that is oriented around the regulation of buildings
and streets and another that is oriented around the regulation of people as
cultural and economic performers. I place these regulatory practices within
a framework that uses Latour's (2005) concepts of mediation and assem
blage—the relationship between materiality and humans—to discuss the
contexts of heritage politics and lived practices in hehtage sites. This case
study explores how UNESCO heritage politics and the Guatemalan state's
regulation of Antigua's architecture and street workers are intertwined with
tourism performance economies and residents' cultural aesthetics of the
city. In describing Antigua's contemporary cityscape aesthetic, and, more
specifically, the Arch of Santa Catalina, I draw on Latour's assemblage
theory to interpret the heterogeneous ways in which the materiality of the
city contributes to watercoior artists' social, economic, and political prac
tices. I then draw on Rancière's (2006) theory of aesthetic regimes to make
sense of individuals' everyday urban practices within public heritage sites.
In other words, considering Rancière's and Latour's respective theories to
gether approaches the analysis of a heritage site in a way that encompass
es the everyday discourses, practices, and materiality of the Arch of Santa
Anthropological Quarterly, Vol. 91, No. 4, p. 1269-1302, ISSN 0003-5491. © 2018 by the Institute for
Ethnographic Research (IFER) a part of The George Washington University. All rights reserved.
1269
Catalina. Namely, I argue residents' heritage aesthetics, within the larger

political, regulatory, and aesthetic apparatuses of the State and UNESCO,
illustrate how urban heritage sites are an assemblage that articulates with
everyday social and material practices that lead to unexpected political
outcomes that are tied to cultural and economic practices. [Keywords:
Aesthetics, assemblage, Guatemala, tourism, urban heritage]
Introduction
In his book Las Calles de Antigua Guatemala, Rafael Vicente Alvarez
Polanco (1999:65) describes the Arco de Santa Catalina, capturing a ro
mantic aesthetic held by Antigua's residents and city leaders alike that
draws on both the Spanish colonial past and their contemporary senti
ments of being stewards of patrimony.
Tired of their daily dedication to needlework, embroidering white

and fine veils and baking delicious confections, the Catalina nuns
crossed inside this arch to go in search of rest, singing on their way
through that narrow passageway feeling praised by the Blessed.
And centuries later when the Council for the Protection of La Antigua
G. in a fervent eagerness of burning zeal in order to maintain un
harmed the precious heritage of this unique city, works possessed
of a mystique of admiration and respect, trying to preserve it for their
and others admiration. (1999:65)
The Arco de Santa Catalina holds a special place for Antigüenos (residents
of Antigua). They employ it in their tales of the past, where nuns and priests
crossed the arch unseen to have clandestine trysts, and make it a site
for contemporary rendezvous, commercial transactions, political actions,
and social events. Tourists identify it as a must-see attraction that signifies
Antigua's place on the UNESCO (United Nations Educational, Scientific,
and Cultural Organization) World Heritage list. It is the city's single most
recognizable site, but it is also a contested place—something that Alvarez
Polanco's well-known-to-Guatemalans description does not capture.
1270
WALTER E. LITTLE
AK
:;%ii
WALTER E. UTTLE
Figure 1 : A common view of the Arco de Santa Catalina. This is similar to INGUATs
webpage for Antigua.
Since being named a UNESCO World Heritage property in 1979, the

Arco has been the site of debates between residents and workers about
heritage aesthetics and public street-use regulations. Some have ques
tioned the value of being on the UNESCO World Heritage List. They won
der whether the designation matters to the city's economic viability as a
tourism site or to its aesthetic heritage value; this has contributed to locals
challenging Antigua's heritage regulations, with some agreeing with the
state's top-down authoritative regulations and others advocating dynamic
grassroots practices of heritage.
The meaning of UNESCO heritage designation in Antigua and how it
relates to Antigüenos' economic and political uses, particularly at the Arco
de Santa Catalina, provides insight into the contradictions between of
ficial heritage conceptualizations that are "complete, untouchable and 'in
the past,' and embodied within tangible things such as buildings and ar
tifacts" and heritage as a dynamic, changing place for the "production of
identity and community" (Harrison 2010:39). In this article, I will explore
the intersection of heritage aesthetics politics and the socio-economic
practices in public heritage spaces, focusing on activities in, represen
tations of, and' discourses about the Calle del Arco (also referred to as
1271
Quinta Avenida Norte, or 5th Avenue North) in the area of the Arco de
Santa Catalina. In places like Antigua, the consideration of street prac
tices (political, economic, and social) and heritage aesthetics (representa
tions, regulations, and preservation) contributes to a better understanding
of the place and the material outcomes, including alternative economic
and political outcomes that may not make sense or contradict dominant
discourses, representations, and regulations. Such flexible and variable
outcomes, of which I have described elsewhere as spatial permissive
ness (Little 2014), manifest themselves as implicit permission to sell on
the street, to post signs that do not conform to city regulations, and to
renovate façades with minor violations of building codes. In other words,
this approach can be conceptualized vis-à-vis Harrison (2010) in terms of
the politics of ontology, where the visions of the different artists I discuss
later in this analysis involve quite distinct ontologies or ways of worlding
Antigua, leading to various forms of social, economic, and political action.
The everyday practice of the street in relation to the aesthetic poli
tics of heritage falls squarely within debates about who has the right to
heritage sites (Herzfeld 2016). Collins (2015), Herzfeld (2010), and Totah
(2014) illustrate how elites justify heritage that can lead to various forms
of exclusion, such as the gentrification of neighborhoods and restrictive
regulations for using the street. Understanding these debates within the
context of heritage sites like the Arco de Santa Catalina is, according to
Brumann (2009:295), "[k]ey to a more comprehensive understanding of
the social life of cultural heritage"—one that does not entrap critical analy
ses within assumptions of heritage that are framed by processes of falsi
fication, petrification, desubstantiation, and enclosure (2009:277). Bruner
(2005), Collins (2015, 2008), and Herzfeld (2010, 2006), among many oth
ers (Breglia 2006; Brulotte 2012; Castaneda 2009, 1996; Hill 2007; Little
2009; Seligmann 2013), effectively demonstrate how heritage sites are
places in which these assumptions (falsification, petrification, desubstan
tiation, and enclosure) are employed in diverse ways by the people who
live in them. My concern here is to understand Antigua's heritage politics
from the perspective of street vendors, businesspersons, tourists, and,
especially, artists, who work on Quinta Avenida Norte where the Arco de
Santa Catalina is located.
At the Arco de Santa Catalina, the seeing and speaking (the representa
tions of and discourses of the place) and the materiality of the place itself
(the people and things in it) are tied to heterogeneous power relations (e.g.,
1272
WALTER E. LITTLE
Rancière 2006). Where official heritage regulations may be hegemonic in

city hall or the national legislature, the street-level use of Quinta Avenida
at the arch is diverse and contested, with elite property owners, street
vendors, and performers aesthetically reinterpreting the street and engag
ing each other socially, economically, and politically in alternative ways.
The official heritage regulations of the arch and the street it spans are de
centered and reshaped by the businesspersons, street vendors, tourists,
city officials, and heritage regulators within the contexts of global heritage
and touristic representations. The dynamic between these diverse actors,
who literally act on the place, and the powerful global heritage tourism
representations make Quinta Avenida what it is—a multi-valenced site
with contradictory economic and political practices.
These various social, political, and representational dynamics shed
light on the provincializing of universal ontologies like that of UNESCO,
illustrating how alternative ontologies emerge from the street artists and
others tied to the Arco, effectively demonstrating de la Cadena's (2010:
342) indigenous cosmopolitics, which is her reworking of Rancière's con
cept of public emergence: "where the capacity to upset the locus of what
'politics' is about." The alternative ontologies of street artists of the Arco
that I discuss below can be considered unexpected politics from unex
pected people in unexpected places.
In what follows, I begin with two vignettes, one ethnographic, aimed
to describe the materiality and social relations of the street from an as
semblage framework (Latour 2005), and the other representational, to
describe the visual aesthetic regime (Rancière 2006) of the arch through
images on Google. These representations, as well as those by the tourism
and heritage industries, are powerful ways in which UNESCO heritage
scapes (Di Giovine 2009) reinforce constructions of place and aesthet
ics. I then turn to street use and how that articulates with the politics of
regulation, experience, and representation. From there, I show the util
ity of linking the politics of aesthetics (Rancière 2006) to an assemblage
(Latour 2005) framing to provide a deeper understanding of these urban
heritage and tourism spaces to discuss three paintings, each by a dif
ferent Antigüeno artist. Urban tourism sites, such as the Calle del Arco,
are economic, performative, and political spaces of experience that also
produce territories and transformations of space (MacDonald 2002:58).
This understanding of place allows for the kinds of economic and politi
cal engagements by urban planners, street venders, street painters, and
1273
business owners—in other words, assemblages (Latour 2005) that cre

ate territories (Wise 2005)—that I will discuss in this article.1 In describing
Antigua's contemporary cityscape aesthetic on Quinta Avenida Norte, I
highlight how lived-in heritage sites' political economies (see Collins 2008,
2015; Little 2009; Herzfeld 2010; Seligman 2013) play out differently than
in heritage villages like New Salem, Illinois (Bruner 2005) and archaeologi
cal sites, like Chichén Itzâ (Breglia 2006, Castaneda 1996) and Tiwanaku
(Sammells 2012), that are not lived in, even though they are significant for
the people who work in them.
An Ethnographic Vignette: Friday in the Shadow of the Arco de

Santa Catalina
With my back against the colonial building's white façade, Gerardo and I
are catching up. It's been nearly a year since my previous visit in August
2014. He is one of ten Calle del Arco painters. There are four currently on
the street. To our right, the next block over is the Arco de Santa Catalina;
and between us and the arch, a Ladina vendor and her daughter hawk
sliced mangos with chili powder and lime juice out of a basket to local
workers. Delivery trucks unload cases of beer and food to the restaurants
and hotels on the street in anticipation of the weekend surge in business.
Cars, trucks, and motorcycles pass in one direction—towards La
Merced Church, seen in its yellow-painted magnificence through the yel
low-painted Arco de Santa Catalina. Pedestrians compete with the auto
mobile traffic. Colorfully dressed Maya handicraft vendors from nearby
San Andrés Itzapa and faraway Santa Catalina Palopö traipse after tour
ists holding out woven bracelets, change purses, and other small trinkets
culturally marked as indigenous. Their ranks will swell on Saturday when
Calle del Arco is closed to cars to accommodate tourists from Guatemala
City, El Salvador, and Honduras. Foreign tourists amble into and out of
handicraft, specialty food, and jade jewelry shops. As they dodge the traf
fic, they pause to take photos of the arch and the various street vendors.
The buildings are mainly in the Baroque style of 18th century Spanish
colonial architecture, but some—like the Cofino building, a garage and
gas station until the early 1990s and since then the handicrafts and cu
rio emporium, Nim Po't—stand out in striking contrast. Other buildings,
like the Santa Catalina Convent that sits opposite of Nim Po't, are ruins.
Behind sturdy iron gates, the convent houses heavy wooden parade floats
1274
WALTER E. LITTLE
and sculptures of saints and angels that local Catholics carry along pro
cessional routes during Holy Week. Some buildings, like the jade jewelry
store in front of us, have reminders of their history as residences or reli
gious buildings, but for others, their past lives as homes, discotheques,
and bars have all but been erased.
As Gerardo and I talk about the street regulations, our respective fami
lies, and our soon-to-be eaten lunches, a group of high-school-aged boys
descend on us. While they rifle through his finished stack of watercolor
paintings, pulling some out and plying him with questions—"How did you
paint the light here?" "Did you have to work from a photo on this one?"
"What are you trying to do with this perspective?"—our conversation is
put on hold. I crouch by Juan Ramon, also painting but not being bad
gered with questions. He explains that Gerardo has been tutoring some of
the local school kids, sharing painting tips and giving workshops at their
schools. The boys are visiting the artist in action. They are also blocking
the sidewalk and spilling into the street, causing cars to swerve and dis
rupting the slow flow of tourists. Passersby pause to see why the boys are
clustered around Gerardo, trying to eavesdrop and catch glimpses of his
paintings. Others stop to talk to Juan Ramon but need me to interpret the
Spanish. Most just hesitate to look at his work and steal a quick photo of
him. Yet others push through boys and tourists with grunts of annoyance,
mindful of the cars. A couple of police survey the scene, giving the street
vendors—mango and handicraft—a glance, but ignoring the street water
color painters and tourists. They pause near the boys talking to Gerardo,
take another look at the mango vendor, and pull out a booklet used to is
sue tickets for street-use violations. The boys and Gerardo continue talk
ing, and the street vendors tense, ready to move, to hurry away. But their
worries are for naught; the police officers decided to write a parking ticket
instead.
This vignette can be considered an urban assemblage, a place that can

be treated analytically where neither human or non-human takes prece
dence over the other. This ontological framing emphasizes keeping the
"social flat" (Latour 2005:165-172) to avoid over-emphasizing the agency
of human actors and discourses (2005:45). Such urban assemblages—
a heterogeneous mosaic of things, people, regulations, representations,
and ideas—constitute place (McFarlane 2011, Wise 2005). As I delineate in
1275
subsequent sections of this article, such assemblages can be considered

networks that are constituted by human and non-human actors (build
ings, cars, paintings and painters' tools, handicrafts, and more). Various
human actors—like urban planners, neighborhood committees, residents,
vendors, and tourists—play a role in the assemblage process. These ac
tors attend to courses of action and form associations that are themselves
involved in the assembling process, meaning assemblage is dynamic.
An Aesthetic Vignette: 93,600 Google Hits for One Place

Most often, the representations of the arch show it without people, which
ignores the contradictory aesthetics and day-to-day practices that take
place there. Local tourism promoters, conference organizers, and munici
pal event planners typically use such decontextualized representations of
the arch in their promotional materials. For example, the arch is the main
element in CAMTUR Sacatepéquez, the Antigua Chamber of Tourism's
logo.2
<— Pta- ^
ZlOI^BHCS^
1 Calle Pomente . ±A____ + W9PO
«*> PPtW
vtvi
2 Calls e i
□OODE
4C-.IW.
5 CaBe *0
»□□□
i[
65T v ' uaal^J
Figure 2: Detail of Map by Roberto Spillari. Map part of Walter E. Little's

private collection.
1276
WALTER E. LITTLE
Google searches are one way in which to comprehend the enormity of

this representation. On May 9, 2014, my search using the phrase "antigua
guatemala. calle del arco de santa catalina" yielded 93,600 hits. My many
Antigua-related searches on Google helps provide perspective about
the magnitude of global interest in Antigua. A simple search using only
"Antigua Guatemala" yielded just shy of 3 million hits, revealing that imag
es of the arch are the most common visual representation of the city. The
visual sameness of the arch photos can be misleading. In general, Google
functions to democratize images, placing same-sized thumbnails of the
original image in uniform columns, while the original URLs to the images
reveal a wide range of sources, including government and development
organization webpages, tourism and travel blogs, tumblr sites, news me
dia pages, and scholars' research. These representations are "aesthetic
acts as configurations of experience that create new modes of sense per
ception and induce novel forms of subjectivity" (Rancière 2006:9). They
shape how to comprehend Antigua, and, more specifically, the arch.
What is striking about the hundreds of images of the Arco de Santa
Catalina is their similarity—the overall emptiness of the street, the lack
of people and cars. Calle del Arco (Quinta Avenida), however, is one of
Antigua's busiest streets; but the images on Google are overwhelm
ingly homogeneous, especially on the block where the arch is located.
Rancière's aesthetic regime "asserts absolute singularity" (2006:23) that
can be observed in the ways that Google search images reflect an aes
thetic that shapes how visitors and locals imagine Calle del Arco. This
has a powerful effect on how people experience and contest the street as
tourists, residents, and workers and that in turn influences how it is regu
lated and that regulation debated, themes to which I return in subsequent
sections.
Heritage Aesthetics and Tourism

Heritage and living history scholars (see Anderson 1984, Bruner 2005,
Castaneda 1996, Harrison 2010) recognize that heritage sites can be con
ceptualized as timeless, unchanging places. This is the primary organizing
logic behind the representation of Antigua. The visual focus of the Instituto
Guatemalteco de Turismo's (INGUAT, or Guatemalan Tourism Institute)
tourism promotion website,3 "Guatemala, Modern and Colonial," is the
past. Where it pronounces Guatemala City to be the "most flourishing
1277
city in Central America with its modern buildings and business centers,"
Antigua is described as
...a colonial and romantic city, with a combination of ancient build

ings and rooted customs and traditions.... Its cobblestone streets
and ancestral edifices transport travelers and vividly illustrate the
religious and cultural traditions of Guatemala. Every corner of La
Antigua exudes romance.
Per INGUAT's web promotion, Antigua "is the principal icon of the Hispanic
colonial heritage of Guatemala." But Antigua is more than this, as it stands
in for all of Guatemala's colonial past. That the Arco de Santa Catalina
is the only image of Antigua featured on this national tourism site sug
gests that the arch serves as a synecdoche for all of Antigua—a place of
Spanish colonial architecture with no people or cars, a place arrested in
the past. This delineation of place complements and fortifies the aesthetic
regime (Rancière 2006) described above and contributes to the tourists'
understanding of the place that is produced, in part, through UNESCO
global heritage-scapes (Di Giovine 2009).
The cultural construction of Antigua is the type of global heritage-scape
that Di Giovine (2009) describes of UNESCO, where regulations aim to
recreate a moment in Antigua's past and conform to a specific visual
aesthetic. For instance, the yellow painted arch in the INGUAT webpage
photo (as well as the other photos in this article), contributes to the con
struction of the arch as a stand-in for the whole city. According to local,
national, and UNESCO heritage regulations, the colors and lime-based
{cal in Spanish) paint, also embody the local, official imagination of the city
as an authentic Spanish colonial place. Paint color may seem like a minor
piece of evidence, but many of the urban sites listed on the World Heritage
List have restrictions and specific instructions for painting buildings, such
as Chora, Greece; Izamal, Mexico; and Salvador da Bahia, Brazil. Paint
types and colors serve as a powerful shorthand to index a place as cultur
ally and historically significant to both residents and tourists. This rein
forces an aesthetic that serves to maintain what Rancière explains is the
"distribution of the sensible"—a "system of self-evident facts of sense
perception that simultaneously discloses the existence of something in
common and the delimitations that define the respective positions with
in it" (2006:12). In Antigua, as explained in regulatory documents,4 paint
1278
WALTER E. LITTLE
colors for façades are meant to match a historical moment, a Spanish co

lonial architectural aesthetic. In fact, Antigua's World Heritage inscription
in 1979—received less than five months after city leaders submitted their
petition to UNESCO—was based exclusively on its 16th century, Italian
Renaissance grid-pattern urban planning, its well-preserved Baroque ar
chitecture, and a distinctive color palate.
Architectural style and paint—as described in the World Heritage peti
tion, the regulatory documents, and on the INGUAT webpage—constitute
an aesthetic regime that officially privileges place and the materiality of
place above people and their intangible cultural expressions. Di Giovine
(2009:279) contends that UNESCO "urges State Parties 'to make full use
of their national legislation'...to enforce these regulations," making the
significant point that regulations penetrate both public and private lives
of those living in World Heritage sites (2009:267). These kinds of heritage
conventions and regulations, argues Di Giovine, "form a uniquely univer
salized identity" (2009:410). This official World Heritage identity however,
can be upset by the articulation of residents, workers, and tourists who
interact with the materiality of these regulations, for example, by using
unauthorized paints and paint colors for façades.
In the petition and inscription documents for UNESCO,5 there is no
mention of what could be considered intangible heritage: food traditions,
handicrafts, language, or the performance of culture. Admittedly, although
the Intangible Heritage Convention that Di Giovine (2009:115) discusses
was not until 2003, intangible heritage has been at the center of debates
about the city's relationship to tourism and the UNESCO inscription itself.
In what can be interpreted as a reaction to the heritage impositions (Di
Giovine 2009:271), scholars have studied Antigua as a center for handi
crafts production (Pérez Molina 1989, Rodriguez Farfan 1992), a labor and
handicraft market for Maya workers and vendors (Little 2004), and a site
of Catholic traditions (Lujan Munoz 1982, Garcia Lara 2012)—all outside
the official heritage regulations. Workers, politicians, businesspersons,
and residents behind these political economies of place make for a rather
messy, though more interesting, aesthetic that supports and challenges,
unmakes and remakes, the tangible heritage of Antigua's buildings and
streets.
The tourism economy of handicrafts vendors, street painters (discussed

later in this article), tourist-centered nightlife, and even local religious prac
tice (especially during Holy Week) is in tension with the dominant aesthetic
1279
visual politics of heritage that I previously described. As Herrân Alonso

(2003:360) explains in his description of Antigua as a lost-in-time place
of Spanish coloniality, 1950s to the present has been a "period of tourism
boom" that puts extreme stress on the architectural heritage of the city.
She adds that the ineffectiveness of legislative protections and enforce
ment "is accelerating the destruction of one of the most important colonial
cities of the Americas" (2003:361) by tourists and those who serve them.
The tourism industry and tourists themselves contrast the heritage
aesthetic of a depopulated colonial city that is the official heritage
representation of the city that Herrân Alonso and other tangible heritage
specialists critique as negative (Cruz 2008, Herrera Quiroz 2013, Lopéz
2009, Masteller 2010). Touristic print promotions represent a far broader
aesthetic for Antigua, most often illustrating colorfully dressed Mayas,
sometimes photos with the crowded pageantry of Holy Week religious
processions, and other images that portray Antigua's vibrant nightlife
(Little 2004, 2013). By contrast, on social media tourism sites with pages
dedicated to the Arco de Santa Catalina, such as TripAdvisor, Minube,
and VirtualTourist,6 tourists themselves tend to post photos of the arch
without the bustle of everyday life, conforming to the dominant political
aesthetic of quiet people-and-car-free streets. They praise the arch as a
must-see attraction and the most emblematic place in Antigua but, then,
write commentaries that range from praising the restaurants, handicraft
boutiques, and bars that line the street to complaining about the traffic,
noise, and people that typify the street under the arch. Tourists posting
comments on TripAdvisor7 offer advice as to when to take photos of
the arch without people, when to go to listen to music, when to avoid or
see handicrafts vendors, and encourage others not to just snap a photo
of the arch but to visit the shops and restaurants nearby. Several even
recommend purchasing the watercolor paintings by street artists.
One person explains,
Get it in the mornings for best shots of the volcano. Or at night for a
lovely lit scene. The street artists usually have lovely, talented render
ings of the arch to complete your art scheme upon returning to the
states! Visited June 2013.
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WALTER E. LITTLE
On April 22, 2014, another tourist writes,
Definitely need to walk down the street and under the arch. Local
vendors are there with hand-made textiles, beautiful paintings by
local artist.
On August 6, 2013, yet another writes,
On a charming, cobblestoned street, the arch is a must-see in

Antigua, if only for a stop. If you are lucky, there will be a parade or
costumed dancers, which happens with some frequency. Don't miss
the lovely watercolors of the arch being sold by some pretty talented
artists in the near vicinity.
These common contradictory attitudes by locals and tourists—wanting a

people-free arch for photos and a lively place to experience Guatemalan
culture—illustrate how an assemblage framework can "look vaguely fa
miliar" and, at the same time, "completely foreign" (Latour 2005:77). This
allows for Antigua to be conceptualized and practiced as a timeless colo
nial place and a vibrant contemporary tourism site by the people who live,
work, and play there.
As illustrated in the TripAdvisor comments quoted above, the Arco de
Santa Catalina has become Antigua's most recognizable symbol for tour
ists, who also learn that it was considered so important to Guatemalan
culture and history that the national Post Office in Guatemala City was
modeled after it. When I interviewed tourists, they emphasized the central
ity of the Arco de Santa Catalina's significance to their experience, wheth
er it be the must-see stop on a city historical tour, a place to meet friends
before going to dinner or a bar, a site to watch folk music and dances, or a
chance to interact with and purchase handicrafts or fresh fruit from Maya
vendors. Most preserve their memories of the arch in photos while some
of them purchase watercolor paintings. However, these photos and paint
ings tend to exclude the various forms of social interaction, economic
exchanges, and cultural performance that take place there.
1281
Calle del Arco—Urban Planning Politics

Idealized imaginings of the Arco de Santa Catalina and the Calle del Arco by
INGUAT, Consejo Nacional Para La Protecciön de La Antigua Guatemala8
(otherwise referred to as the Consejo), and even tourists themselves do
not capture the problems that arise when a heritage site is a lived-in place.
Antigua has been spared the harsh urban planning measures experienced
in other Latin American urban heritage cities, like Salvador da Bahia (Collins
2015, 2008), Havana, Cuba (Hill 2007), or Cusco, Peru (Seligmann 2013),
where people were uprooted from their homes and places of work to allow
heritage planners to refurbish the city to its original attributes (that give it
distinct World Heritage character). Instead, Antigua's residents and busi
ness owners have had to comply with a range of regulations and codes
that pose economic challenges for poorer property owners who lack the
resources to renovate or, even, merely maintain their properties (Little
2009). These processes of regulation can have quite insidious effects on
all but the wealthiest residents and business owners, who struggle to stay
in Antigua much as Rome's Monti district artisans and shopkeepers did in
Herzfeld's monograph, Evicted from Eternity (2009).
In a recent urban planning study of Antigua (Alvarado Pineda 2009) fo
cusing on the block in which the Arco de Santa Catalina is located, tourism
is identified as the single greatest problem confronting Antigua's architec
tural heritage, with 1.5 million or more tourists visiting annually since 1996.
It is significant to recall that the city had largely been neglected until the
national congressional passage of the 1969 law, "Ley protectora de la cui
dad de La Antigua Guatemala" (Decreto numéro 60-60)9 that established
a set of building codes to maintain and restore the colonial architecture.
Contemporary regulation has focused less on the architecture itself, and
more on easier, cosmetic fixes. As one Antigüeho cynically commented to
me, "The Consejo [the nationally appointed regulators] lacks the author
ity and motivation to really care about what the city needs." For much of
the 20 years that I have observed the Consejo's work, a large part of it
has been hindered by conflicts with the municipality, chronic budgetary
shortfalls, uncooperative police officers to enforce building regulations,
and the most vexing, per one of the Consejo architects, wealthy residents
increasingly disregarding the regulations they find inconvenient.
It is important, however, to recognize that the Antigua known via
Google, represented in tourism guidebooks, and experienced in person
is a product of the 1969 law. The standardized architectural and aesthetic
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WALTER E. LITTLE
features, like paint colors, in these representations were more forcefully

implemented during the rebuilding of the city in the aftermath of the 1976
earthquake. In January 2014, when I was interviewing long-time residents
who knew the American artist Frederick Crocker, Jr.,10 who died in 1972,
many of them commented that prior to the 1970s, Antigua was not the col
orfully painted city found today. Some of these older residents lamented
the loss of the earth-tone buildings of the past when the city was a much
quieter place.
In 2003, city planners designed a proposal to convert most of the
ten blocks of Antigua's historic center into a walking-only zone. The
PowerPoint document the planners gave me, "Corredor ambietal, Plaza
Central - Calle del Arco," describes the gradual implementation of a pe
destrian-only area of the city radiating out from the axis formed by the
Central Plaza and Calle del Arco. Originally envisioned as part of a more
comprehensive, environmentally friendly plan, it would link Antigua's his
torically and culturally significant sites to each other and, also, to other
sites throughout the Panchoy valley.
Other elements of the plan include creating a system of parking lots
just outside the central pedestrian section of the city with shuttle buses to
carry tourists and residents to locations within the walking zone. One of
the planners commented, "The primary objective was to remove as many
cars from Antigua as possible. Everyone agrees that the city is easy to
walk. That the exhaust stains the buildings' paint and the cars damage the
water and drainage pipes." One of his colleagues continued, "Residents
are nostalgic about a walking city, that is part of their romantic memory, a
city without cars. However, when they are asked to give up their cars they
won't. Worse are the Capitalinos [Guatemala City residents] and tourists
from Salvador who are afraid to leave their cars alone" for fear of thieves.
In addition to arguing that the parking plan would reduce environmen

tal pollution and damage to historically significant buildings, the planners
contended that the plan played an important role in promoting social and
cultural heritage. In their "Corredor ambiental, Plaza Central - Calle del
Arco" presentation to the mayor and municipal council members, the
planners explained that the "target image to be achieved is an area for
cultural activities and entertainment of high quality residential and com
mercial uses to promote the image of a cultural tourism." Counter to the
Ley Protectora and the other documents produced by the Consejo, one
of the slides describes the Calle del Arco as "an area for cultural activities
1283
and entertainment for high quality residential and commercial uses to pro
mote the image of cultural tourism." The slide includes a photo of a trio
of musicians in front of the Arco de Santa Catalina. Another slide explains
that the "folklore, art, and culture within a commercial, tourist, and resi
dential environment allow the harmonious coexistence between residents
and visitors." On this slide, there is a photo of the street artists who paint
watercolors for tourists.
The city planners' proposal corresponds with a grassroots neighbor

hood organization, the Comité de la Calle del Arco, that has advocated
converting this section of the street to a permanent pedestrian zone since
2001. Like the city planners, the Comité de la Calle del Arco is concerned
with more than the arch's and the Iglesia Santa Catalina's architectural
restoration.11 The committee's pedestrian plan12 describes how the res
toration of the arch and the church go together with the economic devel
opment of intangible forms of culture, such as the creation of a school of
art and culture inside, what would be, the restored Iglesia Santa Catalina.
Further emphasizing their perspective of making the Calle del Arco friend
ly to tourists and residential pedestrians, the title page of the plan includes
photos of tourists, Maya handicraft vendors, and watercolor artists using
the street.
In 2005, city officials agreed to implement the first phase of the walking
plan, in which automobile traffic was prohibited on Quinta Avenida Norte
from the Central Plaza to the La Merced church three blocks away on
weekends. They did not agree to allow cultural tourism performances
on the street. The incongruence between the city officials' decision and
perspective of the city planners and the grassroots Comité de la Calle
del Arco could not be more striking. What could be considered a political
impasse, cultural performances for economic gain, soon became common
during the weekend pedestrian-only days. In subsequent sections of this
article, the performances and economic practices of street vendors and
watercolor artists illustrate how everyday practices converge and diverge
from the dominant discourses on how to imagine and conserve Antigua's
heritage. While the counter discourses by the Comité de la Calle del Arco
and the city planners do not mesh with those from the Guatemalan state
or UNESCO, they complement the distinctive ways in which the street is
used. The distinctions between Antigua heritage discourses and street
practices points to the usefulness of treating the city as an assemblage
to conceive "of the city itself as a gathering process" that is "useful for
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WALTER E. LITTLE
grasping the spatially processual, relational and generative nature of the

city" (McFarlane 2011:650).
Calle del Arco on Weekends

Weekend uses of the Calle del Arco are different from its uses during the
week. It is one of the city's busiest commercial streets from Monday to
Friday; during the weekdays, it is often filled with the cars of out-of-town
shoppers and delivery trucks. The street is a main thoroughfare that driv
ers use to traverse the city, when going from the Central Plaza to get
to the neighboring towns of Jocotenango and San Felipe to the north.
Adding to the congestion are the watercolor artists, handicraft vendors,
food vendors, and other street performers who derive their livelihood from
the street. In 2009, it was felt that the lack of street-use regulations was
inadequate to the growing numbers of residents, tourists, and street ven
dors, leading to an intensification of regulations and enforcement (Little
2014). Tourists and Spanish-language students complain about the cars,
but they are more sympathetic to the street vendors trying to make a living
than are most residents. Their sympathy is shaped by the forced removal
of street vendors and performers by police officers. Foreign tourists and
students, even those who profess not liking to deal with street vendors,
commonly explained that such actions by the police are inappropriate and
heavy handed.
Although this description of the Calle del Arco during the week illus
trates a particular political aesthetic that Rancière (2006:13) explains "is
a delimitation of spaces and times...that simultaneously determines the
place and the stakes of politics as a form of experience," focusing on
the weekend uses of the street illustrates a more complex assemblage
(Latour 2005) that provide insights into how when "heritage moves into
the political arena it becomes a symbol of something else—nationalism,
culture, class—a touchstone around which people can muster their argu
ments and thoughts" (Harrison 2010:191). Indeed, heritage policies and
politics have gone together since the Ley Protectora (Decreto numéro 60
60) passage in 1969. Heritage architectural regulations and enforcement,
including city codes aimed at noise, smoking, street vending, transit, and
parking, affect residents and tourists alike, resulting in debates that go
far beyond heritage discussions to citizens' right to make a living, tour
ists and the tourism industry's claims to services, and residents' petitions
1285
to improve access to new technologies, all of which cut unevenly across

heritage preservation and regulation advocates' attitudes. These debates
reveal creative interpretations of the rules by those who use and those
who regulate streets such as the Calle del Arco that indicate the flexibility
in how those rules are enforced and the permissibility of certain street
economies (Little 2014).
2aaiI
WALTER E. LITTLE
Figure 3: Street vendors at the arch.
In 2005, when the Calle del Arco weekend pedestrian-only plan was
implemented, business owners were divided. Some expressed doubt
about the decision and protested by filing complaints with the municipal
government. One tourism-oriented businesswomen claimed, "It will kill
my business by making it more difficult for customers to get to my bou
tique." A couple of restaurant owners commented that they did not "think
that plan would last because our patrons will complain about not being
able to park nearby."
Business owners' attitudes can be explained within Antigua's changing
tourism demographics. Until the mid-to-late 1990s, most tourists to Antigua
were Americans and Europeans who walked the city's cobblestone streets
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WALTER E. LITTLE
or took taxis. However, following the December 1996 Peace Accords,

ending the 36-year civil war between the national government and the
oppositional guerrilla forces (Little and Smith 2009, Smith and Offit 2010),
and the implementation of a Central America-wide trade agreement in July
2006 that loosened travel regulations in the region, greater numbers of
tourists from neighboring Mexico and Central American countries, as well
as from Guatemala City, began visiting Antigua by car (Little 2004, 2013).
Since 2012, national and international tourists to Antigua have numbered
roughly 2.5 million.13 Concurrently, there has been an increase in crime
that has coincided with the deactivation of the guerrillas and the military.14
With thieves preying on those from El Salvador and Guatemala City who
tend to drive, many tourists are hesitant to leave their cars parked for long
periods. Ten years after the weekend pedestrian-only zone took effect,
business owners have not experienced negative economic impacts. In
fact, those nearest to the Arco de Santa Catalina advocate making the
street a permanent pedestrian zone.
WALTER E. UTTLE
Figure 4: Street performer on the Calle del Arco.
To draw more customers, business owners use the car-free weekends

to host cultural events on the street: traditional Maya dance troupes, Maya
and Ladino musicians, and art expositions, among others. This has, in
1287
turn, contributed to a greater influx of street vendors and uninvited street

performers. Although in contrast to the city's official policy about street
work, the city planners' original project proposed that the pedestrian zone
would be open to limited numbers of vendors, those who sell tradition
al handicrafts, select musicians, and artists who paint watercolor street
scenes. In addition to the above-mentioned street workers, it is common
to see wedding photographers, organ grinders, mimes, clowns, and a
host of vendors selling food, toys, cigarettes, and other portable wares
on the street.
Police enforcement of street work is uneven and depends on how ven
dors and performers ply their trade and interact with business owners and
tourists. Maya handicraft street vendors employ a successful strategy of
making alliances with store and hotel owners to allow them to enter their
premises where the police do not have the jurisdiction to remove or fine
vendors, as they do on the streets. Other Maya street vendors use their
ethnicity, made obvious to tourists by clothing and Maya language use,
to put tourists between themselves and police officers who are reluctant
to use strong-arm techniques to seize merchandise and forcibly remove
them. Vendors who tourists do not consider to be Mayas are more vulner
able to police enforcement, especially, Ladinas (non-Maya Guatemalan
women) who sell fresh fruit from baskets. Hence, the support from tourists
and businesses on Quinta Avenida results in municipal authorities grant
ing street performers and vendors more leeway on weekends to perform
and sell on the street, what I describe elsewhere as spatial urban permis
siveness (Little 2014).
The festive weekend on Calle del Arco contradicts the aesthetic of a
romantic, orderly Spanish colonial past, described earlier in this article.
Locals speculate that the city officials' reluctance to make Calle del Arco a
permanent pedestrian zone stems precisely from this contradiction. They
contend that municipal leaders have not advanced the city planners' proj
ect for this street and the historic district overall, because it would lead
to more street workers and performers, as well as out-of-towners who
come to Antigua for the nightlife. At an informal gathering of several Calle
del Arco business owners in 2010 at a now-closed bar, I listened to them
complain that the city's 2009 smoking, drinking, and noise regulations hurt
the tourism businesses on which they and the city's economy depended.
One woman, who owns a restaurant, shouted over the music playing in
the bar, "When is the mayor going to realize that no one really wants this
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WALTER E. LITTLE
Spanish colonial Antigua. Antigua is a party town. We all make money

when tourists come to drink and party." Although most agreed with her,
one man who owns a high-end textile boutique offered a contrasting opin
ion, "You know we get a very different clientele during the day. They want
to shop and to have a nice meal. There's room for both, but if the word gets
out that Antigua's not a fun place anymore, it will go back to how it was."
Interrupting him was another businessman at the table, who exclaimed,
"Yeah, a fucking boring place where no one makes any money." Although
business owners, most residents, and even Maya handicraft vendors and
watercolor artists support the work of the Consejo to regulate the facades
of buildings to maintain Antigua's colonial look, they are opposed to regu
lations that limit a more vibrant and accessible street life for themselves
and tourists.
Some tourists and locals, especially city officials, want the imaginary
tranquil Antigua that the heritage and tourism industries promote. Tourists
studying Spanish commonly lament that they want to walk quiet streets,
uninterrupted by vendors, exhaust-belching cars and trucks, loud music,
and even other tourists and students. To experience this Antigua, tourists
and Spanish students get up at dawn to walk the streets, photographing
the city as it is perceived to have been in the past—no cars and no people.
When I interviewed tourists in the early morning hours, they were impatient
and annoyed, not wanting to be bothered, as it interrupted their imagina
tions of Spanish colonial Antigua. On more than one occasion, I encoun
tered these same tourists and students later in the day; then, they were
far more gracious interviewees, enthusiastically experiencing Antigua's
noisier, busier contemporary side. Both experiences—quiet cobblestone
streets with colonial buildings and vibrant, people-filled streets with ven
dors and artists—are performative spaces that serve to organize and unify
the space (MacDonald 2002:58). Tourists willingly play along with and
ignore the everyday economic exchanges, sportingly engaging them as
performances in and of themselves. For the most part, they embrace both
the heritage gatekeepers' urban Spanish colonial aesthetics and the more
dynamic, living intangible cultural expressions of street artists, perform
ers, and vendors.
1289
Street Use by Artists: Local Heritage Aesthetics

through Three Paintings
One way to think about the heritage aesthetics politics is through the
work of local artists. I have selected three paintings by Gerardo Galdamez
Coronado, Miguel Batz Cajas, and Roberto Spillari, who have made the
Arco de Santa Catalina the object of their artwork. Paintings of the Arco
are by far the most frequently purchased by tourists, and all street artists
have one ready for sale. Antigüeno artists' practices of painting and sell
ing their works relate to their broader political lives. These are the artists'
'"ways of doing and making' that intervene in the general distribution of
ways of doing and making as well as in the relationships they maintain
to modes of being and forms of visibility" (Rancière 2006:13). Although
there are between four and eight artists painting under or near the Arco
on any given day, they do not conceive of the street in a uniform way. For
this reason, an exploration of their art and street painting can help elabo
rate politics of place and performance in heritage sites, that, McFarlane
(2011:653) explains, "means that urban actors, forms, or processes are
defined less by a pre-given definition and more by the assemblages they
enter and reconstitute."
Antigua watercolor artists (and others such as Spillari who do not paint
on the street) illustrate how "urban space is produced by assemblages"
(McFarlane 2011:662) that yield heterogeneous uses and imaginings of
heritage places like Antigua and, even, specific sites like that of the Calle
del Arco and the Arco de Santa Catalina. The visible aesthetic of political
positions about a place and uses of that place that play out on the street
illustrates the "polemics about the visible and the sayable, about who sees
and who does not see, who speaks and who makes noise, etc." (Rancière
2006:15).
Gerardo Galdamez Coronado

Gerardo Galdamez Coronado is a street artist, painting near the arch
on busy weekend days and on other streets on quieter days. His water
colors of the arch and his works of Antigua conform to the dominant lo
cal Antigua political aesthetics. His paintings focus on the buildings, and
rarely have people in them. Or, as in this example, the people are indistinct
and phantomlike. While he performs by painting in front of tourists, it is a
low-key engagement that conforms to the municipal leaders' norms about
who works on the street. The paintings, likewise, fit the romantic Spanish
1290
WALTER E. LITTLE
WALTER E. UTTLE
% 15fS*
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Figure 5: Watercolor artist on the Calle del Arco.

Painting part of Walter E. Little's private collection.
colonial aesthetic. As I got to know Galdamez Coronado, I learned that

his choice of subject and location to work is tied to painting being his
primary form of livelihood. He is from a family that was forced out of the
historic district after the 1976 earthquake to a neighboring suburb. He is
cognizant of police surveillance and forcible removal of street workers. By
making sure his artistic subject and his behavior fit municipal-approved
activities, he helps secure his place on the street and produces art that is
well-received by tourists seeking a romantic Antigua.
It would be a mistake to interpret his conformation to the local domi
nant aesthetic norms as an adherence to a conformist politic. While he
creates art that seems not to question the constructed Spanish colonial
aesthetic, he is, as a resident of Antigua, actively involved in community
based organizations that do challenge the city's colonial aesthetic, espe
cially, the Calle del Arco. As he explained to me, his politics of community
engagement focuses on expanding the pedestrian zones, supporting the
Consejo's colonial architectural aesthetics, and allowing for street vending
and performing, if this comes with regulations related to monitor numbers
of street workers and their behavior. Although at first glance his advocat
ing for both enforcement of heritage regulations and the opening of the
1291
street to vendors, performers, and artists pit two of Antigua's politics of

place use at odds, it illustrates how he conceptualizes a space and urban
aesthetic in which he or other street workers co-exist within a single place.
He, then, balances his performance for tourists by selling them paintings
that conform to how they imagine the street and arch, rather than how
Antigua is or how they experience it.
Miguel Batz Cajas
WALTER E. LITTLE
Figure 6: Watercolor artist on the Calle del Arco. Painting part of Walter E. Little's
private collection.
Batz Cajas takes a different approach. As can be seen in this example of

his work, he paints the arch and surrounding buildings in a style similar
to Galdamez Coronado's. However, he typically displays arch watercolor
paintings that are populated by people, most often by foreign tourists, and
sometimes with both foreign tourists and Maya vendors. He confessed to
me that the paintings depicting tourists do not sell well to tourists, who
do not want to see themselves in the paintings. Although the paintings at
tract tourists' attention, he derives his income from paintings of buildings
that conform to the dominant, people-free heritage aesthetic and by doing
caricatures of passersby.
1292
WALTER E. LITTLE
For Batz Cajas, making art is a form of performance and way to en

gage tourists. While he uses the arch paintings and caricatures to provoke
tourists to think about themselves in Antigua, these are used to down
play the economic exchange by placing them into a performance of street
art production and conversation with the artist. They may decide to have
Batz Cajas draw a caricature, more typical of Guatemalan tourists than
Americans or Europeans, who buy the more expensive watercolors. When
tourists see the contrast between the arch paintings with tourists, those
paintings without people seem more striking, and their romantic senti
ments of the city are activated with questions about the street. The politi
cal effect of this strategy allows him to make a reliable income, while he
challenges tourists to think about Antigua and themselves in it in new
ways, as he says, "for them to consider imagining themselves in Antigua,
with the people, the noise and the buildings."
Batz Cajas is a K'iche' Maya originally from the area of Quetzaltenango,
which is five to six hours away by bus. Unlike Galdamez Coronado, he
does not participate in local political organizations. Since he is not a resi
dent of Antigua, his politics of heritage representation and heritage per
formance is like that of Maya handicraft vendors (Little 2013, 2004) who
likewise use tourists as vehicles to generate income and challenge the
municipality's regulations. As with the vendors, he is faced with a double
bias, as a non-native of Antigua and as a Maya, that makes participation
in local politics difficult. A miscalculation on Batz Cajas's part can lead to
him being removed from the street. His experience on the street and suc
cess—not giving police reasons to prohibit his street work and creating
paintings that appeal tourists—depends more on the intersubjective rela
tionships he has with police officers and tourists than with local shop own
ers and political officials. In other words, he cultivates a politics of place
based on an assemblage of personal relationships—longer term ones with
police officers and short fleeting ones with tourists. The street itself, his
painting performance, and these intersubjective social relationships are
frames to a spatial politics in public that serve to shape how the street is
experienced by him, the police, tourists, and others in Antigua.
Roberto Spillari
Because Spillari does not depend on painting for his livelihood, he takes
greater risks with his art. He derives his income from his graphic design
work and from giving historical walking tours. He engages the street and
1293
ROBERTO SPILLARI
Figure 7: No title. Painting part of

Walter E. Little's private collection.
tourists in his tour guide work, through which he balances historical and
architectural information with backstage glimpses of contemporary life and
critiques of local municipal heritage and tourism politics. Spillari's tours
are demanding in that they can shake tourists' perceptions of the city, its
residents, and even themselves. For close to 20 years, I have watched
him show tourists his city. Americans have the most difficult time with the
tours, complaining that they are too long and have too much information.
European and Latin American tourists, by contrast, find them a refreshing
counter to the formulaic guidebook descriptions and the imagined
heritage constructions of the city. His paintings are a commentary on
Antigua's politics, ranging from topics that critique artists themselves, to
tourism and heritage regulations. In this painting, he represents the city
as a deconstructed place, where the Arco de Santa Catalina emerges
as the most powerful symbol of a jumbled city in ruin. The painting with
a fractured but looming arch, dominating a city in shambles and chaos,
symbolizes his position on the politics of heritage and tourism as fraught
with controversy and conflict that is both based on ruins and the ruining
of Antigua.
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WALTER E. LITTLE
Spillari has strong opinions about tourism's and the municipality's

respective roles in the undermining of Antigua's heritage. He explained,
Heritage tourism, here, has a limited future. Little thought is given

to attracting tourists who genuinely want to (earn about Antigua.
Instead, it is to the lowest kind, those who come to party and drink.
Cultural and architectural heritage doesn't matter to them or to those
who have businesses that serve them. If that is where tourism is go
ing, then, I can get another profession.
Like Galdamez Coronado, Spillari has been active in community and civic
organizations. For him, the politics of heritage and tourism go beyond the
mere fusion of architectural heritage with people and intangible culture.
He is a strong advocate of regulation, of architecture as well as of people.
As he commented once, "Antigüenos need tourists who come for both the
architectural heritage and the indigenous vendors, but Antigüenos don't
need tourists who don't respect Antigua or those of us who live here."
For Spillari, many city officials, tourism operators, and other business
owners do not encourage policies that promote good behavior on the part
of tourists but attract tourists and street workers who create a chaotic city
that hurts the Spanish colonial architectural and contemporary intangible
cultural heritages that do co-exist in everyday life. Spillari explains that
it is the poor management of tourists and tourism services by municipal
authorities, the Consejo, and the tourism promoters that contributes to
creating a place that will eventually lose its heritage distinction, something
that UNESCO has threatened to do when there have been violations of
architectural regulations and damages done by excessive traffic that, in
turn, put at risk the very aesthetic those regulations protect (Sas 2015;
World Heritage Committee 2004, 2003).
The three paintings of the Arco de Santa Catalina represent a politics

related to the place within the tourism space that each artist occupies.
Following de la Cadena's (2010:361) lead on indigenous cosmopolitics as
alternative ontologies, it is possjble to comprehend these artists as par
ticipating in overlapping, yet different, politics that are informed by other
ontologies that challenge the dominant heritage and tourism discourses.
Each artist engages local politics in quite distinct ways, but their politics
1295
within heritage and tourism are not always easy to discern in their art
work, especially those artists dependent on sales to tourists. Their politi
cal engagement and critique of Antigua, be it aimed at tourism or heritage
regulations, takes shape in other forums, such as city hall meetings and
grassroots community organizations. This is where Galdamez Coronado's
and Spillari's politics converge and agree with each other. As Antigüenos,
they are concerned with protecting the city's architectural heritage, as well
as attracting the kinds of tourists who respect both the city and its resi
dents. Since Batz Cajas is not a resident, he is not able to participate in
local civic life, so he uses alternative tactics to make money and challenge
municipal authority and tourists' conceptions of Antigua. It is important to
point out that these artists have engaged in a form of non-confrontational
politics to urban heritage regulation in ways that are distinct from other
street workers, performers, and vendors who sometimes resist govern
ment regulations and enforcement in similarly confrontational ways as the
street workers in Brazil (Collins 2015) and Rome (Herzfeld 2009).
Conclusion
By conceiving of the Arco de Santa Catalina and Quinta Avenida as an
assemblage (Latour 2005), it is possible to highlight the contribution of
materiality to the political and economic relations within the contexts of
heritage discourses, and regulation. The city planners' pedestrian zone
proposal, the Comité de la Calle del Arco's grassroots activism, the city
officials' regulation enforcement and permissibility, business owners'
economic strategies and preoccupations about heritage regulations and
tourism, the diverse interests and behavior of tourists, and the economic
practices of street workers discussed in this article are situated within a
well-known, culturally and economically significant place.
Antigua as a lived-in place can be understood as "the distribution of
sensible...something common that is shared and exclusive" (Rancière
2006:12) between "actors as networks of mediations," where "action
should remain a surprise, a mediation, an event" (Rancière 2005:45). These
processes of mediation lead to the unexpected (de la Cadena 2010; Latour
2005:53, 116, 117), which can explain how articulations among people
using the street, tourism and heritage discourses and regulations, and
the materiality of Quinta Avenida and the Arco de Santa Catalina produce
particular kinds of visibility and lead to a mix of politics of contestation,
1296
WALTER E. LITTLE
resistance, and conformity (Rancière 2006) that open multiple spaces for
various kinds of street economies.
After more than a decade, a permanent pedestrian zone has not been
implemented, not even for the block where the arch is located. Of the 16
properties on that block, all are businesses that cater to tourism except
for the arch itself, the Santa Catalina ruins, and one private residence,
which is located on the corner of Segunda Calle and Quinta Avenida. The
business owners have enthusiastically embraced the street as a perma
nent walking zone, but city officials have resisted, despite the increased
commerce and support from residents and tourists. Instead, since 2008,
the city leaders have directed their attention to the regulation of street
vending, noise, smoking, business closing hours, and alcohol consump
tion, drawing the ire of business establishment owners, tourists, and street
vendors (Little 2014). Maya street vendors have been the most affected by
the rules, as police regularly impound merchandise and fine them, while
watercolor artists and street musicians (Mayas dressed in their traditional
garb and Ladinos in business suits) that play marimbas are permitted. As
I have explored here, the actual practice of the street by those who use it,
the regulatory processes, and discourses of heritage, tourism, and mate
riality of the place, illustrates Latour's "becoming in which the final result is
not known in advance..." (Braum 2008:171).
Against the politics of the representation of Antigua, the heritage and
street regulations, and the use of the Calle del Arco, the three artists help
us understand the construction of urban space as an assemblage that
is more complex than the dominant colonial heritage-street performance
binary opposition. The aesthetic politic of the city, specifically, the Calle
del Arco and the Arco de Santa Catalina, resists the reduction to singular
meanings, understandings, or uses of the street, indicating that "the ques
tion of the relationship between aesthetics and politics...[is] raised...to re
flect on artists' political interventions..." (Rancière 2006:18). The discus
sion of the dominant politics of representation and regulation of Antigua,
alongside that of the three artists, illustrates such interventions and makes
it possible to get at the symbolic importance and contradictory imagin

ings of the Arco de Santa Catalina by the municipality and the State
through the understanding of artist and vendor performances for tourists.
The Arco de Santa Catalina is a bound-up assemblage of debates about
heritage aesthetics, cultural performances, building codes, street-use
1297
The Practices arid Politics of Heritage in Antigua Guatemala
regulations, and everyday street uses that resist dominant discourses and
representations of being frozen in the past.
These locally specific assemblages "work across multiple sites" (Wise
2005:85), meaning the Calle del Arco and the Arco de Santa Catalina are
part of an assemble as I have discussed here and they, likewise, are part
of other assemblages that index yet other relationships and illustrate the
complex economic, social, and political dimensions that exist in a specific
place and, in turn, with other places. National and local regulations (even
international, such as UNESCO), tourism representations and practices,
and a host of street workers from vendors to musicians and artists, con
tribute to the politics of how the Calle del Arco (Quinta Avenida) and the
Arco de Santa Catalina are conceived of and how they are experienced
and used economically. Hence, treating the site as an assemblage pro
vides ways to understand the interrelationships among actors and sites,
the politics of performance and heritage debates, and "unequal relations
of power" (McFarlane 2011:667). Antigua, framed as an assemblage,
avoids fixing place around a heritage assumption (Brumann 2009:277),
singular aesthetic, economic activity, or public street use. An urban spatial
permissiveness leaves the social space open to dynamic understandings
and uses to imagine and experience Antigua in contradictory, unexpected
ways that resist petrification discourses (Brumann 2009:277) and allow for
economic and political flexibility. ■
1298
WALTER E. LITTLE
Endnotes:
'Latour (2005), MacDonald (2002), McFarlane (2011), and Wise (2005) are working from Deleuze and
Guattari's 1987 book, A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia. In this article, by articulating
Latour's anthropology work with these three human geographers, I am returning to Deleuze and Guattari's
thesis in which assemblages territorialize spaces.
"CAMTUR. See http://www.camtursacatepequez.com/ (last accessed January 4,2015).
3INGUAT's "Guatemala, Modem and Colonial" tourism promotion. See http://www.visitguatemala.com/

en/destinations/guatemala-modern-and-colonial (last accessed October 2,2014).
"For instance, see the "Manual de Procedimientos" and "Manual de Organizaciôn, Funciones y Descripciön
de Puestos" published by the Consejo Nacional Para La Protecciön de La Antigua Guatemala in May 2013.
5"Convention concerning the Protection of the World Cultural and Natural Heritage. World Heritage List.
Nomination submitted by Guatemala, Antigua Guatemala." UNESCO. Document 65, November 24,1978.
"Nominations for the World Heritage List." International Council on Monuments and Sites, UNESCO, April
10,1979.
"See TripAdvisor (available at http://goo.gl/4LnTZS), Minube (available at http://goo.gl/BHwLdr), and

VirtualTourist (available at http://goo.gl/hOiUA7) (last accessed September 21,2014).
'See https://www.tripadvisor.com/Attraction_Review-g295366-d308631-Reviews-Arco_de_Santa_Catalina
Antigua_Sacatepequez_Department.html (last accessed on September 22,2014).
'Consejo Nacional Para La Proteccion de La Antigua Guatemala (http://www.cnpag.com) or just Consejo

as it is called locally.
'Protective Law of the city of La Antigua Guatemala (Decree No. 60-60).
'"Frederick Crocker, Jr. was an artist of some renown who began painting Mayas' indigenous costumes
and life in the 1940s (Crocker, Jr. 1952). At the end of his life (Crocker 2016), he lived in Antigua and was
instrumental in renovating and restoring its colonial buildings. However, those individuals I interviewed
emphasized that his historically accurate restorations did not use the paints and colors that were presently
approved by the Consejo.
"See http://calledelarco.com/imgs/proyectos/santaCatalinaMartir.pdf (last accessed on September 26,

2014).
'"See http://calledelarco.com/imgs/proyectos/peatonizacion_Calle_arco.pdf (last accessed on

September 26, 2014).
13Boietin Estadistico, Banco de Guatemala, see http://www.banguat.gob.gt/ (last accessed August 17,
2018); Câmara de Turismo de Guatemala, see http://www.camtur.org/ (last accessed August 17, 2018);
Institute Guatemalteco de Turismo, see http://www.inguat.gob.gt/estadisticas/boletines-estadisticos.
php (last accessed September 5,2018).
"A selection of news media coverage of crime in Antigua: (Prensa Libre 1997, 1998a, 1998b; Siglo XXI
1998; Castillo Zamora 2011 ; Ortiz 2011 ; Lopez 2012; Facebook; Antiguasegura).
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Foreign Language Translations:

[Keywords: Aesthetics, assemblage, Guatemala, tourism, urban heritage]
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[KnioMeBbie cnoBa: acreTiiKa, accaMÔnaar, r BaTeviana, iypn3M, ropoflCKoe HacneflHue]
As Pràticas e a Politica de Patrimônio na Antigua Guatemala

[Palavras-chave: Estética, assemblagem, Guatemala, turismo, patrimônio urbano]
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The Practices and Politics of Heritage in Antigua Guatemala

Author(s): Walter E. Little

The George Washington University Institute for Ethnographic Research is collaborating

The Practices and

Catalina. Namely, I argue residents' heritage aesthetics, within the larger

Tired of their daily dedication to needlework, embroidering white

Since being named a UNESCO World Heritage property in 1979, the

Rancière 2006). Where official heritage regulations may be hegemonic in

business owners—in other words, assemblages (Latour 2005) that cre

An Ethnographic Vignette: Friday in the Shadow of the Arco de

This vignette can be considered an urban assemblage, a place that can

subsequent sections of this article, such assemblages can be considered

involved in the assembling process, meaning assemblage is dynamic.

An Aesthetic Vignette: 93,600 Google Hits for One Place

Figure 2: Detail of Map by Roberto Spillari. Map part of Walter E. Little's

Google searches are one way in which to comprehend the enormity of

Heritage Aesthetics and Tourism

...a colonial and romantic city, with a combination of ancient build

colors for façades are meant to match a historical moment, a Spanish co

The tourism economy of handicrafts vendors, street painters (discussed

visual politics of heritage that I previously described. As Herrân Alonso

One person explains,

On April 22, 2014, another tourist writes,

On August 6, 2013, yet another writes,

On a charming, cobblestoned street, the arch is a must-see in

These common contradictory attitudes by locals and tourists—wanting a

Calle del Arco—Urban Planning Politics

features, like paint colors, in these representations were more forcefully

In addition to arguing that the parking plan would reduce environmen

The city planners' proposal corresponds with a grassroots neighbor

grasping the spatially processual, relational and generative nature of the

Calle del Arco on Weekends

to improve access to new technologies, all of which cut unevenly across

Figure 3: Street vendors at the arch.

or took taxis. However, following the December 1996 Peace Accords,

Figure 4: Street performer on the Calle del Arco.

To draw more customers, business owners use the car-free weekends

turn, contributed to a greater influx of street vendors and uninvited street

Spanish colonial Antigua. Antigua is a party town. We all make money

Street Use by Artists: Local Heritage Aesthetics

Gerardo Galdamez Coronado

Figure 5: Watercolor artist on the Calle del Arco.

colonial aesthetic. As I got to know Galdamez Coronado, I learned that

street to vendors, performers, and artists pit two of Antigua's politics of

Miguel Batz Cajas

Batz Cajas takes a different approach. As can be seen in this example of

For Batz Cajas, making art is a form of performance and way to en

Figure 7: No title. Painting part of

Spillari has strong opinions about tourism's and the municipality's

Heritage tourism, here, has a limited future. Little thought is given

The three paintings of the Arco de Santa Catalina represent a politics

it possible to get at the symbolic importance and contradictory imagin

"CAMTUR. See http://www.camtursacatepequez.com/ (last accessed January 4,2015).

3INGUAT's "Guatemala, Modem and Colonial" tourism promotion. See http://www.visitguatemala.com/

"See TripAdvisor (available at http://goo.gl/4LnTZS), Minube (available at http://goo.gl/BHwLdr), and

'Consejo Nacional Para La Proteccion de La Antigua Guatemala (http://www.cnpag.com) or just Consejo

'Protective Law of the city of La Antigua Guatemala (Decree No. 60-60).

"See http://calledelarco.com/imgs/proyectos/santaCatalinaMartir.pdf (last accessed on September 26,

'"See http://calledelarco.com/imgs/proyectos/peatonizacion_Calle_arco.pdf (last accessed on

Antiguasegura. "Protesta pacifica 8 de Marzo y memorial." Accessed from http://antiguasegura.org/noti

Facebook. "Protesta contra la violencia en antigua guatemala." Accessed from https://www.facebook.

2010. "Engagement, Gentrification, and the Neoliberal Hijacking of History." Current

. 1998a. "Très asesinados en Antigua Guatemala." Prensa Libre, February 6, p. 83.