San Jerónimo

Made my first visit out to San Jerónimo today, just to get my bearings
and take a walk around. It's a pretty little town with a pleasant plaza
and an interesting museum which is a former sugar refinery, and houses
the machinery for sugar refining, and also a reasonable display of Mayan
artifacts.

The municipal building is reasonably sized and a little run down. I
think that's a good sign--I get suspicious of shiny town plazas with
piped-in music (as I've noted, shiny means quality down here) when the
municipal per capita income is in the $1200 range.

There's also a hotel in town, with a restaurant, but it's a ways out of
the center. Looks very pleasant, but I took a look at a room, and it
doesn't have much on my room here in Salamá (though there is a swimming
pool), so I'll probably keep the room here, since this is Q85/night and
that's Q125. Probably cheaper for me to eat my meals out here, as well,
though of course it would be better to get more exposure to the town
itself. I'll just have to make an effort to spend quite a bit of time
out there.

Incidentally, I wish the Latin Americans would get their story straight
on what the central plaza is called. I asked for directions to the
"Plaza Principal" the other day in Cobán, and the guy gave me directions
to the shopping plaza which had Pollo Campero in it. I guess that's
where he thinks all the gringos want to go!

"Parque Central" is what I should have said, but Holy Crap, I wish they
could just pick a single term for the plaza...

Here: "Parque Central"
Mexico: "Zócalo"
Bolivia: "Plaza Principal"
Peru: "Plaza de Armas"

Okay, that's a little over-simplified, but you get the idea...

The last one is my favorite--a historical allusion to the fact that the
central plaza was where all the local men would gather with their guns
and lances when the town was under threat. Not a bad system, really.

What on God's green earth does "Zócalo" mean, by the way?

And what ever happened to the citizen militia in the states? The
benefits of such a system:
1. Cheaper to maintain a citizen militia than a standing Army.
2. A lot harder to get into wars when every male voter will be heading
off to fight the infidels, the communists, or the terrorists.
3. Gets around Maureen's point about the obsolescence of the 2d
amendment (only a benefit if you're a gun-totin', "bitter" resident of
rural America.)
4. I think there's something to be said about state-building and
citizen-building with such a system. It would be interesting to know if
I was right or wrong, but my suspicion is that there is something to a
social constructivist story about how military service promotes a
feeling of national identity.

And how come we don't build towns this way anymore in the states? I know
of a couple of rural places in Eastern Connecticut that still have a
town green surrounded by a grid (more or less) of streets, but how come
we don't follow that system anymore? Other things being equal, who
wouldn't prefer to be within a couple minutes' walk of a town common or
a Plaza de Armas? Preferably complete with a monument to (a) G.
Washington, (b) Simón Bolivar, (c) Justo Rufino Barrios, or (d) Jay
Hammond.