Some villagers still walk for hours carrying their wares to reach Chichi's market, one of Guatemala's largest. At dawn on Thursday and Sunday they spread out their vegetables, chunks of chalk (ground to a powder, mixed with water and used to soften dried maize), handmade harnesses and other merchandise and wait for customers.
In the past vendors erected their stands of tree limbs and covered them with cotton sheeting each market day, but these days a sea of tin roofs remains a permanent fixture atop the plaza.
Tourist-oriented handicraft stalls selling masks, textiles, pottery and so on now occupy much of the plaza and the streets to the north. Things villagers need – food, soap, clothing, sewing notions, toys – cluster at the north end of the square and in the Centro Comercial Santo Tomás off the north side, whose upper deck offers irresistible photo opportunities of the business conducted below.
