Mayan Market to Table

Mayan markets in Mexico and Guatemala are a lot alike, not surprising as the countries share a border that has shifted throughout history and both have climates that range from mountain temperate to jungle tropical where they can grow just about anything. Thousands of years of Mayan cultivation still hold strong, with corn, beans and potatoes blanketing the largest part of the landscape that peaks and valleys in volcanic highs and wet river lows.

Under the colorful tarp canopies of the Mayan markets, there is a seemingly endless maze of ramshack stalls, operated almost exclusively by women, dressed in traditional long printed skirts and complementing printed blouses cinched at the waist with bright woven belts that match the ribbons braided into their long hair. The mothers, daughters, grandmothers chatter with each other in Mayan and snap, rip, pop beans from their shells piled high in great heaping sacks. They slip, flip, tie plastic bags around sold produce with a kind of bored second nature that must come from working the market day after day, through hard rains that pound the bright patchwork of plastic tarps overhead, through intense heat that gets trapped under the colorful canopy, thick with the aroma of ripened bananas and mangos.

On display are long green onions bundled together with a grass tie, tomatoes plump red from the heat and piled in pyramids of $10 or $20 pesos, soil covered potatoes stacked in the same careful configurations, cilantro picked that day with white dirt caked roots in tact, fresh and dried chile peppers in practically every shade of red and green, garlic braided in the same way the Mayan women braid their hair, bright yellow mangos with their sticky sweet aroma, mountains of avocados with one or two cut in half to show quality, plantains so small like the size of your thumb and so big like the size of your forearm.

There’s one thing I haven’t been able to find at the markets in Mexico that were sold in every other stall in Guatemala. Güicoy or pumpkin squash. Market vendors carried small pumpkins the size of your fist all the way up to big ones the size of your head, with tough skins in sunspotted greens and yellows. It was in the cramped kitchen of a Guatemalan family where I first tasted güicoy and learned to make this simple, creamy, comforting, delicious soup.

New Food #41. Sopa de güicoy. Pumpkin squash soup. Ciudad Vieja, Guatemala.