A velación is an evening when Guatemalans are supposed to visit their local church to pay their respects to their religious idols before they get carted around town in formal procession. In fact what happens is that most of them make it to just outside the church, where they proceed to stuff their faces with seasonal snack-foods, such as buñuelos, churros, tostadas etc and wait for someone they know to turn up.
A few years ago one entrepreneurial soul in Antigua had the bright idea of going to Domino's and buying loads of pizzas which he then sold at a profit (per slice) at the velaciónes leading up to Semana Santa. Domino's realised they were missing a trick, so now each time street food sellers gather you can spot their branded sun-shade and the bloke with the blue baseball cap beneath it selling vast quantities of offical Domnino's pizza which I guess, in spite of the din of generators, has to be more eco-friendly snack, because it cuts out the man on the motorbike.
The typical Guatemalan churro is a doughy, coiled serpent whose habitat is stygian re-re-cooked oil, and is to my mind is nowhere near as yummy as its Andaluz equivalent, ideally consumed with dense hot chocolate in a cafe in Sevilla.
