Espandrels

In spite of all the jibber-jabber about perfidious 'ingleses' when it comes to the discourse here on Belize and its territorial apartness from greater Guatemala, long before full admission into the British Empire in the 1860s, that settlement, founded by a buccaneer by the name of Wallace — from which its modern name derives — had been in many ways always something of a Scottish venture, more 'off the books', yet more lasting and ultimately successful than that other one down in Darien.

I was recently struck by this passage from Norman Lewis's A Letter From Belize, which contains his observations from a visit in 1955.

'One constantly stumbles upon relics of provincial Britain preserved in the embalming fluid of the Honduran way of life, and often what has been taken over from the mother country is strikingly unsuitable in its new surroundings. The minor industries, for instance, such as boat-building, are carried on in enormous wooden sheds, the roofs of which are supported by the most complicated system of interlacing beams and girders I have ever seen. One thinks immediately of hurricanes, but on second thoughts it is clear that all this reinforcement would be valueless against the lateral thrust of a high wind. It turns out that such buildings were copied from originals put up by Scottish immigrants, and were designed to withstand the snow-loads imposed by the severest northern storms.'

He went on to say however that while 'The Spaniard took Spain with him. The Briton was always an exile, living a provisional and makeshift existence, even creating for himself a symbol of impermanence in his ramshackle wooden house.'

Over the years I have wondered just how well adapted the 'colonial' style of Antigua might be to Central American conditions.

In modern Spain the nearest equivalent would be the architecture of the cooler northern zones, such as Cantabria. One doesn't come across much 'terraza española' in the south, but this may well be because around the likes of Seville they improvidently hacked down most of the trees in order to build their gargantuan galleons.

The Guatemalan version has a number of perhaps local idiosyncrasies such as cúpolas, campanas and brick vaults all of which can be problematic in the environment: quakes, dampness, exuberant tropical insect life and so on.

Meanwhile, a contemporary visitor to Antigua Guatemala could be mistaken for thinking that the conquistadors built their homes with internal patios so that they could live around courtyards filled with lush tropical vegetation, trickling fountains and so on, but this could not be further from the truth. All the pot plants and climbers are a far more recent affectation.

And so I have been led to wonder whether there might be a kind of reverse colonisation of the building style here, rather like the way the Maya use the steps outside certain key churches around the country (i.e. a bit like the steps leading up to their ancient temples.)

For the 'original' peoples of this land once lived (and many in the most rural areas continue to live) in extended family groups within compounds made up of several single-roomed dwellings.

'The walls of these dwellings are constructed with wooden posts and lime marl (more recently with cement blocks), and roofed with palm thatch or other readily available materials. These buildings are built around an open patio space, usually in the form of a quadrangle, to provide privacy from the prying eyes of neighbours. In many Maya villages, the kitchen is a separate building made of lighter materials, to allow free circulation around the smoky fire. Tools and foodstuffs are often kept in separate storerooms.' (From A Forest of Kings.)

These 'open spaces' surrounded by individualised dwellings sound rather familiar, and were perhaps more likely to contain vegetation than the internal courtyards plotted by the Spanish.