Tag: Guatemala stamp

Small poor countries really have a hard time displaying culture. Jose Batres Montufar’s family decided to destroy their copies of his poems just after his death so to avoid trouble with the government. That would probably have been the end of all memory if his favorite dictator hadn’t had a statue made of him. So slip on your smoking jacket, fill your pipe, take your first sip of your adult beverage, and sit back in your most comfortable chair. Welcome to todays offering from The Philatelist.

With most of his work not surviving, it is hard to judge Mr. Montufar’s talent, and with it the state of Guatemala’s nineteenth century poetry. He was really all they had. Well there was that bust though, so they have his likeness, and with a likeness you can make a stamp. The stamp then can give the illusion there was poetry once, a long time ago.

Todays stamp is issue A133, a 3 Centavos stamp issued by Guatemala in 1946. It was a four stamp issue with the highest denomination being airmail. According to the Scott catalog, the stamp is worth 25 cents used.

Pepe Batres, Jose Batres Montufar was a pen name, was born in 1809. He was a part of the rich Aycinena clan that had a monopoly in commerce in Guatemala back to Spanish colonial times. Pepe served as a soldier including a year spent as a prisoner of war held by the El Salvadorans. He rose through the ranks peaking at Captain in command of an engineering unit of the Guatemala Army. His schooling was by tutors and Pepe was fluent in French, Latin, and eventually English. His poems were romantic and heavily influenced by Lord Byron.

In 1829 the political left took over in Guetemala and the Aycinena clan had their properties seized and was forced into exile. The family claims the properties were handed out to bunch of liberal creoles and halfbreeds. They were understandably annoyed but looking at their portraits perhaps they shouldn’t be throwing stones from glass houses on ethnicity.

For a while Pepe was safe in the Army but as pressure on him grew he took leave to take part in a Central American funded expedition to map out a possible Atlantic-Pacific canal in Nicaragua. The expedition was lead by Englishman John Baily. The expedition was under resourced and got stuck in the rainforest. Pepe returned to Guatemala sick and dejected.

The Aycinena clan made a comeback in Guatemala funding the peasant army of Rafael Carrera. Though leading a peasant army and allegedly personally illiterate, once in power Carrera built a grand stone opera house for his singing mistress and across from it a statue of the great Guatemalan poet Jose Batres Montufar. At the time Pepe was serving in Carrera’s Army as a military provincial governor.

After Pepe died his family worried that his work would annoy the political right because it poked fun at them  and annoy the left because of who his family were. The opera house, I did a stamp on it here, https://the-philatelist.com/2017/11/06/guatemala-columbus-theatre-still-impressive-on-the-stamp-but-really-in-ruins/  , went through many changes trying to stamp out the memory of Carrera before collapsing in an earthquake in 1920. The very top of Pepe’s statue was remounted as a bust and given to the national library.

Well my drink is empty and I will pour another to toast the illiterate General Carrera who saw to it that Guatemala would at least remember the poet they couldn’t read. Come again tomorrow for another story that can be learned from stamp collecting.

So many of the early Guatemalan stamps show impressive stone edifaces. It is what claudillos like to build with their obvious achievement and hopefully stone permanence. What better to show potential immigrants who might worry the place will be a cultural wasteland. So slip on your smoking jacket, fill your pipe, take your first sip of your adult beverage, and sit back in your most comfortable chair. Welcome to todays offering from The Philatelist.

The stamp today shows the La Reforma Palace. It was designed by French architects. The palace as with many of the structures on this set of stamps were destroyed by a large earthquake in 1919. The government of the time was not stable enough to follow through with plans for reconstruction. I covered this issues Carrera  opera house here, https://the-philatelist.com/2017/11/06/guatemala-columbus-theatre-still-impressive-on-the-stamp-but-really-in-ruins/   .

Todays stamp is issue A30, a 5 Centavo stamp issued by Guatemala in 1902. It was part of a 10 stamp issue in various denominations featuring architectural achievements. According to the Scott catalog, the stamp is worth 25 cents used. A vertical pair of this stamp in imperferate form is worth $100.

After independence from Spain Guatemala faced big problems. The bulk of the people in the countryside were of indian heritage. Their traditional style of living was on rural land under communal ownership of the tribe. The capital of Guatemala City had a slight majority of people of criollo background. This was much closer to Spanish with still some mixing. These were the leaders of the political parties, both left and right, and the military officers. The call out for European immigrants was one of self preservation. At the time, the Yukatan peninsula to the north was a separate indian run country. There was a boom in the cultivation of henequen, useful in ropes and a local alcoholic drink. The cultivation sent Indians off the land and toward Guatemala City from Yukatan. To keep them out of the capital and the following inevitable demand for political power, the American United Fruit Company was invited in, They set up banana plantations that took even more land from Indians but required much labor. The workers were given a small plot of land for themselves in return for several months of labor on the plantation. Guatemala City, now much larger, still claims a slight criollo majority. Their current relief valve are those caravans walking north.

I mentioned that the Presidential Palace on the stamp was destroyed in 1919. The street it was on still shares its name. A new design for a palace was  commissioned from Italian architects, but there was no money to build it.The frustrated President Herrerra wanted a new palace in time for the Guatemala Centennial and ordered one built in 3 months with a shoestring budget. The result was known as the Cardboard Palace. It only lasted a few years before burning in 1925. Guatemala got by without until the current Presidential Palace was completed in 1943, with the help of the United Fruit Company. They courteously delivered the Palace on the Dictator Ubico’s birthday.

The current Palace is somewhat notorious today for death tribunals held there in the early 1980s by Dictator Efrain Rios Montt against mainly leftist Indians. 15 were killed after trials. For many years Rios Montt was protected from opponants retribution  by staying an elected member of Parliment after leaving the Presidency. When he attempted to retire in 2012 at age 85 he was quickly indicted and convicted of genocide. The vertict was overturned by a higher court. It was agreed to reconvict him but without jail time due his age. The journey to civilization begins with one small step. Rios Montt died in 2018 at age 91.

Well my drink is empty and I will pour another to toast the United Fruit Company. Dangerous places require relief valves especially beneficial are domestic ones. Plus you can’t have people as esteemed as Guatemalan leaders living in cardboard palaces. Come again tomorrow for another story that can be learned from stamp collecting.

Welcome readers to todays offering from The Philatelist. So slip on your smoking jacket, fill your pipe, take your first sip of your adult beverage, and sit back in your most comfortable chair. We have an interesting story today of a stamp that lasted twenty years in various editions, by which time the building being celebrated lay in ruins.

The issue today has the look of many early 20th century Latin American stamps. An impressive façade of a building in the classic style with much filigree. It must be remembered that these countries were new and unstable, and so it is understandable to try to allay peoples fears by trying to put forth an aura of stability and permanence.

The stamp today is issue A34, an August 1924 reprint of the 1902 issue. It is possible to tell the issues apart by some color issues and the small writing Perkins Bacon and co, ld londres on the bottom of the stamp. 7 of the original 10 stamp issue were reprinted in 1924.The issue displays Guatemalan architecture. This particular stamp displays what was then known as the Colon, (Columbus), Theatre. The reprint is worth 25 cents cancelled. The original version of the stamp from 1902 is worth 40 cents. The version of this stamp to look out for is an imperferate vertical pair version that is worth $100.

The façade on the stamp is of the Carrera Theatre, located on the central square of Guatemala City, the capital of Guatemala. When built in 1852, it was named Carrera. Later it was renamed the National Theatre. In 1892, it was refurbished and expanded in celebration of the 400 anniversary of Christopher Columbus’s voyage to the New World and renamed in his honor.

The Theatre was built at the direction of then Guatemalan President Rapheal Carrera. He was a big opera fan and the theatre was the suggestion of his mistress Josefa Silva, who was a singer and actress. A German team was brought in to complete the project. Carrera’s rule in retrospect was a time of relative prosperity and stability  but former politicians are often not looked kindly by current ones seeing that his name was removed from the theatre.

There was a large earthquake in 1918 that left the theatre in ruins although the front façade remained. It was thought that the Government did not respond well to the earthquake and that was used as a pretext for a military coup that had the support of the big fruit company. Yes we are talking about banana republic days. The ruins of the theatre stood for over 5 years in the central square of the capital before they were finally demolished  to make way for a street market. Yet through all this they were still printing new versions of a 20 year old stamp that displayed the theatre at it’s best.

Well my drink is empty and so it is time to open up the conversation in the below comment section. In retrospect, Guatemala was probably not in much need of an opera house in 1852. The proof was that there was no coming together to get it rebuilt after the earthquake. Come again tomorrow for another story that can be learned from stamp collecting.