In my travels through South and Central America, I have seen numerous markets. I almost did not go to Chichicastenango, or Chichi as it is called, because I thought that it would be just another market. I was wrong.

I arrived in Chichi before dawn. The evening before, thousands of families had arrived by tired old buses from faraway villages and built the skeleton of an enormous street market - now waiting to be filled with venders and patrons.

I walked through the empty market to the municipal buildings where families slept on cold, hard stone.