The Rear View

When I first started travelling to Latin America, I spent most of my time in Central America -- more specifically in Guatemala and El Salvador. I tended to limit most of my time to small rural villages and towns of little physical infrastructure and for years, I would bring home photos of one-room adobe houses, fields of corn, small colonial towns, and local residents going about their daily lives.

Little did I realise that I was subtly shaping people's overall impressions of Central America. A few years back, my mother had the opportunity to billet a small group of Guatemalan Girl Guides at our place in Montreal. What surprised her the most were the pictures they brought of Guatemala City which showed tall buildings and an infrastructure reminiscent of the North. I was then accused -- light-heartedly, of course -- of inappropriately portraying Central America. In order not to fall into this trap here, lest you think that Recife is all about the beach and colonial architecture, I present to you, without further ado, the view from the back of my place.