“This city is so crazy,” he said, sipping horchata in a restaurant in Zone 10. He thought about how the combination of the snail-like design and traffic can mean it takes an hour to drive between two places that sound so close to each other - zones 10 and 11. They were all so different and to mush them together felt messy.īut then he thought about the idiosyncrasies of his city’s layout - about how the main landfill is in Zone 3, so close to the city center that even a simple rain sends a plume of garbage odor wafting through much of the city. He agreed, but struggled to think of a way to organize the hodgepodge of stories. Pensamiento lives in Zone 2, a lower- to middle-class residential area that he said is turning into a “ zona hipster.” His zone made international headlines during a tropical storm in 2010 with a sinkhole so deep you couldn’t see its bottom.Ī few years ago, someone approached Pensamiento (whose last name translates to “Thought”) about publishing some of his short stories about urban life. He questioned people from time to time over three decades, and the answer was often the same: “¿Saber?” (Guatemalans use the verb meaning “to know” as a way to say “who knows?”) Then, one day, he felt a rush of excitement upon meeting an urban architect - this guy has to know, he thought. Her ignore-it-and-move-on answer sparked a gnawing curiosity in Pensamiento. Pensamiento and his friends looked at one another, puzzled, and asked her why there wasn’t a 20. She counted all the way to 19 and then bounced to 21. He remembers the day in first grade when his teacher taught the class about the city’s zones. In a bit of local gallows humor, when someone dies in Guatemala City, some people say, “ Se fue para la zona 20” - “He’s gone to Zona 20.”įor Juan Pensamiento, a 38-year-old artist, writer and legal advisor, figuring out the story behind Zone 20 became a near obsession. The most infamous, though, is the missing Zone 20.Ī misconception caught on several years ago, said Ángel Higüeros, chief of cartography in the municipality’s office of land registry, that the city cemetery was located in Zone 20. In rectangle-shaped Zone 19, sometimes called “the island” because it floats separate from the rest of the city, someone posts about traffic congestion. Instead, there are pictures of the new skate park in the zone’s Paraíso II neighborhood - second paradise, it’s called. In the zona whose name often lands in headlines like “Women’s bodies found in a ravine in Zone 18,” the Facebook page carries no mention of violence. There’s a food truck event in Zone 1 - the bustling center with a reputation for both its pickpockets and its gentrifying pockets - and there’s serious flooding on 9th Avenue in Zone 7, one of the city’s most dangerous. People use the pages to post pictures of a tan chow chow named Sony who went missing from Zone 19 or to tell their leaders in Zone 5 about annoying potholes. The municipality’s website skips the same three as Wikipedia and links to each zone’s Facebook page. Nuestro Diario, a newspaper in Guatemala City, offers a post saying that there are 25 zones but that a few them technically belong to other municipalities. WikiTravel, an online travel guide, says 21, and Wikipedia puts the number at 22, saying they go up to 25, but that zones 20, 22 and 23 are missing. How many zones exist depends on whom you ask. On top of the numerical zones, the city’s Zone 10 is also called Zona Viva - the “lively zone” jammed with hotels and bars and nightclubs - and the poorest and most dangerous spots get branded una zona roja (a red zone). It’s kind of a mirror image of Paris’ 20 arrondissements, which spiral out clockwise. The zones start near the city’s center, with Zone 1, the oldest part of the capital, home to the national palace and the central market. “¿ Zona?” taxi drivers often ask as you hop in. In a sprawling city such as Guate, zones are a quick way to give people a rough estimate of the spot you’re talking about. No explanation was forthcoming on why three zones, including 20, were missing. Two decades later, as the city grew, leaders voted on a resolution laying out the boundaries of zones 1 through 25. SIGN UP for the free Great Reads newsletter >ĭesigned as a way to give shape to a swelling metropolis, officials approved the zonification of Guatemala City - often Guate (pronounced “wah-te”) to locals - in 1952, according to the municipality’s website. “The municipality,” he said, his voice rising an octave at the last syllable, enough to let you know he was really asking the question, not answering it. Posed with another question - “Who are they?” - he shrugged. “Who knows why they jumped over 20 and 22,” he said, laughing.
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