The Antigua Bus Station
Solola Ice Cream
Solola Street Scene
Waiting For Passengers
Waters Rough From the Chocomil
In the Lancha's Prow
Waiting on the Lancha at Santa Cruz la Laguna
Path to the Volcanos
Supply Boat at Dawn
Mist and Light on Volcan San Pedro
Travelers
COLUMBUS, OHIO–Ever since I first laid eyes on the blue expanse of Lake Atitlan, I have wondered about the towns surrounding her shores. Little by little I explored them over the years, mostly haphazardly, leaving many unseen. If I were to go back and look through my old journals I know I would find many, many lists with the exhortation, “Return to Atitlan, visit and photograph each town,” or something of the like. So, on this last trip I finally got that done. Or almost. I only made it to San Lucas Toliman in the night to photograph a political meeting with Diputado candidate Enrique Rodriguez, and there is the little town of Cerro de Oro at the base of that fascinating mini-volcano just down the road from there. And, it seems, there are many little pueblos in the corner between San Antonio Palopó and San Lucas Toliman that no one ever mentions. Listed below are the towns I visited and photographed. All are hyper-links that will take you to that gallery. Most are on the lake shore though a few, like San Andres Semetabaj and Patanatic are up on the caldera’s slopes and a few like Pueblo Concepcion and Chaquijyá are farther away, out of site of the lake though not its guardian volcanos. There is plenty left to do. The more I have hiked the area and traveled its roads and towns by pickup and bus the more clear it becomes that one could spend a lifetime exploring Atitlan and the Department of Solola. There are hundreds of towns, rarely visited, back in the folds and slopes of its mountains. There are volcanos to climb and festivals to observe and, as anyone who has visited knows, the lake itself changes moment to moment. Look away and look back and the clouds and light have taken on some new character. A boat is cutting its way across with a long white wake and the wind has raised the waves. So this, as always, is the completion of a major effort looking forward to new explorations.
SIGNS & STREET ART of PANAJACHEL
GUATEMALA CITY—We came down out of the mountains, down the curves and switchbacks on the outside of Lake Atitlan’s caldera, dropping out of the highland fog into the thick night of Guatemala’s subtropical rainforest. Tall trees, dripping water, lined the road. It was late and the Central American night was unrelieved by light pollution so far from the city. Cloud cover blocked any star or moonlight and the night was dark and close. The powerful beams of the flat-black Toyota 4-Runner’s headlamps cut a fast-moving wedge out of the blackness and into this wedge stepped a wandering armadillo.
Enrique Rodriguez at an early campaign strategy meeting.
The prehistoric beast looked up and saw the end of his days in the headlamps’ glare but Enrique jerked the truck to the left, slid neatly around the armadillo and sped straight on into the night.
“That was a smooth bit of driving,” I commented.
“Thank you,” replied Enrique Rodriguez, “I’m surprised I didn’t hit it. I am very tired.”
Earlier that day Enrique had delivered his first public campaign speech in the town of San Jorge La Laguna, officially beginning his run for one of the three Diputado seats for the Department of Sololá. San Jorge is set into the cliffside overlooking the volcanic Lake Atitlan in the highlands of Guatemala. A fair was in progress, with a bandstand and Ferris wheel constructed in the dirt square in front of the old church. The band introduced Enrique and he spoke for a few minutes, announcing his candidacy and outlining his campaign promises. The audience was almost entirely indigenous Kachiquel Mayans. They stood silently on the church steps while listening to Rodriguez’s plans for economic growth, job creation and improved security. When the speech was finished, the band struck up again and Enrique spoke with people, shook hands and grabbed a quick lunch of tortillas and chorizo from a food vendor’s smoking grill. From San Jorge we returned to his apartment in Panajachel and packed the truck for a later political meeting in San Lucas Toliman and the trip afterwards to his family farm. We drove up into the mountains, following the highway that skirts the edge of the Atitlan caldera as the sun set and night fog began to gather.
The Central American Republic of Guatemala, with a population of around 14 million, is divided into 22 Departments. These are represented in the country’s unicameral legislative branch, the Congreso de la República, by Diputados, elected to four-year terms. Rodriguez, who is entering the political arena for the first time, is running for PAN (Partido de Avanzada Nacional) or the National Advancement Party. The PAN Presidential candidate is businessman Juan Gutierrez, also a newcomer to the political arena. Rodriguez describes the PAN party as essentially moderate conservative, pro-business and free market, staunchly anti-corruption and, in treading a centrist line, distinct from both the far right Partido Patriota (Patriot Party) headed by retired Army General Otto Peréz Molina or the leftist UNE (Unidad Nacional de la Esperanza) or National Hope Party represented in this election by Sandra Torres de Colom, the soon-to-be-ex-wife of outgoing President Alvaro Colom. Guatemalan law states that a President can only serve one term and that a spouse cannot succeed the President in office so, in a bid to retain power within the family, Sandra Colom is divorcing her husband with the immortally cynical sound bite, “I love my husband, but I love my people more.”
The feria in San Jorge La Laguna while candidate Rodriguez delivers his first speech.
The Department of Sololá, located in the Mayan highlands of Guatemala, has a population numbering between 300 and 400 thousand. A census is currently underway, which may eventually result in a fourth Diputado seat being added due to significant population growth in the region over the last decade. The capital of the Department of Sololá, also named Sololá, is a city of around 100,000 people. The Department encompasses some 400 or so communities as well as the entire area of Lake Atitlan, a large volcanic caldera lake, religiously significant to the Maya and of great potential to the tourist industry.
Rodriguez announcing his candidacy for Diputado of Solola.
As night closed in on our way to San Lucas, the road got worse, its two lanes sometimes constricted to one by recent landslides. On the shoulders, such as they were, walked people going home after long days in the fields, wandering cows and chickens, couples holding hands, bicyclists and motorcyclists, mating dogs and running children. Just as Enrique said, “Often the fog is much worse,” we turned a corner into a bank so thick visibility was no more than a car length in front of us. We continued on. There was no stopping or going back and the candidate had a meeting with the party leadership in San Lucas on the other side of the lake. So for an hour there were white knuckles, the vain attempt to pierce the white blanket with straining eyes and no talking except to call out the sudden appearance of obstacles, drop-offs and cliff walls. Finally we dropped low enough so that the fog thinned to heavy mist and the road straightened out as we entered San Lucas. Enrique pulled up to a building painted the bright yellow and blue of the PAN party. We got out and met the six men and one woman who would be working on the campaign in that area. Inside, the room was painted the same yellow. The people sat around the edges on wood benches and spoke one at a time, expressing their concerns and asking for various assistance and favors.
After over three hours in the fluorescent-lit yellow room, the meeting broke up. Hands were shaken and campaign materials passed out, future meeting dates agreed upon and we were back on the road.
Enrique sighed as we regained the highway. The fog was gone as we dropped further out of the highlands, speeding down the night highways into thickening jungle.
Rodriguez speaks with a supporter and campaign worker at a meeting in San Lucas Toliman.
“I am tired,” he repeated, “What a day. I really could use a rest,” he said, then, with a smile in his voice he added, “But it’s exciting. I think we have a chance to make a real change in this country. And at least the fog is gone.”
Just after saying this, the armadillo stepped into the high beams and after dodging it we had a good laugh imagining the poor beast sweating and shaking back in its burrow, telling his family and friends to repent of their evil ways, that the bright, roaring light had spared him that night. After more twists and turns on bad, dark mountain roads, Enrique pulled over and got out to lock the hubs into four-wheel-drive. He got back in, turned off the music and told me to roll down the window. I did and we drove off the highway and down a deeply rutted track, immediately engulfed by the forest.
“When I was young,” said Enrique, “and we would come here with my father, he would always do this. He would turn off the radio and make us roll down the windows, Listen to the night, my father would say, Listen to the jungle.”
All down the two-kilometer track we did that, listened to the buzzing, the calling and rustling, the mutters and whispers and shrieks of the subtropical rainforest after midnight. The headlights illuminated huge piles of mossy stones, the glossy green of coffee plants against the myriad greens of the jungle and finally buildings, houses and warehouses, a bridge and the sound of rushing water. Finally we pulled up to the family house and were greeted by a maid who took my bags away. I wasn’t sure what I was expecting but a spacious series of rooms in the Arts and Crafts style in the middle of the Guatemalan jungle wasn’t it. Four old Morris chairs surrounded a low table, and a wood bar stood in the corner with a photo of the family patriarch looking on. There were well-worn couches that spoke of comfort rather than ostentation and hanging next to an oaken desk was Enrique’s grandfather’s pith-helmet, worn and battered from years tending the farm.
Rodriguez examining a mature coffee plant at Finca El Retiro.
Finally, home and safe, some of the fatigue lifted. We sat in the Morris chairs and drank fresh juice squeezed from jungle fruit and Enrique began talking about his farm, his campaign and other projects,
“This farm, Finca El Retiro, has been in the family since my grandfather Daniel Rodriguez bought it in 1945. It produces coffee and bananas and the earliest records we have go back to the 1870s. When I say I have a lot on my schedule I mean it. In the middle of running for office I am also working to bring the farm back to life. The coffee plants are all old and, well, coffee prices worldwide went into a slump in the 1990s and we sustained a lot of damage in both hurricanes Mitch and Stan… Much has been neglected for many years and now I am working to replant the entire farm, replace and update the processing machinery and figure out the way forward in the years to come.”
He was silent for a moment, before continuing, “It is much like my country today. I hadn’t ever thought of politics until the party asked me to run for Diputado. I studied Business Administration at Seattle Pacific University with the goal of renewing the family business but I also realize that my country needs a renewal. So much has been neglected, let fall to ruin. There is so much corruption. So many men have taken all they can and given nothing back and the people have lost faith. I am young, a non-traditional politician who has gone from business to politics and has the political will and principles to work for social, economic and environmental sustainability. But of all the things Guatemala needs, jobs are most important. Jobs on the local level and small business lead to economic growth on a national scale.”
“How do you plan to create these jobs?” I asked.
Rodriguez planning the replanting of Finca El Retiro with his overseer.
“The poor rural towns need access to productivity and knowledge. And they need access to markets. The government has allowed the country’s infrastructure to so deteriorate that even when goods are produced they have trouble making it to the buyers. We would help to provide seed capital for small agrarian ventures and micro-enterprises and invest in community development, all, of course, with the approval of the communities involved.”
We talked long into the night. Enrique’s plans and vision for the future of his farm, his country and the Department of Sololá seeming to give him energy.
“I love Sololá Department. Finca El Retiro produces coffee and will produce much more when these new plants come to maturity, but for years I have done business with the Mayan growers in Santiago, Atitlan, working with them, buying from them, the individual fair-trade growers who work with traditional methods. It has helped me know the people in the region and understand their unique character and concerns. Recently the Antigua region has been awarded the status of an official coffee growing region–which is a huge boost to their prestige and the potential prices they can command; I hope to attain the same recognition for the Atitlan region.
“Sololá is rural and 95% indigenous. It is rich in nature and beauty but poor in education and living standards. It is war-torn and prone to natural disasters yet optimistic and proud, a diamond-in-the-rough in a post-conflict zone. Sololá has been excluded and marginalized from any real development, sustained by paternalism and pity. It is this I plan to change.”
Finally the day and the days before caught up and the conversation wound down. I went to sleep and woke by 6 a.m., the sunlight streaming through the screened windows and the morning already hot. Enrique was already up and hard at work. There were infrastructure and personnel problems to solve around the farm, an engineer to meet with concerning the installation of the new coffee processing equipment and details of the replanting operation to finalize with the overseer. After coffee Enrique took me on a walking tour. Originally Finca El Retiro had been a true plantation, complete with houses for the employees, a church and a school: a farm containing a village. A few people, mostly elderly, still lived in some of the houses but other than a core staff most of the labor was now seasonal. We walked by the village, past the old stables and toured the processing facilities. The farm’s power was derived from its own hydroelectric plant, turbines powered by the steady, strong flow of a natural stream on the property, the source of the rushing water I had heard the night before.
Enrique stopped to talk to the electrical engineer about the power plant, consulted with the structural engineer about a new floor needed to support the modern sorting and drying machines and went over maps with the overseer that showed the order in which the plantings would be renewed. When this business was taken care of, we started up the road we had driven down the night before. It was 9 a.m. and the day already over 90 degrees. After a mile or so Enrique stopped a moment, “You know,” he said, wiping his forehead, “After being in the city you always think you won’t be able to handle the farm, the jungle, but really it is just what you need!” He smiled, looked for a path almost indistinguishable from the surrounding greenery then plunged into the forest and down a steep trail. I followed as he pointed out details of the coffee plants, the shading banana trees, landmarks he had grown up with. At the bottom of the valley he stopped and talked to a worker and a little farther down the trail ran into the property’s ranger.
“This man,” he said, “knows every trail, every plant, every animal that lives in this region. He keeps the trails open, watches for any problems.” They shook hands and we took off again. Suddenly Enrique charged up a hill and I followed, practically running up a nearly 45 degree slope planted with coffee trees. At the top of the ridge we caught our breath and started down again. We passed through a section of heavy vegetation and suddenly emerged in a gently sloping field filled with thousands of young coffee plants, bright green in the sun, nearly ready to replace the old and tired plantings. Enrique explained the different varieties, what did well at what altitudes, what was good for blending and what by itself, the intricacies of the coffee market and of running an organic operation.
Rodriguez speaks with his ranger on the trail through the farm.
When we returned to the house there was a simple lunch of refried beans and cheese-filled tortillas with cool horchata and a pitcher of ice water to wash it down. Enrique went to deal with some issues involving staffing and supply and I sat and took notes, watching the flights of bright-plumaged birds gliding and dipping over the vine-covered trees. Rainy season had just begun and dark clouds moved over the steep ridges that rose all around the valley.
In the afternoon we packed up the truck, headed up the rutted track out of the jungle and back onto the highway. The road took us quickly down out of the mountains, past chaotic crossroads towns and into the fertile plains. As we headed to the city Enrique continued speaking of his campaign plans and the history of Guatemala and its politics, the challenges he and his country faced. Almost imperceptibly the rural fields gave way to urban sprawl and as the sun again began to set we found ourselves in the evening traffic of the capital city. He navigated to Zone 10 and found me a hotel near some good restaurants. I checked in and shook hands with the young candidate, wished him luck. He had a meeting that night with supporters in the capital. I had a plane back to the US at 9 a.m. the next morning. He had meetings before that.
“Come back soon,” said Enrique from inside his truck, “Come see what we do with the future.”
PANAJACHEL—I stepped off the boat onto the floating dock at Santiago and clapped my wide-brimmed Panama hat tightly onto my head. I slung the light NorthFace Recon pack over one shoulder and the Domke F3X camera bag over the other and began the uphill hike up the main street to Hotel Ratzan. To my right was the new, lakeside park, now underwater. Its concrete statues of Tzutuhuile women waded in Lake Atitlan, risen three meters or more these last few years. Boys played amongst them, splashing and diving, so it was still a park, just an unplanned water-park.
Santiago street scene during Semana Santa
It was Wednesday, the first day this year of Semana Santa, Holy Week. I had left Panajachel, where I had been for the last two months or more studying Spanish, to spend the week in Santiago on the other side of the lake. I had finished my last day of classes the Friday before. Most of my things I had left at my friend Yukon Dave’s house and I felt terrifically free. I was unencumbered by the schedule of classes, the weight of anything but a change of clothes and my cameras or, for that matter, knowing anyone.
I had made a lot of friends in Pana and a few said they might come over for the day to see Santiago in the midst of Holy Week’s whirl but I was alone in the largest town on Atitlan’s shores, the one with the largest indigenous Mayan population and the center of the worship of Maximon, San Simon, the Mayan god of necessary evil, a synchronization of the old trickster god Maximon, Saint Simon and Simon Judas. The idol, a semi-abstract wood carving of a bearded man about four feet tall, resides in a different house every year. At the end of Semana Santa he moves to his new residence. I had visited Maximon twice before in Santiago, once some six or seven years earlier and once on this trip, a month or so before. Worshipers, supplicants and the curious come to the house and, if following custom, bring offerings of tobacco, liquor, candles and money. The idol, wearing a cowboy hat and draped in scarves, usually has a cigar or cigarette in his mouth. When a new bottle of rum or aquardiente is proffered, the caretakers tip the idol back, place his cigar in an ashtray and pour liquor into the idol’s mouth. I have been told it flows into a cup behind Maximon and is later consumed by the caretakers. The honor of hosting Maximon is highly sought after as his cult is a strong one in the Guatemalan highlands and with him comes much wealth. Hosting this trickster god, however, all too often results in ruin for the family, who squander the money, descend into chronic drunkenness and quarreling and are left poorer than they began when Maximon moves to his new lair.
Santiago men carrying curious, large seed pods.
So, along with my feeling of freedom was one of trepidation. Santiago is not a town to be trifled with, it is one that holds secrets and is not a haven for gringos–at least not after the last boat leaves for the night and the trinket shops shutter their windows. Before I got to my room, several blocks up the main street, I ran into the tail end of a procession. Men were marching in line carrying what appeared to be some sort of four foot seed pods on their shoulders and there was some sort of action far up front. I had intended to drop off my pack, take a shower and relax a bit before getting lunch but this was what I had come for. I pulled the Leica M6ttl and Panasonic GF1 from the Domke and slung them around my neck, turned the latter on and set a basic exposure on the former which was loaded with 400 ASA Fuji Neopan black and white film. I began to shoot and to work my way forward as I did. The procession turned left and passed the market then right on the street below the cathedral. Here I made my way almost to the front and there was Maximon himself. I viewed him for the first time in sunlight, removed from his smoke-filled den. He was strapped, somehow, to a man’s shoulders who danced and slowly turned so that everyone could see the god-saint’s wooden visage. I was unable to fight my way through the last few feet of the crowd and after a few minutes the idol was taken into the municipal building and the crowd dispersed.
I went back to the hotel, dropped off most of my things and then hired a tuktuk or motorized rickshaw to drive me around the edges of town so I could better get the lay of the land. The day was overcast, with heavy grey clouds lowering over the lake, obscuring the peaks of the volcanoes and pregnant with the beginning of rainy season. I was exhausted, after the last weeks and after dinner went to my room, watched CNN for the first time in months and was asleep by 9 p.m., thinking rightly that I would have little opportunity for rest over the next days.
Santiago girls carrying a float in the children's parade.
Thursday morning I woke early and set out on the streets. I got breakfast then fell shortly into conversation with a man selling the typical Tzutuhuile costume in a booth near the market. His name was Juan Angel Mendoza and we spoke of the city, its history and problems and the events of the next few days. I then bought a pair of the long, blue and white striped shorts the Santiago men wore and the red sash to hold them up as well as woman’s sash for my wife, intricately beaded with a bird motif in the traditional style of the town. Every time I passed we would say hello and usually, unless I was following some procession, I would stop and chat with Juan Angel as well as other locals who would be at his booth. I soon found that random people around town, the waiters at the restaurant I frequented and others who I had not formally introduced myself to, knew my name. But in general I tried to speak with and introduce myself to as many people as possible, to acquire at least a passing and friendly acquaintance with people in a strange town where I knew no one.
Incense bearers leading a Holy Week procession.
Thursday and most of Friday passed in a blur as I followed procession after procession, exploring the side streets and eating or grabbing a restorative coffee at El Pescador restaurant in between events. Friday dawned dark grey and rainy. It was the day Maximon would be brought into the square in front of the cathedral, as would Jesus in his glass coffin. All day I followed processions and returned to the cathedral and the square in front. All through the city the fombras or carpets were being laid out on the main streets. These are intricate designs, composed of colored sawdust, pine needles, fruits and other materials, laid out by teams of men and women. They first chalk the designs on the ground then fill them in. Finally, the procession will march over them, destroying them in the passing. I feared the rain, which was intermittent but heavier as the day progressed, would destroy them but it seemed to do no harm. I was looking as well, for my friend Steve, a native Arizonan who was building a hotel in a small inlet called Patsizotz (The Place of the Bats) over near Santa Cruz. I saw Su, whose wedding I has just photographed a few days before and Alex and Patricia from London and a few other Panajachel expatriates but nothing of Steve.
Maximon was being held in a small, old building to the left of the cathedral, surrounded by pine boughs and his closest followers. Inside the church Jesus’ coffin was being prepared, sprayed with bottle after bottle of perfume until the fumes were suffocating. The square began to fill up and then Maximon was brought out as the rain fell and the sky darkened with clouds and the coming night. Maximon danced again and I began fighting my way forward and finally ran into Steve. He followed as I pushed and slipped and wiggled to the forefront, taking a vicious elbow to the stomach from an old Mayan man and a few shots to the ribs from others. Almost in the very front again we shot until Steve’s battery failed, the light failed for me and the rain began to fall harder.
Maximon faces his followers.
We decided to call it a night and extricated ourselves from the crowd and walked back down towards a restaurant near the hotel. We ordered a well-deserved Gallo and were about halfway through our cold Guatemalan brews when we heard shouts and whistles from the street. I grabbed my camera and got the flash up just as a crowd of Mayans came trotting down the street with Maximon on their shoulders and men with flashlights leading the way. We threw money on the table and followed but by then the streets were empty. We ran to a cross street and there a woman pointed to the left. We followed there and at the next turn another person pointed the way and soon we found ourselves on a dark street in front of the alley that led to the house where I had seen Maximon a month before. It dawned on me that this must be his going away party, the last hurrah before he changed residences. I looked around. A stream of Mayans was filing up the narrow alleyway, all dark heads and cowboy hats. We were the only two gringos and very gringo we were. I said, “Shall we go?” Steve, a man with many adventures behind him, shrugged, smiled and said, “Why not?”
Maximon's beer is delivered.
So again we pushed forward. In the small, sloping courtyard in front of the house a crowd was gathered pressed up against the open windows. Being the tallest person there I could see the inside was filled. I tried shooting over their heads but all I got was more heads so, a little at a time, I began working my way into the crowd, judging its sways, taking the place of anyone who moved forward or back. Soon we were inside. The crowd parted widely for several men bringing in cases of beer in large bottles and soon those bottles were being opened and poured into two glasses which were passed out, ceremoniously drained and passed back. I wondered if we would be included, the two glaring outsiders. After a while a glass was handed to me. I drank it and passed it back and soon one was sent to Steve. I felt that justified our presence as well as anything and I finally got right to the front of the crowd.
Maximon on the ground, his priest stands to the side.
Maximon was laid out, flat on his back. The evident priest stood to one side of him and people came forward, paid their respects and faded back. Little by little the crowd began to thin, like at the end of any party. I found myself back in the courtyard talking with Gaspar, a young man in his 20s wearing a striped polo shirt and jeans. Steve was in conversation with a man in a black beret with gold-rimmed teeth wearing a Che Guevera shirt and an old woman in full Santiago traje who spoke perfect American English and Tzutuhuile. She looked and moved like a gringa but used a Mayan name and said she was a, “Third degree Shaman.”
There were a number of Mayan men pressed closely around me and I thought it a good moment to pull out the pack of Rubios cigarettes I had bought for a situation such as this. I handed them around and soon the pack was empty, the smokes glowing in mouths and tucked behind ears. I crumpled the pack and calmly pulled out the second. Soon it was almost gone as well but a bit of tension seemed to be relieved. Gaspar, weaving just the slightest amount said, “It’s a shame people get robbed in Guatemala.”
“Yes, it is,” I replied.
“I’d like to walk you out. You could even get robbed here.”
I am good at taking a clue and caught Steve’s eye. He felt the same shift and we said our adioses and followed Gaspar out into the night and away from the house where Maximon had a moment earlier been carried into the rafters. The night was cool and damp with the smell of incense and rain. I clapped Gaspar on the shoulder, “I am going to buy you a beer, my friend. Let us go and find a place.”
Ceremonial beer is poured in front of Maximon on the ground.
We returned to where we had been before Maximon had run by. The waiters looked at us all and said they were sorry but they only had two beers. It seemed strange but I thought nothing of it and we walked up to El Pescador. We pulled up three chairs on the patio and I ordered a round. The waiters refused, apologizing that it wasn’t me but Gaspar who was, in their opinion, “Bien bolo,” or, in the local parlance, “Well drunken.” I saw that they were correct and thus it was time to separate ourselves from Gaspar. The only question was how to do it gracefully as, well drunken though he might be, he had been nothing but good to Steve and me. Gaspar mentioned another place and we walked up the street before I said we had decided to call it a night, that it was already late and tomorrow would be a long day. Gaspar protested a bit and hung on, “Man, he said, “I really want a beer…”
“I know, amigo, here is 40 Q, that’ll buy a couple with change.”
“Thank-you my friend,” he said and hugged me tightly, “We are good friends forever, yes?”
“You are welcome, my friend,” I replied and shook his hand firmly, but that was not enough demonstration of amity. We hugged, close and manly six more times, amigo mio, my friend, que le vaya a bien, mañana si, mañana mi amigo, before finally Gaspar walked into the night. I rejoined Steve who was watching this with some amusement from down the block. We returned to El Pescador, sans Gaspar, and had our Gallos on the upper patio then returned to Hotel Ratzon and watched and listened to the Santiago night from the rooftop with some rum.
In the morning I checked out. I had planned to stay until Sunday but I felt it was time to go, that enough was enough. We had breakfast at El Pescador, several cups of coffee and then made for the dock and a fast passage across the morning-smooth lake. The shoreline of Panajachel was packed with Holy week revelers and we fought our way up Calle Santander to La Palapa just as the bar opened and the Saturday BBQ was beginning. The owner, Ricardo, another Arizonan welcomed me back to Pana and offered me a job that night photographing the bar and band, a job I accepted. Yukon Dave showed up and ordered his first Cuba Libre of the day and said I was welcome to stay at his place again as long as I didn’t mind that he had female company. After a bit we went back to his place where he met his girl. I rested a bit then returned to La Palapa where the evening’s festivities were just beginning. It was glad I had returned, that I was back on familiar ground after Santiago and that I could begin to say my goodbyes and rest up over the next week before returning to the US. I was wrong about the resting. That was the night I met Enrique Rodriguez, candidate for one of the Diputado (Congressional) seats for the department of Solola…
PANAJACHEL–People are often surprised to learn that the Mayans are still a vital culture, with their own languages, customs, religion and communities. It may have been a long time since they built any pyramids but the Maya are, if pressed by hundreds of years of Spanish conquest, forced assimilation, frequent massacres and the unstoppable encroachment of the modern world, still possessed of strong traditions and close-knit communities. Guatemala is the Mayan heartland, though their culture covered what is now Mexico’s southern States of Yucatan and Chiapas, Belize and parts of Honduras and El Salvador. Unlike the Imperial Aztecs to the north and the Inca far to the south, the great Mayan cities were abandoned by the time the Spaniards arrived. No one knows exactly why the Mayan high civilizations fell, though it is likely due to a combination of endemic warfare between the rival City States of the different tribes and environmental pressures. Although the great cities, like Tikal, were already reclaimed by the jungle when the conquistadors arrived, the Spanish still encountered fierce resistance. As they did throughout the Americas they pitted one side against the other, employed native mercenaries and made full use of their superior military technology and experience.
My Spanish teacher, Holga Yolanda Xiquin Calabay and her grandparents in Patanatic.
Kachiquel Mayan men from San Antonio Palopó. This reproduction of a hand colored photo, which I found pinned to a wall in that town, was probably taken in the early 20th century. The traditional clothing in this image is still woven by hand and worn today.
Some of the bloodiest battles were fought in the Atitlan region between the Kachiquel and Tzutuhuile tribal groups who are still heavily represented in the towns around the lake as well as the Quiché. The Quiché have a small lakeside presence but their homeland is in the mountains north of the Atitlan/Solola region. Many people to this day speak either Kachiquel or Tzuthuile, some exclusively, though most know Spanish as well.
I acquired this basic Kachiquel lexicon from my Spanish teacher, Holga Yolanda, from the town of Patanatic (a pueblo on the mountain overlooking Panajachel) and from a boy named Marco who sold scarves and other textiles on the street. Marco was from Santa Catarina Palopó, a pueblo on the lakeshore, about four kilometers from Panajachel. I cross-checked the words between the two sources and tried many of them out on random locals with whom I would stop to chat. In such I was generally successful in making myself understood. The phonetic spellings of the Mayan words are of my own device as are any and all errors. As for the collection of phrases I generally let the sources tell me what they wished to and, therefore, what to them seemed important.
Good morning//The sun rises/Buenos Dias: “Zaca-rik”
Good afternoon/Buenos tardes: “Sha’ka-iir”
Good evening/The night comes on/Buenos noches: “Xoc-ak’a”
Until tomorrow/Hasta mañana: “Chuac cheek”
Goodbye/Adios: “Ki-bana”
I am going home/Yo voy a mi casa: “Yin-eeah chi wa choch”
Midday/Medio dia: “Pan-kaj kij”
How are you?/Como estas?: “Utz a-wach?”
I am well, thank-you/estoy bien, gracias: “Utz matiosh”
What is your name?/Como te llama?: “Ach-ka a bee?”
What is your name (formal)/Como se llama usted?: A-chi-ka abi-riet?”
My name is Andrew/Me llama Andres: “Ri-en nu be, Andres
I/yo: “yin”
Please/Por favor: “Tah-ahna utish”
What time is it?/Que hora es?: “Achi-ka-ora?”
To want/querer: “Na-wa-ho”
You drink beer/Tu tomes cerveza: “Yet-ya tiho-ya”
I want a beer/Yo quiero cerveza: “Yin wa ho ya”
To eat/comer: “Natig”
To drink/Tomer: “Na-cun”
To smell/oler: “Na zak”
Tasty!/Rico!: “Qui!”
Acidy, bitter/Asido, amargo: “Chám”
Spicy/Pica: “Pókon”
Money/Dinero: “Pók”
Meat/Carne: “ti-írr”
Beer/Cerveza: “Ya”
I want to eat/Yo quiero comer: “Yin nuah-ho yee wah”
Do you smoke?/Tu fumes?: “Yet ya-si kan?”
How old are you?/Quanto de años tiene?: “Yet-hani-a-hunah?”
Where are you going?/De donde vienes?: “Achi-kapeweh?”
Do you have brothers?/Tienes hermanos?: “Ye-ehko-acha?”
Wife/Esposa: “Wash-ai-eeh”
By Aldous Huxley, pages 128-130, Harper & Brothers Publishers, New York and London, 1934
ATITLAN–Lake Como, it seems to me, touches the limit of the permissibly picturesque; but Atitlan is Como with the additional embellishment of several immense volcanoes. It is really too much of a good thing. After a few days in this impossible landscape, one finds oneself thinking nostalgically of the English home counties.
Detail of the Frontpiece map of "Beyond the Mexique Bay" by Aldous Huxley
Panajachel, the village nearest to our inn, proved to be a squalid uninteresting place, with a large low-class mestizo population and an abundance of dram shops. Aguardiente and a lick of the white-wash brush go together in these parts. The Indians till the soil and act as beasts of burden, and the half-castes sell them raw alcohol. Commerce is higher in the social scale than manual labor.
San Antonio Palopó, which we visited by water (it being almost inaccessible on the landward side, excep to goats and the indefatigable natives) is a purely Indian village. There seems to be only a single family of mestizos in the place. Painfully squalid in their ragged European clothes, a couple of sluttish women came and went about their house; and it was sadly characteristic that the only child who tried to beg from us should have been a little boy belonging to one of them. The lower class ladinos feel themselves vastly superior to the Indians and have therefore scornfully rejected the traditional decencies of their behavior, without, alas, acquiring any of ours.
San Antonio has its own private national costume. The men are dressed in a shirt and drawers of striped cotton, with a long female-looking kilt made of a checked blanket wound round the waist, and a jacket of blue cloth. The women wear a red bodice with full sleeves, striped in red and white, a dark-blue cotton skirt, and quantities of beads and buttons made of gold and silver glass. These last are from Woolworth’s or its equivalent and have presumably taken the place of the old necklace of coins. Aesthetically, the change is for the better. These gaudy, Christmas-tree ornaments make a splendid showing.
There is no weaving at San Antonio. All the cloth required by the inhabitants is made in two villages at the other end of the lake. San Pedro and Atitlan are the Manchester and Bradford of this small, isolated world. San Antonio is the local Argentina or Saskatchewan; its inhabitants exchange the surplus from their almost perpendicular maize field for the manufactured products of the other villages.
Photo from "Beyond the Mexique Bay"--photographer unnamed.
Cloth is not San Antonio’s only import. In the middle of the plaza between the church and the cabildo, or municipality–the only level place in the whole of the village–an itinerant vendor of pottery was showing his wares to a group of women. From the covered terrace of the cabildo the chief men of the village looked on at them and at us with that magnificently dignified aloofness which is characteristic of the Indians. Compared with these utterly impassive aristocrats, the English milord of old French novels is a chattering and gesticulating dago. Nil mirari is a motto they constantly live up to; and they have carried the art of looking through people, of treating them as though they weren’t there at all, to a higher pitch than it has ever reached elsewhere.
PANAJACHEL– El bartender estaba limpiando su bar, cuando escucho unos pasos. El levantando la vista veía entrando un pirata.
Entonces, el pirata le hablaba diciendo dame un ron. El tienen aspecto muy bravo y muy falo pero despues de dos copas de ron, el pirata ya se encontraba tranquilo. Entonces el bartender le pregunta, “Si le puede hacer algunas pregunatas?” y el pirata responde, “Que si, porque no tenia verguenza de nada.”
El bartender le pregunta, “Que le paso con su camote?!”
El pirata responde, Una vez hubo un motin, una revolucion en mi barco. Y mis marineros escorbutos, me tiraron en el mar. Y un pinche tiburon me mordio mi camote. Entonces este camote de madera…!”
“Ai yi yi,” dise el bartender, “Otro ron para ti! Es libre!”
“Gracias,” dise el pirata.
Y le sigue preguntando el bartender al pirata, “Que paso con su mano? Porque el gancho??”
“Ah,” dise el pirata, “Una vez yo luche con espadas con otro pirata. El me corta mi mano y yo le corta la cabeza de el… Entonces, el gancho.”
“Y que le paso con su ojo, porque tiene el parche???” le dijo el bartender al pirata.
El pirata relato, “Una buen dia estaba en mi barco, yo estaba viendo para el cielo y mi loro aparecio y cago en mi ojo.”
El bartender estaba un poco confundido, y preguntado el pirata, “Que hiciste?”
Entonces el pirata responde, “Lo limpie mi ojo, y no recordaba que tenia un gancho en lugar de mi mano!”
PANAJACHEL–Years ago I was staying at a small hotel surrounded by jungle on a tributary of the Rio Dulce in Guatemala. The night was heavy with humidity, isolation and the smell of decaying vegetation. We sat in a small electric island surrounded by wet forest.
There was an older German man who was very drunk. He bought round after round of drinks even when no one wanted any more. He asked repeatedly that we follow him to his house when the bar closed to celebrate his birthday. Like many Northern Europeans, he walked a fine line between a near-morbid curiosity of Americans and statements of his own political superiority that bordered on the grossly insulting.
Suddenly he lunged forward and pulled a shotgun from its hiding place behind the bar. He held it with inexpert hands, and the 12 gauge bore passed us all. The bar went silent and no one moved. I reached over and gently took it from him, turned the muzzle to the thatched ceiling and handed it back to the bartender who put it out of reach.
The sound of the forest was very loud. The German looked at all the faces, still stunned, staring at him.
“What?” he said, “What did I do?” He was honestly surprised. I put my hand on his thick shoulder.
“Hans,” I said, “You never, ever take the gun from behind the bar. You don’t do that.”
He hunched over, chastened, looking small, all 58 years and 200 lbs of him. “I. Didn’t. Know. That. They don’t teach us that in Germany. I am in Guatemala. I was being fun.”
“Now you know.”
The party was over and one by one people drifted away. The last I saw, Hans was still trying to explain himself and order more rum.
From “Land of Wonder and Fear” by F.A. Mitchell-Hedges, The Century Company, 1931. Page 113-114.
“I shall never forget the next morning. Five thousand one hundred and fifty feet above sea-level lay Lake Atitlan, seventeen miles long, without a ripple, green-blue in colour, and completely surrounded by gigantic mountains. Rising sheer from the edge of the water were the two volcanoes Atitlan and San Pedro, towering twelve thousand feet to the skies. Indian women in beautifully worked, brilliantly coloured costumes, and men with strangely woven coats, short pants and skirts, were already busy doing nothing as usual among the masses of flowering plants, bushes, and trees. The sky was mottled 
with gold flecks–a miracle of beauty which changed continually as the sun rose higher until, as it appeared above the heights, the lake shimmered, a molton silver mirror, reflecting the volcanoes and mountains perfectly. Humming-birds and gorgeous butterflies fluttered everywhere, adding splashes of vivid colouring to the exotic scenery. The lazy drone of insects arose through the heavily scented air; the lure, the insidious lure of the tropics enervated us with its narcotic somnolence. Addicts, we revelled in the drug.”
2 March 2011
SAN JORGE, LAKE ATITLAN, GUATEMALA—As you travel the steep road between Solola on the rim of Atilan’s caldera to Panajachel on its shore, you pass above the town of San Jorge. You look down, a thousand feet or so, into the center of the pueblo, over its houses and into the square in front of the Catholic church. We were journeying to San Jorge with the hope of seeing Mayan religious ceremonies. I looked forward to standing in that square in front of the church I had viewed so often from above. The bus climbed the steep road and Daniel, the guide from my Spanish school pointed to a cliff side. “Andres, we are going there.”
I looked and then saw. There in the side of the mountain, nowhere in view of San Jorge, was the black mouth of a cave. As many times as I had traveled the road I had never before seen the place, bordered by grey stone and then forest.
We exited the bus where the road descends to San Jorge and that church. I thought we would begin hiking down to it but instead we walked a bit farther down the main road to a steep, smaller road paved with stones. That led us to an even steeper path leading down the cliff side, which ended in front of a narrow ledge and the mouth of the cave. The cave was utterly black with the soot of millenniums of fires. Inside, candles were burning, the ashes of fires still smoked, but no one was there. The cave floor and surrounding area were littered with incense wood, empty liquor and perfume bottles, tinfoil coins and other ephemera of worship. Inside were four blackened crosses of concrete and several altars set flat in the uneven stone of the floor. “It is called Cueva de Los Brujos,” said Daniel, the Cave of the Witch Men.
The place had a heavy smell of soot, ancient humanity and incense, and seemed to posses an unnatural humid warmth. I felt a sense of fear, perhaps irrational, perhaps not, trepidation to enter a place of beliefs so old and foreign to my own. But enter it I did and photographed it from every angle I could find, my hands and clothes becoming streaked and smudged with the black soot that covered every surface. I stood for a moment outside, strangely out of breath, feeling the cool wind from the lake to my left and the humid breath of the cave on my right.
From there we hiked back up the steep trail and then along the high edge of San Jorge. Again, all I could see of that unknown Pueblo was a view of the church from above, albeit from a new angle. The trail continued on and I realized we were heading up to another spot I had only seen from the road.
I remembered years before when Katherine and I had hiked from Xela to Atitlan. On the morning of the third day we descended into the caldera from above the town of San Juan on the other side of the lake. The descent into the caldera began below a minor peak called La Nariz de Maya, The Nose of the Maya, which it indeed resembles. The rest of the group hiked the extra several hundred yards up that peak but my knee had gone wrong and for as much internal shame as I heaped upon myself, it was bad to the point where every step was agony and I had many thousands of steps still to go.
Kates reported that the peak was a ceremonial spot with evidence of many fires and so, ever after, I have looked to the various high spots that form Atitlan’s uneven rim, suspecting that they held Mayan holy sites. The peak we were hiking to I had seen and wondered about in the last few days, viewing it both from a boat crossing the lake and the bus to Solola.
Now I found myself there and it was even more spectacular than I could have known from my far off vantage points. The trail ended on a pointed ridgeline that provided a vista of the length and breadth of the lake. The highest point itself was a bare granite shelf that fell away on three sides into the abyss of Atitlan. And these rocks had areas of deep, black soot and the smell of incense clinging to them. The wind swept around us, very nearly cold and so strong that I felt no shame in staying low and crawling when I felt like changing my viewpoint.
The deep blue lake spread out in front of me. I was as high above it as I had ever been. I turned and below and behind me, standing in front of a rock alcove tucked in the mountainside, was a Mayan priest. He wore the red embroidered shirt and brown kilt of Solola and a bright red, ceremonial scarf wrapped around his head. He stood in front of the old blackened rocks and raised his arms in the universal gesture of a man before the eternal. In the late afternoon sun the heavy white incense smoke rose and swirled around him and the light caught the sharp, copper planes of his handsome, surprisingly young face. Not a boy or an ancient but a man in his prime. He must have sensed my presence for he half-turned, looked up. Our eyes met and I expected disapproval for my intrusion but he smiled with white teeth, nodded, and turned back to his gods.