Lords Of Atitlan

What Aldous Huxley called “the most beautiful lake in the world” scientists now call its most endangered. Human waste, garbage, phosphates, and farm chemicals assault Lake Atitlán, even on a good day. October 4 and 5 2005 were not good days: Hurricane Stan wreaked havoc upon the lake and its beleaguered residents. Rains had fallen steadily the entire week previous. Treeless slopes and steep farm fields became saturated and slid off the mountainsides. Boulders tumbled. Logs rolled. An enormous load of debris flushed into Lake Atitlán. In Panajachel, the San Francisco River swept to the lake: houses, vehicles, a warehouse full of paint and toxic chemicals, and the town´s sewage treatment plant. Nothing has been done to replace that facility, so millions of tons of raw sewage drain into Lake Atitlán annually.

Stan took a human toll as well. Cruel irony for Panajachel: October 4 is the feast day of its patron saint, San Francisco de Asís, and the principal day of the fair in his honor. It should have been the happiest day of the year. But, while townspeople waited in the iglesia for the rains to ease so the procession could step off, word came that two small children had justinriver that bears the patron´s name. In the early hours of the morning of the 5, an ancient river long lost to time reappeared in the slopes above cantón Panabáj (Santiago Atitlán) burying some 800 of its sleeping residents in mud.

Deforestation and the extension of agriculture up volcán Atitlán are largely the culprits for the tragedy at Panabáj. This February, forest fires raged out of control on volcán Tolimán for weeks. Mayan culture is deeply connected to its trees. Guatemala means “place of many trees”. In traditional Mayan society, a town´s traje (native dress) distinguished its people from others; so too did its trees. Panajachel means “place of the matasano tree”; Patulul, “place of the zapote tree”; and Chutulul, “near the zapote tree”. Palopó means “amate tree”.

Above the town of San Andrés Semetabaj is a wide mountain ridge which connects San Andrés` rural towns with those of Chichicastenango (Department of Quiché), Tecpán (Chimaltenango), Concepción, Patzún (Chimaltenango), San Antonio, and Santa Catarina. Along this ridge, between las Trampas and Godinez is a string of towns whose names glorify the majestic forests that once abounded there.First is caserio Chuitziyut (Concepción), “above the maguey”; then Panimaché (Chichicastenango), “place of the giant trees”.Panimatzalám, an aldea of San Andrés is “the place of wide boards”.Tocaché, its caserio, is “the entranceway to the trees”. Place names celebrate trees in places conspicuously absent trees. Las Canoas, also part of San Andrés, takes its Spanish name from its historic industry of carving dug-out canoes, in that day quite large craft. Today, las Canoas is mostly corn-fields.

In February, I took a photo of a forested cerro (bluff) near Patzutzún. A couple of weeks later, I photographed it ablaze; a few days after that, completely charred. Here are photos of that cerro along with photos taken in the immediate aftermath of Hurricane Stan, to alert you to the plight of an imperiled Lake Atitlán.