Lords Of Atitlan

To Western and indigenous eye alike, the people within the municipality of Santa Cruz la Laguna are Lake Atitlan´s most exotic. To the eye of the camera, they are perhaps its prettiest. Geographic isolation and lack of road access have hidden Santa Cruz from time and a changing world. Traditional Mayan life persists there, especially in the rural villages. Centuries-old farming techniques, social relations, and housing forms not only survive:flourish. Santa Cruz is a closed society, an almost distinct nation.Almost all of its women wear its traje, one seldom seen outside of Santa Cruz.

Historically, the only contact Santa Cruz´s lake towns had with the outside world was by water or mountain trail. This year, new roads scale the mountains out Santa Cruz and Tzununá to Sololá.The roads are absurdly steep, and untested by the rains. They do ease the walk to Santa Cruz´s mountain towns: Pajomel, Chuitzancháj, and Chaquijchoy. But Santa Cruz lake dwellers continue to travel to Sololá as always, first by launch to Panajachel and from there by bus or pick-up. Jaibalito, which lies between Santa Cruz and Tzununá, probably will never have a road.

I spent a couple of nights in Jaibalito at the end of April.I got up early the second morning to visit Santa Cruz´s fringe villages. The path to Chuitzancháj crawls straight up the mountainside. The ascent is arduous, but filled with visual treats of coffee groves, pine forests, cornfields, Lake Atitlán and its volcanoes, and, in the rainy season, waterfalls. I met only two travellers in camino, girls from Chuitzancháj on their way to sell herbs in Jaibalito. As I struggled near to Chuitzancháj, however, I saw a swarm of activity. Families cut and gathered firewood.Men strained up and down mountain trails bearing back-breaking burdens of corn and fodder.Women weeded vegetable plots. They cut corn leavesfeed the livestockto wrap and cook tamalitos.Water sprinklers whirled aroundover.

Chuitzancháj, like Pajomel and Tzununá, is a collection of small settlements and family compoundsabout the cafetal. Homes are tiny and built of adobe, bajareque, wood planks (tablas). Trojas (corn cribs) and temazcales (familiar steambaths) have rancho de paja (thatched roofs). A few chickens, ducks, or turkeys, a pig or two, or even a cow wander around most households.

From Chuitzancháj, I walked the roadway to Pajomel, then stepped down the ancient stone pathway to Tzanjomel and Tzununá, visiting and shooting photos all along the way. Reaching the lake front of Tzununá exhausted, I took the public launch back to Jaibalito.

Many of the folks I had seen this day in late April attended the fairs of Santa Elena de la Cruz in Tzununá (May 3) and Santa Cruz (May 10) as I did. Sad news greeted us in Santa Cruz.A few days earlier thieves had absconded with the images of Santa Elena and María del Carmen I had seen borne by the people of Tzununá for the last time the previous Sunday. I include my best photos of Santa Elena and the Virgin, taken May 3, 2006. If you ever see these images, notify someone. They mean the world to the people of Tzununá, who have little else.