Picture It

Fruit Vendor, Sacapulas, Quiché Department

Fifty years ago, the foods that were available in Guatemala were highly location specific. Around Lago Atitalan, the soil is poor and there were very few choices. The diet of the Maya living in the lakeside villages was largely limited to the following: Continue reading →

There are ‘rules’ for safe travel in Central America and I am about to be challenged by several of them. I am in Quiché, and flying out of Guatemala City in a couple of days. The conservative approach might be to head for the supposed safety of Antigua and book a tourist shuttle directly to the airport for the morning of my departure. Or I could travel to Guate the day before and stay somewhere near the airport. But I am happy and entertained here in Quiché and want to spend all my remaining time here. So I stay, Continue reading →

Apart from the obvious interest of the market day, what I enjoyed most in my visit to Chajul was the simple, quiet pleasure of wandering around this lightly visited village, without a map or really much idea of what I might find. I had boarded a microbus in Nebaj at 7:45 am for the 45 minute rides to Chajul, and had spent the morning exploring the biweekly market. Now it was time to see more of the village.

The main street entering the village is of concrete and in good repair. There is a reason for this, and it is not a happy one. During the Civil War in Guatemala, the army completely occupied this town. The road was built to support the army infrastructure.

Mostly foot traffic on the concrete paved main street

Where the paving was asphalt, the surface was typically badly cracked.

The buses and microbuses entering the village turned off the main street before they reached the central area

In the more central residential areas, streets were either cobbled or paved with small cement blocks, no doubt another remnant of the military presence here in the 1980s and 90s.

Children and chickens play in the street

A little shop (tienda) in the village (aldea), with farms on the surrounding hills.

Throughout the Ixil area, the women and girls almost always wear traditional clothing (traje), while males – even tiny little boys – are dressed in Western clothing.

Away from the central areas, the streets grow more rough.

As the road climbs up into the surrounding hills it grows more narrow and rugged. Clean stream water is captured in a cement holding pond. Below are village women using the outflow to wash clothing.

Laundry is put out to dry on fences and gates

Traje drying on fence

and on roofs

Sturdy cotton fabrics, heavily embroidered, require long drying times. All sorts of vertical and horizontal structures are utilized as drying frames and racks.

After exploring to the edge of the main village on the roads that climbed into hills to the north, I returned toward the main road. My goal was to reach the village cemetery.

These little girls lived in the house adjacent to the village cemetery

The main road into Chajul leads directly to the Plaza and La Iglesia Católica de Chajul. The last bit of road is closed to vehicles on market days.

In many rural areas, the local market days rotate among a few of the more prominent villages in the region. In the Ixil Triangle region of Guatemala, Nebaj is the largest population center, with about 20,000 inhabitants. Chajul and Cotzal each have about half that population.

I had arrived in Santa Maria Nebaj just in time for the Thursday morning market. Now it is Friday and the activity has passed on to Chajul. Tomorrow it will move onward to San Juan Cotzal.

There are several advantages to visiting a village on one of its bi-weekly market days. First, transport to and from the village will be especially frequent on these days. Second, a great many people will be around. The rural inhabitants will come into the village, both to sell their produce and other wares, and to spend their proceeds. Third, the high level of activity is interesting to a visitor wanting to observe and, at the same time, the visitor is somewhat less noticeable.

To see the market at its most active, it is best to get an early start. I was tucked into a microbus and underway at 7:45 am, and in Chajul by 8:30. I first did a little wander in the village, walking away from the central area to get a feel for the appearance of the streets and the homes.

Most of the local people seemed much better off than this woman. Her husband was just behind her, carrying load of wood supported by a head strap. He was straining hard under his load. She carried a few sticks as well. Her bare feet spoke all too eloquently of their poverty.

I then walked back toward the busy market, along with groups of locals headed in also, and found a quiet little spot from which to quietly observe.

Because of the hilliness of the site, the town plaza is elevated. The street which led into town ended at the main stairway leading up to the plaza. To the left were shops. At the far side of the Plaza was a stairway which climbed up to La Iglesia Católica de Chajul. To the right a few more stairs led down to more shops.

La Iglesia Católica de Chajul stands at the far end of the plaza

The plaza viewed from the Iglesia. The market area is at the far right.

The street paralleling the front of the plaza was filled with tables and stalls, and with tarps and blankets heaped with various goods.

Along the street which parallels the Plaza

Shoes often come in piles of sizes and styles. Matched pairs are more expensive.

Most interesting, and unusual, were the rural women who stood in a double line along the street leading to the plaza with their baskets of maize on the ground in front of them. A few also had baskets of black beans or avocados.

An hour or so later, the regimented line had relaxed. The sellers who were known to provide the best quality had already sold all they had brought. Buyers who arrived later would still have much to choose from but it would probably be of lesser quaiity.

Several of the women approached me to see whether I might come with them to their home to browse through some of their weavings. Eventually, when I had satisfied myself that I had seen what I had come for in the general market, I did agree to do that.

Certainly I did not really need, or even want, anything. But those small purchases can mean a great deal to the woman you buy from. And so I bought a couple of inexpensive used items – a little girl’s huipil (woven top) and a faja (sash).

A few small purchases can mean food on tonight's table.

And later that day I did purchase another huipil.

The weaver/artist wearing the huipil I bought from her

The textiles in Guatemala are so varied and beautiful, eventually it is hard to resist buying things you know you really don’t need.

And so passed the first part of my day in Chajul. From there I went on to explore much more of the village, wandering up the hills, and down, eventually discovering the very unusual Cementario (cemetery), and interacting throughout with the uninhibited and delightful children of the village.

— Continue reading to see more of Chajul —

Mud bricks, tile roofs, dividing fences made of piled wood for the cooking fire. Pigs tethered between close-set houses. Fences of vertical sticks tied together with twine. Men in dark clothing with dark faces beneath pale straw cowboy hats. If they wear white hats, they must be the ‘good guys’.

Pickup trucks with wire frames, open air and cold local transport. Full of faces, people standing, holding onto the frame as the truck careens around corners.

Fields of maize climb the mouths of ravines; in the open spaces rich, dark, tilled soil. Cloud forest rims the fields, mist coming right down to the field edges. Are there Quetzales hiding in those trees?

The van driving in front of ours is full. Six men and boys ride on top, three more hang off the rear ladder. I am warm and safe inside. It is good being built small though even so my legs are much longer than the guatemaltecans beside me. But basically I fit comfortably.

We drive the packed dirt of the mountainside above a chasm of a valley. It is a dramatically beautiful terrain. Villages come and go, just houses hugging the road, above and below. Beyond the houses the mountain drops sheerly away. Tiny tiendas all with the same limited assortment of necessaries. Saddled horse tethered to a tree, grazes and waits. Horses are the most useful form of transport to and from these fields.

Far across the valley a large slip bisects a road which looks like ours must from a distance – clinging precariously to the mountainside. This is the nature of the road through the Cuchumatanes linking Uspantán and Sacapulas.