CULTURAL AND HISTORICAL GEOGRAPHY OF SOUTHWEST GUATEMALA—McBRYDE 5 
(verano, literally, “summer”) which lasts from 
November through April (McBryde, 1942, a and b). 
With the heavy rains of the wet months, especially 
along the south slopes of the mountains, the outer 
Lowlands are flooded. Roads and trails become 
mires, and transportation is extremely difficult. 
These conditions account in large measure for the 
sparse population which has always characterized the 
region. 
The many slightly meandering streams and small 
rivers that flow across the Coastal Plain are bordered 
for the most part by heavy gallery forests, where tall 
trees and dense undergrowth obscure the banks and 
cast heavy shade. 
Since shortly after the Conquest, the Lowland 
savannas have served as important grazing lands for 
cattle, introduced by the Spaniards, and large estan- 
cias, or ranches, still dominate the cultural picture. 
For an average width of about 25 or 30 miles (40 
to 48 km.), this flat, thinly peopled, park-savanna 
landscape stretches inland from the seashore, along 
the entire Pacific coast of Guatemala (map 7). 
The narrower western section is called Costa Cuca; 
the wider central part, Costa Grande; and the narrow 
eastern Lowlands, Costa de Guazacapdn. Where 
visibility is not obscured by low-hanging clouds or 
broad-leaved trees, there is a striking northern sky 
line of blue mountains, studded with sharp volcanic 
cones and cleft by deep canyons. 
THE PIEDMONT (LA BOCA COSTA) 
As one approaches the mountains, the gradient 
steepens, and the forest closes in more and more. 
There are immense trees having wide, buttressed 
‘bases and great, spreading branches matted with 
orchids and ferns, and hung with fine, rubbery lianas 
and aerial roots. Many of the massive trunks are 
gripped, Laocoonlike, by heavy twisted vines. Such 
a foreground as this frames the occasional glimpse 
of the verdant wall of foothills beyond, dominated by 
steep-sided, mist-shrouded blue volcanoes. The 
shaded air is cool and damp, smelling of rich, moldy 
earth, for plant life is lush. Bright-colored birds of 
infinite variety dart through the sheltering foliage. 
The Pacific versant here is ribbed with narrow 
ridges that divide innumerable straight, parallel rivu- 
lets, swift-flowing, sharply entrenched, often deep, 
so that in traveling along the piedmont one must 
be constantly ascending and descending at frequent 
intervals. This is what made journeying a series of 
“dangerous crossings” for Fray Alonso Ponce (16th 
century priest, the comisario general, who traveled 
through New Spain) and other early voyagers; it 
is what made railroad building, 300 years later, in 
places almost a matter of laying trestles end to end, 
and made maintenance a serious problem. 
Through the lower piedmont there are a number 
of small Indian settlements, some of them, as in an- 
cient times, colonies of Highland aborigines seeking 
to augment and diversify their agricultural returns 
(map 11). These settlements are strewn between the 
line of railroad towns, which are centers of supply 
for the coffee plantations above and the cattle ranches 
below. About the villages there are but few small, 
inferior remnants of the cacao groves that once cov- 
ered the region, the famous “mines”? of the Low- 
lands from Soconusco to Salvador. 
Higher up are the coffee plantations, or fincas, 
to which economic emphasis has shifted within the 
past 80 or 90 years. Here the natural forest has 
been thinned, leaving only enough trees to shade the 
neat rows of well-cleared coffee bushes. Along 
many of the rocky stream courses, however, the heavy 
monsoon forest remains as if in primeval state. Some 
humid slopes are covered by almost pure stands of 
giant treeferns (pl. 5, c). Rainfall is exceedingly 
heavy from April through November, and tempera- 
tures are warm all the year (map 6). 
Occasionally, a finca is adorned, as at Moca, by an 
artificial lake, bordered with tropical flowers and 
shrubs (pl. 5, b). The dark water now and again 
reflects the jerky flight of majestic serpent-necked 
egrets, startlingly white against the deep green wall 
of forested slopes and the towering blue cone of 
Atitlan. On most of the larger plantations, lawns 
and gardens, graced by treeferns and palms of many 
sorts, surround the clusters of large buildings which 
are the homes and administrative offices of the 
aristocratic planters of the boca costa. A short 
distance away .compact rows of little tin-roofed 
shacks (ranchos) house the Indian mozos, or la- 
borers, who clear and harvest the coffee. 
In certain sections, where secondary cones and 
foothills rise sharply above the bases of volcanoes, 
the lower piedmont is quite mountainous (pl. 46, f). 
As the ascent toward the Highlands progresses, the 
forested stream courses become deeper and wider, the 
clear waters tumbling in rapids and cataracts. 
2Cacao was the “money” of the Mayas and Aztecs, and certain 
early chroniclers referred to the groves as “mines.” Some of these 
were owned by Pipi! (Mexican) colonists, but most of them belonged 
to Highland Maya planters. The coast of Soconusco was especially 
famous for cacao. 
