CULTURAL AND HISTORICAL GEOGRAPHY OF SOUTHWEST GUATEMALA—McBRYDE a) 
1930 indicates a fourfold increase in the number of 
Indians in these two countries since the time of the 
Conquest. On the same basis, his 1930 calculation 
for Guatemala is 2,000,000 Indians. This country 
contains by far the greatest concentration of “pure” 
Indians to be found anywhere in Central America 
today. 
Factors in the post-Conquest decline of the 
Indian population.—For the southwestern piedmont 
of Guatemala specifically, the 1579 description of 
Capotitlan lists the following causes of reported pop- 
ulation decline immediately following the Conquest : 
(1) Polygamy, practiced in pre-Columbian times, was 
forbidden by the Spanish. 
(2) Former living conditions of scattered populations 
were healthier than in insanitary towns into 
which Indians were forced by reducciones. 
(3) Indians have imitated the Spanish in going on 
long-distance trade and labor journeys, in which 
the “change of airs and waters” seems harmful; 
also, bathing after sweating from such labors. 
Indian numbers were much reduced by the Con- 
quest through battle casualties, executions, and exces- 
sive exploitations in quests for high-value resources, 
especially gold.* 
In those sections of Central America where gold 
was lacking there were disastrous results of exploita- 
tions of other ready sources of wealth. In the area 
of the modern Republic of El Salvador, where there 
has been much oppression of natives, the “gold” was 
cacao, as indicated by a letter from officials of the 
Audiencia de Guatemala to the Spanish King, April 
8, 1584, in which extraordinary depredations of the 
Indians of El Salvador (especially the Izalcos) are 
described in detail. With Spanish recognition of 
Aztec demands for cacao, the value of this com- 
modity more than trebled (as I calculated the new 
price, $13.50 to $15.00 per load of 24,000 beans), 
and certain Spanish planters near Sonsonate began 
intensive exploitation of the Indians. 
“They began to put pressure upon their Indians 
and to make them plant great groves [milpas] of 
cacao, making them work in them day and 
night they became very sick because of the 
humid and hot country thus many died and 
they went on dying because of. this new work” 
(Anon., Ms. 1584, p. 12). Palacio (1866, p. 15) says 
in 1576 of cacao production in El Salvador that “in 
the four places of the Izalcos alone’ more than 
50,000 cargoes of cacao beans, worth 50,000 gold 
*See Brinton (1885, pp. 177, 181, 183, 187, 189), regarding the 
futile search for gold in the volcanic Highlands of Guatemala. 
pesos on the market, were produced. The cultivated 
area was estimated at “2 leagues [8 km.] square,” or 
about 25 square miles. A cargo was three viguipiles, 
or 24,000 beans (a viquipil was 20 contles of 400 each, 
or 8,000). If this estimate is accurate, 1,200,000,000 
cacao beans were produced annually on an area of 
not over 30 square miles (p. 33). In the “Relacién 
de la Provincia i tierra de la Vera Paz” (Anon., Ms. 
1574 b, pp. 8-9, f. 96) there is an account of the losses 
through sickness and deaths among the Vera Paz 
Indians who went into the Pacific Lowlands. It is 
stated that Highland Indians could not go into the 
Lowlands beyond Tucurub toward the Golfo Dulce, 
because they would “quickly get sick and die.” Owing 
to this and to the deserted or “heathen”-infested lands 
in the vicinity, these Vera Paz Indians went to rent 
lands in Sonsonate, Soconusco, Chiquimula, and 
Zapotitlan, 8 to 12 days walking distance away. Here, 
too, many became sick and died. 
Velasco (1894, p. 302) says of Soconusco, about 
ASV Ale 
Although on the plain in the lower part of this province 
there are very good town-sites, the Indians inhabit the 
wooded slopes through their love of cacao, which yields 
best in country that is hilly, hot, and humid. The Indians of 
this province have declined greatly in number, due to the 
trials and tribulations associated with cacao cultivation: the 
2,000 Indians of this province produce 400 loads (24,000 
beans each) of cacao a year. 
Fray Alonso Ponce’s companions, in 1586, refer to 
the Soconusco lowlands as “el Despoblado,” a region 
of well-watered cattle pastures where there are no 
towns (Ponce, 1873, p. 294). (See maps 8 and 15.) 
Pineda (1908), writing about 1570, says of Istapa: 
The town of Ystapan is next to the Pacific ocean, half a 
league from the shore . . .; this town is very rich in cacao, 
there being many groves [munchas myllpas], with so much 
cacao that the Indians cannot process it, for, though it used 
to be a large town, it has declined greatly because of the 
numerous deaths, so that many groves had to be abandoned 
without anyone to harvest and process it. 
Diseases.—The ravages of diseases were extremely 
disastrous in Guatemala. Shattuck (1938) has 
described these in some detail, though he said little 
concerning the three great decimating epidemics of 
the 16th century, which were described in the 
Cakchiquel history (Brinton, 1885). The first of 
these occurred in 1523 (an oft-repeated accompani- 
ment of or prelude to the European impact, which 
here occurred in 1524), the second in 1559, the third 
in 1576. Though smallpox, the early occurrence of 
which in Mexico is well known (Carter, 1931, Ds 09; 
