CULTURAL AND HISTORICAL GEOGRAPHY OF SOUTHWEST GUATEMALA—McBRYDE 59 
flooded by sea water. There is thus a natural deposi- 
tion of salt by evaporation, especially during the 
dry season, with an admixture of silt brought down 
by the swollen streams of the Coastal Plain during 
the rainy season. 
There seems commonly to be a division of labor 
in saltmaking, as follows. A playero digs out the 
saline soil with a broad hoe. A silt cover may have 
to be stripped off first, and for this process a 12-foot 
pole, with a flat, wooden blade at the end, is em- 
ployed. The salty earth which is dug out is taken 
by the playeros to palm shelters built on strips of 
higher ground, not flooded during the rainy season, 
and there it is piled up and stored. It is then sup- 
plied as needed in sackfuls to the cocineros, who ex- 
tract the salt from the playa material. The apparatus 
employed is crude and simple, but effective. On 
each salina there are two old canoes of the type used 
in lagoon navigation. These are placed horizontally 
upon racks built of poles, one directly above the 
other. The lower, called the recibidora, is usually 
about 3 or 4 feet above the ground. The upper, the 
coladera (colander), is a little more than a foot 
higher; its bottom is perforated and covered with 
palm mats. A thick layer of sand is put in it as 
a filter, with playa salt crust spread over that. Water 
is carried to it, up a small ladder or ramp in a brace 
of buckets attached to a pole placed across the 
shoulders (pl. 1, d). 
When the lower canoe has been filled with water 
that is high in dissolved salt, leached from the 
coladera, the saline solution is transferred by buckets 
to an adjacent iron vat, about 414 feet wide, 7 feet 
long, and 2 feet deep. Fixed by mortar between 
two stone walls, this vessel is usually about 2 feet 
above the ground, so that firewood may be piled in 
under it. The brine in the vat is kept constantly 
boiling all day, at the end of which time a large 
amount of salt is deposited. 
A 16th-century manuscript describing Capotitlan 
(Anon, Ms. 1579, p. 21, f. 115) includes a passage 
on saltmaking at Xicalapa which might well have 
been written yesterday but for the small scale pro- 
duction. Jars were used (as at Sacapulas) instead 
of the large iron vats for cooking the brine. Other- 
wise, the 16th-century method is practically identical 
with present-day practice along the Pacific. That 
this boiling of brine may be a pre-Columbian tech- 
nique, at least in fundamental principle, may be con- 
cluded from certain comments made by early Spanish 
writers. Many of them described the process in 
minute detail, and remarked that the salt obtained in 
this manner was “more trouble than it was worth.” 
Not only is this seen in the 16th-century manuscript 
cited above but it may also be noted in Palacio’s 
Relacion of 1576, wherein the ‘costa de Guazacapan” 
is described (Mendizabal, 1929, pp. 149-150). 
Alonso Ponce’s companion describes the cooking 
of salt in Mexico (Atoyaque), and the molding of 
figurines of salt (Ponce, vol. 2, p. 121; Mendizabal, 
1929p: 137). 
Apparently, both methods of evaporating salt, by 
sun-drying and by cooking, were known in pre- 
Conquest time. Oviedo mentions cooked salt early 
in the 16th century (op. cit. vol. 1, p. 173). 
Mendizabal (1929, p. 188) concludes that the 
fire-evaporation technique was a later introduction 
by migrating agricultural peoples from the north, 
especially the Nahua. It is his belief that the 
“archaic” cultures knew only sun-evaporation of salt. 
I see no reason for doubting, however, that any cul- 
ture which knew cooking and had clay vessels may 
have evaporated salt with the aid of fire. Mendiza- 
bal discounts the possibility of any “constant relation- 
ship” between geographical possibilities and the 
systems of making salt, and attributes the general 
distribution of the two methods to cultural factors 
alone, except for such local environmental variables 
as firewood supply, amount of rainfall, etc. He fails 
to point out the big climatic factor of low annual 
rainfall along the west coast and in the interior of 
Mexico, also on the northwest tip of Yucatan, in all 
of which regions salt production was concen- 
trated in pre-Columbian time, as compared with 
the greater humidity of east coasts, along which 
there was a dearth of salinas. Any salt which is made 
in such regions of high rainfall must be cooked out. 
The reason why sun-evaporated salt as well as cooked 
salt is made along the west coast may well be that 
the relative humidity is not so high, local winds are 
well developed, and sunshine is relatively abundant 
and temperatures high; all of these are climatic fac- 
tors conducive to evaporation of sea water, especially 
during the dry season (November—April, inclusive). 
(For sun-dried-salt producing centers, see map 18.) 
Interior: Sacapulas—The production of salt at 
Sacapulas was perhaps first described in detail by 
Dollfus and Mont-Serrat in 1866 (1868, pp. 229-230), 
as follows: Briny water was collected in salt springs, 
artificially enlarged into circular basins about 114 m. 
in diameter. These were scattered irregularly over 
a plain next to the Chixoy River. By means of ditches 
