CULTURAL AND HISTORICAL GEOGRAPHY OF SOUTHWEST GUATEMALA—McBRYDE & 
of Cubulco, Rabinal, and Salama. Some of these 
cattle are taken by Quichelenos from Chiché to 
Santo Tomas la Union and other piedmont mar- 
kets. Indians from as far away as the Lake villages 
and occasionally the Lowlands go to Chiché to buy 
cattle, usually not over 1 or 2 at a time. A few 
cows, bulls, and oxen are sold at San Francisco every 
Friday. 
Horses and mules——Horses and mules are even 
rarer than cattle in the regular weekly markets. At 
Chiché they are as numerous as cattle, about 100 
per week being sold by 40 or 50 vendors. At San 
Francisco el Alto only a few appear in the market, 
coming mostly from Huehuetenango. Until about 
1925, I was told, horses and mules were brought 
from Chiapas, Mexico, especially the Comitan area. 
The “Feria’.—The livestock market, usually re- 
ferred to as the “feria,” is almost always separate 
from the rest of the plaza, often as much as 100 
yards away, in a fenced or walled enclosure. Ex- 
cept for those in the towns mentioned above, most 
of the markets have no weekly feria for large animals. 
Solola has no Friday feria at all, for example, while 
Huehuetenango, with a big daily market, has a feria 
only on Sunday, at the Temple of Minerva, classical 
relic of the Estrada Cabrera regime. Not over 100 
little pigs and 25 large ones are sold there weekly. 
At San Juan Ostuncalco, chickens and turkeys are 
also sold in the Sunday feria, by 75 to 100 women, 
local and from all the adjoining municipios. At most 
markets, fowl are scattered through the produce sec- 
tion, sold by local women, who have one or two 
each, as at Solola (pl. 13, b).» At Chichicastenango 
there is a row of about 2 dozen women selling chick- 
ens and turkeys in the regular market (map 25). At 
Chiché there is a similar row, but the women come 
from Patzité. 
Fairs —Livestock are sold mostly at special fairs 
which occur once, twice, or three times a year at any 
one place. Besides the celebration for the patron 
saint, there are big fairs lasting several days during 
Passion Week (preceding Palm Sunday), and again 
August 15-19, accompanying the Feast of the As- 
sumption. There is a national fair at Guatemala 
City held in November. All commercial activity 
during fairs is increased twofold or threefold per day 
above a normal weekly market day, and the livestock 
feria shows a more extraordinary development than 
almost any other section. Solola, for example, has 
a feria during the pre-Easter fair, at the Temple 
of Minerva, where hundreds of animals of all types 
mentioned above, large and small, are sold (pl. 
13, c). Many of them are brought from distant 
regions, especially the cattle from eastern Guatemala 
(see McBryde, 1933, pp. 119-123). At the weekly 
Solola market, only a few pigs, sheep, and goats are 
sold. 
Sheep are most important for wool, black and 
white, and are relatively little used for meat. Pigs 
provide meat in many forms, and also fat for most 
of the soap. Cattle are raised primarily for beef, 
little milk being consumed. The fat is used for soap 
and candles (see p. 70). In addition to the little 
butcher shops scattered through the villages and 
towns, there are a number of meat stalls also in the 
markets. Here butchers, generally local men, handle 
only beef, while local women with screened boxes 
sell beef, sometimes combined with pork or mutton 
(see map 24). Sausage and crackling are sold sepa- 
rately. Meat vendors may travel some distance to 
market, especially during fairs. Nearly all meat 
consumed in the region is fresh, with very little 
salted or jerked. Butchering is no fine art, and meat 
is generally cut into irregular chunks with little 
thought of the animal’s anatomy. At Panajachel in 
1936, when three butchers rotated, slaughtering a 
bull only when another had sold out, all cuts of 
meat were the same price, 6 cents a pound. 
FISH, REPTILES, AND WILD GAME 
(Map 13) 
Besides livestock and poultry, the only live animals 
generally sold in the markets are iguanas, large, 
fierce-looking lizards, which are considered a delicacy 
(see p. 39; pls. 12, e; 13, a) and lake crabs (pp. 120, 
124). During Lent there is a great demand for 
iguanas, which are caught only during their laying 
season, about January 15 to March 15, and salt fish, 
which is brought mostly from Tapachula, Mexico, 
and is sold in great quantities throughout Highland 
markets during the Lenten season. As many as 40 or 
50 men, mostly from Totonicapan and Quezaltenango 
some also from Chichicastenango, sell large stacks of 
salt fish daily in Solola during the pre-Easter fair. 
Throughout the Lenten season, 6 to 10 or more such 
vendors may be seen in almost any of the larger 
Highland markets, with salt fish brought on mules 
from Tapachula. For the rest of the year, salt fish 
is scarcely ever to be seen in the Highlands. 
Smoked venison, gars impaled upon sections of 
cane, and other large smoked fish, besides salt fish, are 
