CULTURAL AND HISTORICAL GEOGRAPHY OF SOUTHWEST GUATEMALA—McBRYDE 99 
It is a crossroad location where Lake routes and land 
routes converge,!*® giving accessibility to a great 
variety of products. To the north are elevated fields 
of wheat, vetch, beans, apples, peaches, and potatoes 
in abundance; gardens of onions and cold-land vege- 
tables ; wool and cotton looms; limekilns ; products of 
potter and carpenter. To the south are Lowland 
sugar and coffee plantations (the Lake coffee is 
limited in amount, though of high quality) ; tropical 
fruits of every description, especially pineapples, 
zapotes, and nances; rice, cotton, cacao, salt, chile, 
achiote :(anotto), palm flowers and leaves, fish, 
shrimp, caymans, and iguanas. The Lake shores 
furnish superior avocados, beans, oranges, limes, 
tomatoes, sugarcane, garlic, jocotes 
(Spondias sp.), crabs, small fish, ropes, anise, and 
chickpeas. 
matasanos, 
In such a setting it is understandable that the Ati- 
tecos should have become middlemen and professional 
translake navigators on a small scale. They have fine 
timber in the mountains on their west, a partly shal- 
low, sheltered bay, with numerous minor indenta- 
tions, and corn lands beyond,® which most men 
visit only by canoe. Under these conditions, skill 
in handling boats is readily acquired from boy- 
hood. The fleet of fine dugout canoes in Santiago 
numbered about 250 in 1936, more than 10 times 
those of the Santa Catarina fishermen, whereas nearly 
all the other villages have but 4 or 5 each. Most of the 
Lake canoes are made in Santiago, and a few in San 
Pedro, the only other place on the Lake. Twenty or 
30, and during peak harvest even 80, dugouts daily 
break the early morning stillness of Santiago Bay, 
with one, sometimes two or four, white-shirted Atite- 
cos in each, paddling briskly across from Santiago 
southwestward to the opposite shore a mile or so 
away. They arrive in about 20 minutes, and walk to 
their milpas on the slopes of San Pedro volcano. 
For crossing the bay they employ small canoes, 
whose average length is 4% varas (12 ft.). Much 
larger ones are used in going across the Lake, a 
149 Main land routes: ‘Trail from San Pedro and San Juan in the 
west; trail from Cerro de Oro, San Lucas, Patztim, Tecpan in the east; 
chief water route, for launches and canoes (mostly of Santiago) from 
Panajachel in the north, transporting some 200-300 merchants per week 
(especially on Saturday for Sunday coastal markets), mainly from 
Solola and Chichicastenango, going to Chicacao and the fincas. 
150 Tt is the combination of the last two factors which may explain why 
the Atitecos, and not the Luquefios (San Lucas natives), became the 
chief navigators and carriers, hence, the merchants of the Lake; for 
San Lucas, on an even easier pass route, is without the large bay and 
has less extensive arable lands (map 20; pl. 46, d, e). 
9-mile trip from Santiago to Panajachel, made in 
about 4 hours. The gunwales of the canoes are built 
higher with heavy 12- to 15-inch boards that are 
nailed on (hence, probably a Spanish rather than 
pre-Columbian trait) as a protection against waves. 
The Lake crossing is made early in the morning 
(usually 4 to 8 a.m.) to avoid the heavy waves that 
come with the south wind, beginning about 8:30 a.m. 
Two large pegs extending from the stern of a canoe 
(part of the original log) serve as handles for lifting 
the boat in beaching it. There is often a handle at 
the prow also (pl. 24, a-e; see also Lothrop, 1929 a). 
The mail carriers (called pescadores) of Santiago 
are municipal paddlers, usually four to six, who pro- 
vide a daily crossing for passengers, landing in Pana- 
jachel and walking to Solola. Men, women, and 
children with cargoes of every description, including 
pigs, are thus ferried across.1°! Their largest canoe, 
“La Capoj Tzutuhil,” is owned by the municipio, 
and is the pride of the fleet ; it is 33 feet long by 3%4 
feet wide, and carries usually 16 passengers, in addi- 
tion to 4 pescadores, who were getting 8 cents (asking 
10) for the crossing. The Atitecos are expert boat- 
men, usually the best on the Lake, and they invariably 
win the annual Lake Atitlan regatta. The Santa 
Catarina fishermen are possibly as expert as Atitecos 
at maneuvering small canoes, such as the ones in 
which they have spent so much of their time in 
fishing and crabbing. 
Santiago village is almost in the geographic center 
of the best milpa lands of the upper municipio, rarely 
over a league and a half (though much may be steep 
The largest nearly 
level plain, and the only such area of milpa close to 
climbing) from any of them. 
Lake elevation, is that composed of alluvium from 
the eastern volcanoes, in the canton called ‘El Plan,” 
over 4 sq. km. in extent, just south of the village. It 
is little over a league from the center of Santiago to 
the main firewood supply, across the south ridge 
(caldera escarpment) on the timbered Pacific slope. 
There is another source somewhat farther away, west 
of the village, across the bay, on the slopes of San 
Pedro volcano, and on the north face of the scarp 
(see map 20 and pl. 47). 
151 Like all the Lake dwellers except Santa Catarina men and some 
Pedranos, few Atitecos can swim, and the occasional upsets of small 
canoes in the heavy waves usually result in drownings. The American 
engineers (Intercontinental Railway Commission Survey, 1898, p. 81) 
tell of a terrific battle with a norther, which their Atitlan paddlers 
weathered successfully. 
