THE PLACE AND THE PEOPLE 



The Panajachol delta has an altitude above sea 

 level of from 5,100 feet (the altitude of the lake) 

 to about 5,200 feet. The climate is mild, the tem- 

 perature rarely falling below 50° F. or rising above 

 80°. The mean temperature is remarkably con- 

 stant throughout the year, varying only between 

 64° and 67.5° F. The diurnal range varies, how- 

 ever, with the wet and dry seasons, from about 30° 

 in January to about 16° in June. The afternoon 

 temperatures during the dry season are consider- 

 ably warmer than during the rainy season. There 

 is some rain in the dry season, and there are many 

 days without rain in the rainy season; but it may 

 be said that from the beginning of May to the end 

 of October it rains heavily for a few hours each 

 day, and during the remainder of the year it almost 

 never rains. 



In the rainy season outside work is often im- 

 possible for days at a time, and the Indians save 

 many inside jobs for these months. Sickness is 

 then much more prevalent. It is difficult to go 

 to market and to earn wages, just when the basic 

 breadstuff, maize, is scarcest and must be bought 

 at high prices. The river is high and impossible 

 to cross sometimes for days, and there is always 

 the danger of its overrunning and destroying one's 

 land and house. 



The river, from which flow almost all the irriga- 

 tion ditches, is a narrow stream in the dry season; 

 but when it rains in the hills above, it becomes a 

 raging brown torrent carrying rocks and branches 

 and other debris down to the lake. At such times 

 the stream divides into three or four channels, 

 changing its entire course in a moment and, run- 

 ning along the banks, undermines and erodes the 

 fertile soil of the edges. Each summer hundreds 

 or even thousands of square feet of good agricul- 

 tural soil are washed into the river bed.^ Houses 

 have been destroyed, and families, losing all their 

 land, have been forced to borrow shelter or become 

 laborers on the coast. How long this condition 

 has prevailed I do not know, but the Indians have 

 a legend to the effect that the river has been on a 

 rampage since a deposed priest vengefully buried 

 a figure of Christ somewhere near its source.' 



It would be arbitrary to divide the municipio 

 into m-ban and rural sections. The delta is 

 inhabited; the hills are not. In the delta a small 

 area laid out in streets contains the municipal 

 bxiildings, the church, and the market place. It 

 might be called the town, but since officially and 



otherwise the whole delta is so designated, it 

 would be better to call it the town center. Over 

 the rest of the delta the people live rather evenly 

 dispersed, irregularly among the coffee fields and 

 the garden plots (map 3). The town center is on 

 the west bank of the river relatively near the apex 

 of the delta. Most of the outlying area extends 

 therefore to the south. The most strictly Indian 

 portion, where most of the pure Panajachel 

 Indians have their homes and fields, is on the other 

 side of the river where they live almost to the 

 exclusion of others. The town center, or west 

 side of the river, is occupied largely by Ladinos 

 and by Indians inunigrant from other towns. It 

 also contains such extraneous elements as hotels 

 and country homes of wealthy Guatemalans and 

 foreigners, for the most part along the lake shore 

 between the river and the west edge of the delta. 

 The Ladinos tend to live close to the town center; 

 the wealthier, the closer. This is general Guate- 

 malan custom, although in Panajachel the arrange- 

 ment seems to be breaking down because of the 

 development of a "gold coast" section along the 

 lake shore. 



In the immediate town center there is almost no 

 cultivated land except the patio flower gardens. 

 But in the remainder of the delta it may be said 

 that the land is primarily devoted to crops, the 

 dwellings occupying only small pieces surrounded 

 by fields and orchards. In fact the houses are so 

 often hidden by surrounding vegetation that a first 

 attempt at mapping missed more than half of 

 them. 



The automobde highway from Guatemala City 

 crosses the river from the east about a mile and a 

 half above the town center, runs south through 

 town and then west to the southwest corner of the 

 delta, whence it climbs steeply to Solol^ and points 

 north and west. In the delta it is a broad and 

 straight road, unsiu-faced except for cobblestones 

 in the center of town. The other wide roads shown 



1 Of a half-acre piece of land used tor an esperimental cornfield in 193R, for 

 example, the river washed away in that one season at least 200 square feet. 



' A rival story has it that when sugarcane was introduced in Panajachel, 

 jealous canegrowers of another town (San Martin Jilotepeque) caused the 

 river to become wild. The Maudslays visited Panajachel in 1894 and write, 

 "There are times during the wet season when the sudden increase in the vol- 

 ume of water threatens the safety of the to%vn, and we were told that not 

 many years ago an inundation caused great damage, washmg away some of 

 the houses, and cutting ofl the townspeople from all outside communication" 

 (Maudslay, 1899. p. 57). The photograph of Panajachel published by the 

 Maudslays in 1899 shows that at the time of their visit the river had a quite 

 different course from when McBryde photographed the delta in the early 

 thirties. The reader is referred to McBryde's excellent photographs, 

 published in 1947, for a general picture as well as for this comparison. 



