A Bit About Landslides

Note to readers: I wrote this entry at home this morning. This afternoon on my way down to the city, we were stuck waiting for an hour and a half and they worked to clear a landslide from the highway...

Now that the threat of Hurricane Dean has long passed, I am going to explain to you all a bit more about Guatemala’s vulnerability to hurricanes and tropical storms. Guatemala has a very short Atlantic coastline, which is not heavily populated. It is not the wind of a powerful storm making landfall that we are afraid of, but the heavy rainfall we will receive if the tail end of a storm stalls out over us.

There have been two major disasters here in the past ten years: Hurricane Mitch (1998) and Tropical Storm Stan (2005). In both cases, large amounts of rainfall received after the storm had already weakened considerably provoked flooding and landslides. In my municipality, three villages (including the one I now live in) were forced to relocate after Mitch, and another eight or so moved after (in reality, during) Stan.

Why is Guatemala so vulnerable? A number of factors are at play. The country is located at the nexus of three tectonic plates. This creates a very mountainous landscape with a lot of steep slopes and very little flat ground. It also produces a good deal of volcanic activity, and the volcanic soils that now cover most of the country tend to break away and slide much more easily than non-volcanic soils. Land use also plays an important role. The primarily indigenous campesino population of the country had all the good land and resources stolen from them long, long ago, forcing them to eke out a living from the mountains and forest. Deforestation is very prominent, to exploit the forest resources and to clear land for subsistence farming. Deforested slopes are much more prone to slide than slopes covered with trees.

It is this combination of natural and human factors that create a high vulnerability to landslides, particularly here in the Western Highlands of Guatemala. Every time it rains a lot, people worry about what might happen. The relocated villages are no longer in danger here in Ixtahuacán, but there are still over a dozen other villages in areas of high risk, as well as some folks that never left the old towns.

I’ll share with you the story of Stan from Don Francisco, a Mayan elder from the village of Xolja II. The old village of Xolja was located deep in the mountains at the foot of a sloped that climbed several hundred vertical meters above the town and is totally cleared of forest (see below). The townspeople thought it strange that it would rain so hard for more than one day, and most stayed in their houses. It was the second or third night of the storm when the people began to hear the sounds of landslides coming from the mountain above them. Don Francisco said it sounded like the howling of the devil; Don Jacinto described it as the sound of a freight train. Francisco ran out of his house to see what was happening. He immediately sank into the mud up to his thighs. He saw a river of trees and stones passing by. He then was surprised to see the house of his father whiz by, still intact!

The people of Xolja met and decided to flee to the mountaintops above in Alaska. They grabbed what they could carry and left at daybreak. Small streams had turned into raging rivers and the journey was very dangerous and difficult. A woman had to give birth on the way. Finally they arrived in Alaska, but the hardship was just beginning. They did not have clothes suited to the frigid climate of the mountaintop; everything was soaked. They built shelter, first with cloth and tarp, and later with corrugated metal láminas. Help came first from neighboring villages, and later as word of their suffering spread domestic and international NGOs arrived as well. Two years later almost all those people have houses of cinderblock, latrines, and schools. Potable water projects and electrification are taking longer to complete. The climate of the new towns is difficult: cold, cloudy, and dusty. Everyone suffers from a lot of respiratory problems, and sanitation is difficult without reliable water sources. But the people seem to think that ultimately their lives will be better in the new communities and don’t regret the move. They feel much safer as we pass through another rainy season.

Currently I am working in three of the new communities, though I am trying to get a foothold in a group of four more. The history of the construction of each community is distinct, as well as the NGOs that are working there currently and the pending needs for projects, so I am taking my time trying to get to know people and the language. As many of these towns relocated from roadless areas of the mountains, Spanish speakers are rare and it is clear I will need to improve my K’iche if I want to collaborate with a broad group of villagers, including women.

Playing with the kids in Nuevo Chuicutama.

A little friend wishing me off as I leave the school.

I’ll keep my readers up-to-date as projects develop and if there is a way that people can support the work. Be well!

Hurricane Dean, apparently the most powerful hurricane to make landfall in nearly 15 years, passed far to the north of Guatemala, wreaking havoc in the Yucatán peninsula of México. Peace Corps pulled us out of our towns and put us up in a hotel for a couple days, “just to be safe”. Less rain fell in those two days than normal…I was a little embarrassed when I returned, but most of my friends and colleagues here already know that Peace Corps has a million and one seemingly incomprehensible rules and regulations.

Last night I attended a rock concert in the big communal hall here in town. The first two bands didn’t excite me too much, but when Kab’awil came on the room was transformed. Kab’awil is our home town rock band here in Ixtahuacán. They sing in K’iche, use traditional instruments alongside electric guitar and bass, and send a powerful message to youth with their music: embrace traditional Mayan values, work hard for the future of our community and our country, and fight injustice wherever you see it. The show was a lot of fun. Imagine 150 teenagers, mostly guys, dancing like they would never get another opportunity in their lives. And while they favored a ´Mosh´ approach to the dancefloor, crashing into each other like bumpercars, when the marimba player started a traditional song they all lined up to perform the corresponding traditional dance. Wow!

The still unfinished Catholic Church at sunset on a clear afternoon.

I went for a really long bike ride in the mountains a couple of weeks ago. I went a good fifteen or twenty miles (20-30 km) away from the highway, farther than I had previously ventured. Judging from the looks I got from the villagers, they don´t see gringos on bikes out there to often...I´m guessing it was the first time. I dropped deep into a valley, and the climb back up to the peak was exhausting, but I was rewarded with this view of the volcanoes peeking up through the clouds.

New Baby

The newest member of the family, baby Francisco, in his grandmother's arms.

The Latest News

Greetings to all! Hope all is well, and that those reading from the North are enjoying a good summer.

To the left is an image from my “morning commute”. I am working with four primary schools on Environmental Education—one is here in town but the other three are a good forty five minute bike ride up a mountainous gravel road. It is frequently clear early in the morning when I am headed out, so I am rewarded with spectacular views, an advantage of life at high altitude.

I am sitting in my room in Ixtahuacán writing this entry on my new computer. While I could do my job without it, I decided I would be more effective and professional with a computer, so I bought one and had a friend bring it down from the States. Peace Corps is not what it was in the Sixties—or the Nineties, for that matter. I need a cell phone and the Internet in order to do my job. Volunteers today are generally somewhat connected with friends and family back home in the States. On the other hand, some things don’t change. Some of my students have no shoes. I am served coffee in dirt-floored huts. There is no indoor plumbing. I no longer take notice of such things, but if I think about it I can see the web of a thousand details that make my life entirely different here than it ever was in North America.

As I type my ‘host mother’, Martina, is in the house out back, in labor. It will be her fifth child. I am excited to have a baby in the house. It may sound like a lot of kids, but the Mayans are scaling down the size of their families. Martina herself is one of thirteen children. I’ll get a photo of the little whippersnapper up here as soon as possible.

Rosa is making tortillas with her daughter Pascuala, grandson Dylan riding high. This is how Mayan women carry babies.

Here is my house. It was built by international NGOs in 1999 along with the rest of the town, and you can see their seal by the door. It’s cozy. There is electricity but no indoor plumbing, though the pila (a big concrete sink) is right out back in the patio. I have a little gas stove and a toaster oven in my room, so I can cook tasty food.

Lee Tuuj

The tuuj, or temascal in Spanish, is a Mayan vapor bath. Though traditionally built from adobe, the tuuj is now generally constructed from cinder block, as are most Guatemalan houses. A fire is lit inside the tuuj to heat it early in the day. The fire is built under a pile of stones just like in a Finnish sauna, and a vat of bathing water is nestled in alongside.

Once the fire burns down to coals the bather crawls in and sits on the bench in the back. One can cast water on the stones to create steam, and there is plenty of hot and cold water for bathing. A curtain (which doesn’t appear in the pictures) hangs across the doorway to keep in the heat and steam.

















I do not take showers or bucket baths here, only the tuuj. We usually light it twice a week, though we have been lighting it every day since the arrival of baby Francisco, as a woman must take a steam bath daily for ten days after giving birth. It is wonderful to crawl in there on a cold rainy night, steam searing the nostrils with every breath.