Lago de Atitlán
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(Lake Atitlán) Lago de Atitlán is a large lake in the Guatemalan Highlands. At 320 meters deep, it is the deepest lake in Central America. It is surrounded by volcanoes and towns and villages of the Maya people.
The lake is volcanic in origin, filling an enormous caldera formed in an eruption 84,000 years ago. It is renowned as one of the most beautiful lakes in the world, and Aldous Huxley famously wrote of it: "Lake Como, it seems to me, touches on the limit of permissibly picturesque, but Atitlán is Como with additional embellishments of several immense volcanoes. It really is too much of a good thing."
The forests surrounding the lake are an important habitat of the Guatemalan national bird, the Resplendent Quetzal. The lake surroundings also support extensive plantations, with communities harvesting coffee, rubber, sugar cane, macadamia, tea, bananas and lumber.
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[edit] Geological history
The region first saw volcanic activity about 11 million years ago, and since then has seen four separate episodes of volcanic growth and caldera collapse, the most recent of which began about 1.8 million years ago and culminated in the formation of the present caldera. The lake now fills a large part of the caldera, reaching depths of up to 600 metres.
The caldera-forming eruption is known as Los Chocoyos eruption, and ejected up to 300 km³ of tephra. The enormous eruption dispersed ash over an area of some 6 million km²: it has been detected from Florida to Ecuador, and can be used as a stratigraphic marker in both the Pacific and Atlantic oceans. A chocoyo is a type of bird which is often found nesting in the relatively soft ash layer.
Since the end of Los Chocoyos, continuing volcanism has built three volcanoes in the caldera. Volcán Atitlán lies on the northern rim of the caldera, while Volcán San Pedro and Volcán Tolimán lie within the caldera. San Pedro is the oldest of the three and seems to have stopped erupting about 40,000 years ago. Tolimán began growing after San Pedro stopped erupting, and probably remains active, although it has not erupted in historic times. Atitlán has grown almost entirely in the last 10,000 years, and remains active, with its most recent eruption having occurred in 1853.
On February 4, 1976 a massive earthquake (magnitude 7.5) struck Guatemala killing more than 26,000 people. The earthquake fractured the lake bed causing subsurface drainage from the lake, allowing the water level to drop two meters within one month.
[edit] Ecological history
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In 1955 the area around Lago de Atitlán became a national park. The lake was mostly unknown to the rest of the world and Guatemala was seeking ways to increase tourism and boost the local economy. It was suggested by Pan American World Airways that stocking the lake with a fish prized by anglers would be a way to do just that. So, a non-native species, the black bass was introduced into the lake in 1958. The bass quickly took to its new home and began eating the native inhabitants of the lake. The predatory bass caused the elimination of more than two-thirds of the native fish species in the lake and contributed to the extinction of the giant grebe, a rare bird that lived only around the Lago de Atitlán region.
[edit] Culture
The lake is surrounded by many villages, in which Maya culture is still prevalent and traditional dress is worn. The Maya people of Atitlán are predominantly Tz'utujil and Kaqchikel. During the Spanish conquest of the Americas, the Kaqchikel initially allied themselves with the invaders to defeat their historic enemies the Tz'utujil and Quiché Maya, but were themselves conquered and subdued when they refused to pay tribute to the Spanish.
Santiago Atitlán is the best known of the lakeside villages, and is noted for its worship of Maximón, an idol formed by the fusion of traditional Mayan saints, Catholic saints and conquistador legends. An effigy of Maximón resides in a different house each year, being moved in a grand procession during Semana Santa. Several towns in Guatemala have similar cults, most notably the cult of San Simón in Zuníl.
While Maya culture is very prominent in many lakeside towns, the largest town on the shores, Panajachel, has been overwhelmed over the years by tourists. It attracted many hippies in the 1960s, and although the war caused many foreigners to leave, the end of hostilities in 1996 saw visitor numbers boom again, and the town is entirely reliant on tourism today.
[edit] Guatemalan Civil War
During the Guatemalan civil war, the lake was the scene of many terrible human rights abuses, as the government pursued a scorched earth policy. Indigenous people were assumed to be universally supporters of the guerrillas who were fighting against the government, and were targeted for brutal reprisals. At least 300 Maya from Santiago Atitlán are believed to have disappeared during the conflict. Two events of this era made international news. One was the assassination of Stanley Rother, a missionary from Oklahoma, in the church at Santiago Atitlán in 1981. In 1990, a spontaneous protest march to the army base on the edge of town was met by gunfire, resulting in the death of 13 unarmed civilians. International pressure forced the Guatemalan government to close the base and declare Santiago Atitlán a "military-free zone." The memorial commemorating the massacre was damaged in the 2005 mudslide.
[edit] Hurricane
Heavy rains from Hurricane Stan caused extensive damage throughout Guatemala in early October 2005, particularly around Lake Atitlán. A massive landslide buried the lakeside village of Panabaj, causing the death of as many as 1400 residents and leaving 5,000 homeless.
Since then roads have been reopened and travel to the region has returned to normal.
[edit] References
- Vallance J.W., Calvert A.T. (2003), Volcanism during the past 84 ka at Atitlan caldera, Guatemala, American Geophysical Union, Fall Meeting 2003
- Guatemala Volcanoes and Volcanics (United States Geological Survey)
- Kingery, Dennis (2003), Improving on Nature?, National Center for Case Study Teaching in Science
[edit] External links
- VolcanoWorld information
- Details of geological history
- Lago de Atitlán by Eve Andersson
- Lago de Atitlán and Panajachel
- Time Magazine article
