K'iche' maya villages

I entered the Maya highlands alright, and the road went from 300 meter to 1500 to 2150 meter. And then back down to 1200 again. The Spanish once wanted to capture the Cuchumatanes, as it is called here, hoping to find gold and other treasures, but they didn't manage to capture everything here due to the very difficult terrain (and I can't blame them). Also, there were a few smaller Maya clans, the Ixil and Uspantek Maya, who were frequently, quoting Wikipedia, "harassing" the Spanish, which led the Spanish to want to capture both of these territories; the Uspantek lived in (and around, I guess) a town called Uspantán. When the spanish tried taking Uspantán, they were ambushed from the rear by the Mayans, routing the Spanish. It took another year and a long battle for the Spanish to finally capture both the Ixil and Uspantek Mayans.

Also worth mentioning is the faith of these Maya villages in the civil war: government forces considered the Mayas to be part of the guerilla movement and targeted the villages purposefully. Then, in the 80s, came "Operation Sophia", targeted at ending guerilla warfare. What happened is that (U.S. backed) government forces of Guatamala committed genocide on the indigenous Mayans in a lot of these small villages, most notably (if I have it correctly) on the Ixil, and killed around 200.000 people and destroyed 626 villages across Guatemala. (This genocide is what I also mentioned in an earlier footprint, about Nueva Horizonte, but that was Petén.)

Nevertheless, both Ixil and Uspantek belong to the Quiché department, or k'iche'. I didn't visit the Ixil — one or two mountains too far— but did end up in Uspantán, which lies up a long climb starting at 620 and ending at 1800 meters. And I had a surprise waiting for me on Friday the 3rd, when I had planned to continue on to Sacapulas (another small Maya town). Well, two surprises, as on Thursday I learned about the platana drink, which is made from plantains. But the bigger one was on Friday: Viernes Santo, or good Friday! (I am not keeping track of the calendar properly...). I had heard of there being parades worth seeing on this day, and they put up very delicate, very long, very beautiful "carpets" all through the town. And as far as I know, overnight(!), because I didn't see them on Thursday evening.

So I waited for the procession, had some hot chocolate, and sure enough they started carrying the cross and Jesus all around town, accompanied by (not too in-tune) music and incense. Insanely impressive how much work went into the carpets, and for how long they were carrying that heavy Jesus grave around town.

Then, while cycling, I saw the same thing in small villages on the way, and in the smallest of villages they even constructed these carpet artworks on the roads. In the evening in Sacapulas there was another procession, without carpets, and I don't know enough about Christianity to know if this was a different one or not. I had a quick look, and online there are large descriptions of all the different processions they do throughout the week in Antigua, so I am sure I missed out on some important details.

I am now on the way onto the capital of the El Quiché department, Santa Cruz del Quiché, but since I already had enough material for this footprint I will wrap the K'Iche' story up for now. Next up should be the Chichicastengo market.Read more