page_title: Panajachel
section_title: Visit of archeologist Alfred P. Maudslay in 1892
hierarchical_section_title: Panajachel / History / Visit of archeologist Alfred P. Maudslay in 1892
caption_attribution_description: English: Esquipulas Pilgrims in Panajachel, Sololá, ready for a night ritual in 1895.
context_page_description: Panajachel is a town in the southwestern Guatemalan Highlands, less than 90 miles from Guatemala City, in the department of Sololá. It serves as the administrative centre for the surrounding municipality of the same name. The elevation is 1,597 metres. Population was 11 thousand in the 2000 census, estimated as 15,000 now, and has approximately doubled each of the last few decades. The town of Panajachel is located on the Northeast shore of Lake Atitlán, and has become a centre for the tourist trade of the area as it provides a base for visitors crossing the lake to visit other towns and villages.
  "Panajachel" derives from the Kaqchikel language and roughly translates to "place of the Matasanos," the white sapote fruit tree.
context_section_description: In 1892, British archeologist Alfred Percival Maudslay and his wife, Anne Maudslay, visited Panajachel during their long journey throughout Guatemala; their impressions were reported in their book A glimpse at Guatemala, published in 1899.   They arrived to the town after spending a night in San Antonio Palopó and a short trip of 12 km; Anne Maudslay described Panajachel location as this: «a little town standing on a rich alluvial plain formed by a swift stream which issues from a narrow cleft in the hills, and has spread out the earth in the shape of an open fan until it forms a mile of frontage to the Lake Atitlan.»
  By 1892, Panajachel people had already built numerous irrigation canals which had altered the normal stream bed to work on orchards, gardens and coffee plantations at the delta area.  Nevertheless, the channels were insufficient to protect the town infrastructure against flooding, which occurred once in a while; in fact, several years prior to the visit of the Maudslays, there had been a large flood that destroyed several houses and left the town isolated.  The town itself was not that interesting to the visitors, but their surroundings were marvelous: the volcanos, mountains and Lake Atitlan, whose green forests contrasted with the bare hills that surrounded Panajachel.  Life in town seemed monotonous to Anne Maudslay, especially that of women who seemed to have the same day every day, grinding corn to make tortillas and leaning over the stream shore to wash their family clothes.  Only those women that sold their produce in the central plaza market in the morning had a slightly different routine.
  While in Panajachel, the visitors witnessed a religious ceremony by numerous pilgrims that were returning from visiting Esquipulas; pilgrims gathered in the central plaza that night around fires that they set for their food, and once they were done with their supper, they placed petates -native Guatemalan mats- on the floor in a line that crossed the plaza.  Each one of them grabbed a small wooden box where they produced a small Catholic saint sculpture, leaving that of the Esquipulas Black Christ, in the center. Once the preparations were ready, they began the ritual by cradling from one mat to the next, always on their knees and pressing their forehead against the floor in front of each saint; every man did this for several times and in the end, they all gathered around the Black Christ and sang a hymn for about thirty minutes; once done, gathered their belongings and went to sleep on the plaza floor. Anne Maudslay tells in her book that even though this seemed like a Catholic ritual, it was, in fact, a Mayan one; several priests that they found during their journey told them that they were not sure that the natives had really absorbed the Catholic faith that the conquistadors tried to instill in them for centuries.
caption: Panajachel natives getting ready for a maya ceremony in honor of the Catholic Cristo Negro of Esquipulas in 1892.  Photograph by Alfred Percival Maudslay.[7]
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