- [David] In the United States, about once every 50 years, we have a volcanic eruption and every 20 years or so, a damaging earthquake.

In Guatemala, people live and die in the shadow of volcanoes.

Eruptions are constantly occurring and earthquakes are always a threat, always.

(gentle rhythmic music) - [Announcer] Funding for In the Americas with David Yetman was provided by Agnes Haury.

Funding for In the Americas with David Yetman was also provided by the Guilford Fund.

(gentle rhythmic music) (energetic cheerful music) (cheerful upbeat music) - Volcanoes destroy.

They spew out hot steam, hot ashes, pyroclastic flows, lava.

They wipe out entire towns, but volcanoes also create.

They create craters, they create fertile soil and they create landscapes that, sooner or later, people occupy.

Nowhere in the world is this more obvious than in the Southern part of the nation of Guatemala.

There are 33 major volcanoes in Guatemala because it's on the edge of the Rim of Fire that goes around the entire Pacific Ocean.

Nine of those 33 volcanoes are active.

One example of the gift of volcanoes is a lake and a deep crater, 1,000 foot deep crater that was left 85,000 years ago.

It's called Lake Atitlan and most people view it as the loveliest lake in the world.

Lake Atitlan is roughly five miles wide and 11 miles long.

Right now, there are 350,000 people that live in the outskirts of the lake.

It is one of the two main attractions in all the Republic of Guatemala.

(upbeat cheerful music) Heading for the town of San Juan La Laguna, Saint Johns on the Lake and we are going to prepare and eat a traditional Lake Atitlan meal.

Lake Atitlan is not going to experience an explosion underneath.

The volcano that created it is extinct and there are 14 towns and villages, some of them pretty good size, around the lake and until recent years, they were accessible only by boat or footpath, but now most of them you can get to by vehicle.

The volcanic activity is not, by any means, over.

Back about 150 years ago, the Atitlan Volcano erupted and caused quite a bit of damage here.

It didn't really change the nature of the lake.

The crater is a result of an explosion very similar to Crater Lake in the United States.

That was about 85,000 years ago and the amount of material that blew out of here would have changed the Earth's climate for 10 years or so.

So today we get the advantage of this immense lake, 1,000 feet deep and it actually rises and falls depending on how much rainfall there is in the area.

(gentle cheery music) Catholic missionaries arrived in the Lake Atitlan area before the year 1600 and very quickly began evangelizing around the lake.

They named 12 of the towns after the apostles.

Here, in San Juan La Laguna, they built a church.

What we see here probably has nothing to do with the original, but the facade, perhaps 200 years old, is all that remains of the church that was built at that time.

The builders have kept the facade and then built a new church immediately behind it to preserve the tradition.

It's a combination of indigenous, Catholic, modern and ancient.

(gentle cheerful music) (woman speaking Spanish) - [Translator] We work together with the community library which is called We-hat-su-nawa.

Because it is an innovative library, they try to involve as many families as possible to preserve the traditions of our culture.

(woman speaking Spanish) This is a tradition that has been improved.

Before, our grandparents would use three rocks and then place a griddle like we did here.

Three rocks, the griddle and then one cooks around it.

We try to take advantage of all the fire available for everything we use.

Sometimes we heat the iron in the morning and keep the fire burning all day.

Now, it is much easier than before.

The tradition remains the same.

- So they actually marinate these cuts of beef.

This is traditional, in lime.

They actually do it a day before.

Once the tomatoes are roasted, they add a different flavor to the dish.

They usually use an Ancho Chile, which is dried, but it's fairly non-spicy, it doesn't have much of a bite to it.

If you like hot, then you use these Corban Chilies and she's roasting them for me.

- [Translator] We're going to grind everything.

Usually our grandparents would gather all of us around and we would eat here.

We would all just bring our chairs in closer with our plates.

The chickens would also join.

My grandmother grew up eating and tossing leftovers under the table because the chickens would eat there.

The color red symbolizes blood.

San Juan, like other places around the lake, was captured and a lot of blood was spilled in the process.

We remember that the Guatemalan people, especially the women, use their imagination and creativity to embroider in each of our huipiles, the history of our villages.

It is what we do.

In this case, the huipil, which is a blouse, represents the bio-diversity of the lake.

This represents the Mayan calendar.

(rocks scraping) My mother taught me to use the rock to grind rice.

It is a gift from the volcano, the volcanic rock.

(woman speaking Spanish) The rocks have history because they are inherited.

Here, in Santa Clara, for example, when a woman gets married, she is gifted a rock.

- This is definitely not fast food.

This is slow food of the best kind.

(cheerful gentle music) The roasted tomato taste and the chili, ground chili taste, come through almost overwhelming the beef taste.

And I think that's a good thing.

It's fresh tasting and delicious.

Native cultures have surrounded Lake Atitlan for thousands of years and archeological sites turn up throughout the region.

On the way to one of the most important sites, we pass through the traditional market town of Solola, a few kilometers above the lake.

It was a commercial center long before Spaniards arrived in the region.

Ischi-meen is located not far from Lake Atitlan.

It's only 25 or 30 kilometers.

(man speaking Spanish) - [Translator] We feel proud that our ancestors lived here and they taught us and they practiced much wisdom.

We preserve the wisdom to this day.

We preserve what we learned about cultivating, the calendar, respect for nature, respect for the world that surrounds us.

We have great respect for our ancestors.

They respected water, the air, the sun, the moon, the stars, it was all respect.

In order to cut down a tree, they would first look at the cycles of the moon.

They would talk to the tree.

They would ask for its permission and would apologize because they were going to damage it.

They lived very healthy lives and lived to be 100 years old.

- The site is sophisticated.

There are ball courts here and there are pyramids and each of the pyramids has a special spiritual significance.

One of the unusual aspects of this site is that it has continued to be an important place for the kaqchikel even at the present and ceremonies are still performed here on a regular basis.

So although the Spanish came and conquered, unlike other Maya sites in the lowlands, this is a living, ongoing site of sacred significance to the kaqchikel people.

The pyramids would originally have been the sacred places, the very top of them and the rituals could have been carried out there.

The people now who use the area for their sacred ceremonies have moved down to the flatter areas.

- [Translator] Before, the ceremonies would take place in the central plaza, but the authorities decided to move them over here.

What people burn here are candles, incense and what we call ko-pai.

(David speaking Spanish) - [Translator] And there are five alters?

- [Translator] Yes, because, for example, if one group comes to do a ceremony and then another group arrives, they will have to wait.

- [Translator] It looks like a lot of candles have been burned here throughout the centuries.

- [Translator] I mean, many people come.

Incense, ko-pai, flowers, candles, fruits, food, this is everything we offer to the volcanoes.

An important concept is that the higher the place in which a ceremony can take place or that one can climb to, the more pure it is.

One is closer to the mother moon and the stars.

As people say, there is a closer communication.

I have climbed volcano Santa Maria, three times.

(gentle music) We are descendants of 1,000 year old culture.

We are born.

We don't make ourselves.

We possess an abstract wisdom.

We can't touch this wisdom or see it, but we can feel it in our sacred ta-mes-cal-es.

Tecpan is where the ceremonial center, Ishim-shey, is located.

Ishim-shey is the place where our ancestors lived, the Kaqchikel.

To honor our ancestors, we perform rituals in Ishim-shey because that is where their energy can be found.

Our Kaqchikel kings, our first grandparents, oversaw this place.

When Ishim-shey was invaded by the Spaniards, our people moved and founded the town of Tecpan.

Our ancestors lived in Ishim-shey.

This shell connects the midwives to the grandmother of the midwives.

We are linked to them and to us, the rocks are our energy.

- The carapace of this turtle represents the Maya calendar.

There are 13 sections designs, but it also represents the spirit of Mother Earth.

It was still a long drive to Antigua, but seeing the detailed and delicate embroidery of the Kaqchikel, we had to stop at a village that specializes in traditional textiles.

This is a shop where weavers still work in the little town of San Antonio, Aguascalientes and there are (laughs) there aren't a lot of places like this, but here is a woman making some textile with a back loom and I look inside and here is an overwhelming number of textiles.

(woman speaking Spanish) - [Translator] In Guatemala, all the villages have different designs.

San Antonio Aguascalientes is the only town in Guatemala where the Huipil is embroidered on both sides, the only town.

It can take six months, eight months, to make a Huipil.

That is why many people are not making them anymore because they prefer to do other things than to make a Huipil.

The joyful colors of Guatemala are these colorful huipiles.

This is a-su-tay, with both sides completed.

Look.

This is the original work of the town of San Antonio.

The mother-in-law wears it like this on the back and she walks along the streets and all the people go and say, "Woo, "what soo-tay is that mother-in-law wearing?"

- It's easy to see why Spaniards chose Antigua as the location for their most important city in all of Central America.

Only Mexico City was more important in the entire area of North America.

As you look around, you can tell that the climate is very nice, ample rainfall, water everywhere and plenty of land with fertile soil to raise crops to support a fairly large population.

Spain and the church poured millions and millions of dollars into this area to make it the most beautiful city in all of the Americas.

- [Translator] There are towns around Antigua that do not have potable water and they come, wash their clothes at these places.

People say that our indigenous people practiced laundry room psychotherapy.

They get rid of all the negative energy.

They talk about their problems and the water cleans and purifies.

It is a tradition that is still preferred in this area and in towns all around Antigua.

- Most Guatemalans cannot afford to own cars, especially people who live in the towns around the cities.

When they wanna come into town and usually it's on a market day, they come in and bring lots of stuff with them, boxes, crates, even animals, they have to have somewhere to put them.

They put them in the racks and the owners of the buses like people to be able to identify them by the gaudy colors.

So each town in this area has its own color of bus and the owners take great pride in identifying their town and their buses by the colors.

In the last decade, three-wheeled vehicles have started showing up everywhere in Latin America.

Here in Guatemala, they call em tuk tuk's and for very little money, you can jump in one and get taken almost anywhere in town.

Some places, they've become a nuisance because they're small, they weave in and out of traffic and they're dangerous.

So some places have limited their availability and it leads to conflict between people who like their low price, the owners that like to ride them and the taxi drivers everybody else for whom they get in the way.

So the tuk tuk is a symbol of ongoing conflict to transportation, but they're kind of fun to watch.

(engines whirring) Once the Spaniards had occupied the area and pushed aside the people who lived here, they faced only two problems, big problems, earthquakes and volcanoes.

As I walk down this path, the stone I see is all of volcanic origin.

Huge volcanoes and periodic earthquakes.

After the earthquakes, the Spaniards would rebuild, making things thicker and stronger, but then another earthquake would come and never far away was the danger of a volcano exploding and sending pyroclastic flows that could kill people in seconds and decimate entire communities.

This is what happened in June, 2018 when the volcano called Fuego, not far from Antigua, erupted without warning.

We're three and a half miles, right here, from where the volcanic eruption took place.

The pyroclastic flow, that mixture of super heated gases and ash, came down here at about 120 miles an hour.

When it hit these trees, it virtually killed them instantly, but if you look only a few feet away on each side, you can see where it didn't even touch.

Imagine what that was if you were living in a town eating lunch and that hit, you would have no warning, death would be almost instantaneous and it was for a number of people.

No one knows how many.

- [Translator] The majority of people who live here never realized it was an eruption, but suddenly the sky went dark.

People thought it was rain and they never imagined that lava would come.

That is why many families did not have enough time to leave their homes.

(woman speaking Spanish) It was 2:30 in the afternoon on Sunday, June 3rd, when the volcano had been rumbling for three days.

That morning, every boom would make the house shake.

In only five minutes, 10 minutes, as you see here, this is how the community ended up.

My family and I fled.

My feet were burned, but many people died, children, young people, elderly people, women, a lot of people in this alley died because they were trying to escape.

The people died trying to get their families out of here.

The officials cleaned everything here.

They turned everything upside down to look for the bodies and they are sill looking for several bodies.

We escaped by climbing to the top of the church.

They evacuated us from up there.

They got here with me and we climbed to the terrace.

Thankfully, the lava did not reach here, just the heat and the smoke.

(woman speaking Spanish) - Even the more affluent residents of Antigua are aware of the historical and ongoing hazard of living in the shadow of the volcanoes.

A longterm resident knows what it is like.

- We're almost a mile high in the highlands of Guatemala and you do get frost.

Pedro Aldogado was the person who was sent down from Mexico city to conquer the Americas and he conquered Guatemala in that process and when he came, he set up the capital in an area called Ciudad Vieja.

In a very short time, they had a volcanic eruption from Fuego and they had to move the capital to this location in Antigua and of course, earthquakes are completely connected to volcanic activity.

There are three beautiful volcanoes in this valley.

They had another very strong earthquake here and this is after the Spanish had set up a capital, they had set up a plaza, they had the cathedral was underway, the first university in the Americas is a block away from here and every single religious order of the Catholic Church had set up convents and monasteries.

UNESCO turned it into a world heritage site.

- [David] My sense is that a colonial house would not be complete without running water and a fountain.

- Well, you had to have running water in your property and you had to get permission for how many straws of water.

The Spanish, when they came, they brought artisans from Spain and by the 1700's, Agua broke open with a very strong earthquake and it was a lake at the top and the lake came down flooding with mud and rocks and water and completely flooded Antigua.

It didn't just flood with water, but at the same time there was a volcanic eruption from Fuego and so it was covered and buried, but by order of the king of Spain, everyone in Antigua had to move to Guatemala City, which was a larger, more open valley and the people that remained were considered renegades.

It took centuries to reveal this beautiful structure that was underneath that had been buried.

Pedro Alvorados, first governor for Guatemala owned this property and so the building that was built was built in such a way to withstand the earthquakes that were happening here.

The walls at the base are three feet thick.

They're made with a mortar rock and brick and as the building goes up, the walls get more narrow and the roof line is quite low and all of that is designed to withstand earthquakes.

This floor is original to the house.

- [David] Over 400 years old.

- [Ana] Over 400 years old.

- Guatemalans benefit greatly from the volcanic landscape.

In addition to the beauty of the lake, they have fertile soil that is among the best in the world for a lot of crops.

They have a landscape that attracts people from all over the world, but all of them live in the vicinity of a potentially destructive volcano.

It's a balance that people have to live with and most Guatemalans believe it's worth it.

Join us next time In the Americas with me, David Yetman.

The Colorado River and its tributaries form the hydraulic backbone of the Southwest.

It's an endangered river.

- [Woman] There is actually not as much water as they thought there was.

- [David] Over allocated, excessively dammed and diverted.

- I have never ever seen this river this low before.

- [David] But its importance has never been greater.

(gentle cheerful music) the pyroclastic flow, the rain and the ash combine to make this into a raging torrent.

It took out almost everything in its path so everything in its path in this area was obliterated, leaving only this deeply incised channel, a bunch of old lava rocks and downstream, a thick coat of ash that'll be there for many, many years.

(cheerful upbeat music) - [Announcer] Funding for In the Americas with David Yetman was provided by Agnes Haury.

Funding for In the Americas with David Yetman was also provided by the Guilford Fund.

Copies of this and other episodes of In the Americas with David Yetman are available from the Southwest Center.

To order, call 1-800-937-8632.

Please mention the episode number and program title.

Please be sure to visit us at intheamericas.com or intheamericas.org.

(cheerful theme music)