María Guarchaj and Teresa Gonón write in Ojalá about the challenges facing communities that live by, and depend on, Lago Atitlán. While it is true that the lake has been suffering from environmental degradation, attempts to profit from technical responses at the expense of affected communities are not new. Local community groups wish to protect their sacred resource for future generations.
The blue of Lake Atitlán fades into the dark green vegetation on the slopes of the Atitlán, Tolimán and San Pedro volcanoes in the department of Sololá, Guatemala. Over one hundred thousand people live in Kaqchikel, Tz’utujil and K’iche’ villages around the lake and they depend upon its water to live.
The lake has faced danger for some time. In 2009, a bloom of cyanobacteria, which feeds from sunlight and carbon, blotched the water with green. This dissipated quickly, but it was clear that pollution is on the rise. Studies by Guatemala’s San Carlos University and the Universidad del Valle indicate that climate change as well as sewage, solid waste and nutrients from soil washed away by rainfall are the principal cause.
A few years after the bacterial bloom, groups of Mayan Tz’utujil women from San Pedro la Laguna sounded the alarm about an attempt to build a massive water collector on the shores of the lake.
As proposed, the mega-collector would have required the installation of a network of pipelines. The Friends of the Lake Association said that this would be a way to divert and treat the sewage that pollutes the lake, “but what they really wanted to do was sell the waters for monocropping on the southern shore,” said Débora Quiacaín, a lawyer and member of the Community Development Council (COCODE) of San Pedro la Laguna. Quiacaín also participates in the Tzunun Ya’ Collective. In Tz’utujil, Tzunun Ya means “hummingbird of the lake,” Quiacaín said. “Our parents used to tell us that there were many hummingbirds,” she recalled.
You can read the full piece, with photos and links, including to the original in Spanish, here, In defense of Atitlán Lake.
Categories: Corruption, Environment, Guatemala, Human Rights, Impunity, Indigenous peoples, Land, Racism, Resource Extraction
Guatemala Solidarity Network 
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