Walking through Antigua, Guatemala is an experience unparalleled. During the fall, the three active volcanoes are visible in the morning, and by 2 pm, you’re most likely running for shelter due to the powerful, torrential rains that fall over the Guatemalan highlands like clockwork. With volcanoes come strong seismic activity; the area is thrown into intense episodes of earthquakes, the most recent being the devastating February 1976 episode. The city has endured much damage to prized colonial architectural achievements, and it has somehow kept them looking robust yet romantic. The town square has many cafes and sweet shops, Spanish schools, restaurants of all cuisines, spas and adventure travel agencies, keeping the modern tourist plenty entertained. A nude, European-style fountain is in the center of the square, with billowing trees scattered strategically to give way to the intense Central American sun. These facets, combined with tiled roofs and color-blocked buildings are all the makings of an absolute charmed city. You’ll see indigenous Mayan women and children adorning traditional clothing and, they’ll try with their might to sell what their hands created. Being in Antigua is not a genuine experience of Guatemala, but an experience to observe a conglomeration of different environmental and political histories that has allowed it to survive as a cultural outlet and an aspect of hope in a country divided.

For Antigua to carry this position, a series of events were executed quite perfectly, events that were embedded in the environmental endowments that surround Antigua. It was inducted into the UNESCO world heritage family in 1979 for it’s Italian Renaissance inspired town design and the intricate Spanish baroque-inspired colonial architecture. From this point on, it’s position as a cultural and intellectual center was cemented in the modern world, but the position this entails was in Antigua’s heritage from the get-go. Antigua, Guatemala held the seat of Spanish colonial government, which oversaw Guatemala and it’s surrounding regions. This meant that it was the cultural, economic, religious, political and educational center for Chiapas (southern Mexico), Belize, El Salvador, Honduras, Nicaragua and Costa Rica for approximately 300 years.

The current location of Antigua, Guatemala is in the Valley of Panchoy. This was the third location for the city: earthquakes, floods, and fires forced a constant movement of the capital to different locations. The valley provided reliable water sources and fertile soil. This particular locale served as the capital 230 years, until an earthquake in 1773 shook the placement of the current capital to the modern day capital of Guatemala City. Lucky for Antigua, many of the residents left for the new city, but enough stayed to salvage what remained of the now abandoned capital city. The new name for the city: La Antigua Guatemala, or “the ancient [old] Guatemala”, was properly adopted after the new capital was established (UNESCO).

This strategic, yet necessary, transfer of the capital city allowed Antigua to shrink in importance for a while. Being a capital city yields many pressures on a place, therefore the earthquakes and flooding that occurred allowed Antigua to thrive as a cultural center, without the volatile political drama. This was especially vital for Antigua’s survival during Guatemala’s civil war. Natural disasters weren’t the only “protection” the environment bestowed on Antigua. The vital position of the town, 5,029 feet above sea level and abundant with rich, volcanic soil, allowed for the growth of several primary products, most importantly coffee. Coffee from Antigua is world-renowned, and the cash crop yielded much economic prosperity for Antigua (Britannica.com).

In 1880, only twenty-some years after Guatemala started exporting the bean, coffee was 90% of the country’s exports. During this time, the dictator Justo Rufinos Barrios continually compromised lands to allow for this intense exportation. Unfortunately, many of these lands belonged to the various Mayan cultural groups. As a result, indigenous Maya and poor Ladinos were enslaved on their own lands after they were seized for the country’s economic gain. “Planters gobbled up vast amounts of land and relied on the state to ensure the cheap supply of labor, mostly Mayan Indians from highland communities” (Gardin, 59). Simultaneously, this led to an increase in the Mayan people as vendors (Little, 7); vendors you can see on a casual stroll through Antigua. Traditional Mayan textiles and artwork are colorfully compelling, and Mayan people’s kind faces are a difficult place to not put forth a quetzal or two. The selling of tangible culture allowed for the preservation of traditional art, and undoubtedly encouraged cultural pride (Beekhuis, 326), but within the context of the Mayan culture, being a tipica vendor brought an onslaught of change with regards to their personal identity and relationship to their homelife and household (Little, 8). These issues are continually prominent among Mayan culture today. Looking back at this time, it seems evident that acculturation was relentlessly forced on the Mayan population, yet their culture is used to attract tourists to Guatemala. This is a compelling irony that continues within the context of the deadly and controversial civil war.

There were several reasons the civil war broke out in Guatemala, but one of the major fuels of the war was land. The ideology of land is the ground for constant debate and turmoil between the indigenous peoples of Guatemala and the Westernized Ladino elites. Ladinos and the indigenous Mayan are the two main cultural groups in Guatemala. Ladinos are of all classes, from rich upper-class, to poor lower-class: not all Ladinos are in support of Western ideals. The Mayan however, are consistently categorized as poor. This isn’t a testament to their integrity or work ethic, but to their cultural values viewed through a capitalistic lens. Since the Spanish Inquisition, the Mayan have resisted cultural appropriation. They continued to practice their culture in the midst of a westernizing Guatemala as much as they could. The Mayan culture isn’t centered around competition and profit like the newly imposed Spanish/Western culture. The elites in Guatemala were fighting to keep those Western ideals alive.

As said earlier, dictator Justo Rufinos Barrios seized land for the export of coffee. Government appropriation of land is a major insult to a culture like the Mayan. Whereas Western culture views land as something humans can dominate, the Mayan culture is centered around building a relationship with the land. Developing a relationship with nature is synonymous to taking care of one’s own self. For a Mayan, not being allowed to build that relationship was regarded as a “violation of the right of health” (Lam), and this was exactly what the government did to these people when they took over their lands. Malnutrition among the Mayan culture is prominent: today over half of indigenous children are malnourished (The Economist). A cause of this is likely the continued dissonance between these two cultures about who has the right to the land.

Barrios saw the end of his days as leader by the mid twentieth century. A revolution arrived that attempted to bridge the Mayan and Western values. As Jacobo Arbenz came into power, I can imagine nothing short of thousands of cries of joy from the struggling indigenous population. Under his regime, he implemented policies that redistributed certain lands back to the Mayan. Unfortunately, Guatemala’s capitalist neighbor to the North wasn’t pleased. The 1950’s are categorized in American culture as a time of fear. Holding communist beliefs was akin to making deals with Lucifer. President Eisenhower, convinced that Arbenz’s actions were acts of communism, authorized the C.I.A. backed coup against Arbenz in 1954. Arbenz was thrown from power and relatively forgotten. Guatemala retroverted back into a country ridden with policy of government ownership of the land (Malkin).

What culminated after the absolute worst of the worst: an intensely long and brutal civil war, one that cost the lives of an immeasurable amount of individuals. It commenced in 1960, and by the time it ended in 1996, 626 massacres were committed. A starking 600 of these occurred in rural Mayan communities. It is believed that over 80% of the people targeted were of indigenous descent. The killings were absolutely gruesome. While in Guatemala, I had the experience of visiting a Mayan community that was targeted by the military in 1982 and 1983. Our guide, Juan, led us on a walk that his mother took thirty years earlier, the same walk that ended her life. As he led us up the intense hills of his homeland, he told us through tears how the soldiers forced him away from his mother. The soldiers made the women dance and chant, absolutely humiliating them. Juan, at a tender age of 9 years old, watched from a tree branch as the women of his village were hung and thrown lifeless into a pit. Juan was fortunate to survive—several young children were among the same torture. The end of our walk with Juan was this the very same area that the bodies laid in 1982. The experience of being amid the death bed of so many souls was absolutely chilling. Juan’s community was a victim of the Rio Negro massacres, Rio Negro is located at the very northern tip of the Quiche region. Three hundred and forty-four massacres took place in El Quiche during the civil war.

Indigenous Mayan weren’t the only group targeted by the military. My host parents were young adults at the time of the war; my host mother was a student. She expressed how frightening it was to attend her schooling in the capital. It was explicitly understood to not carry any form of identification, or any proof that you were going to school. Intellectuals, especially students activists and teachers were viewed as a threat, and the military didn’t hesitate to eradicate those lives. An entire generation of forward thinking, creative minds disappeared. A mind isn’t something to be so carelessly wasted. Besides the loved ones lost, what really left an impression on me after learning of the civil war’s destructive legacy, was the diminished hope among the survivors, as a result of losing so many revolutionary minds. These minds were striving for a better Guatemala, and then they just vanished.

Antigua’s role in the role amid this madness was rather negligent. The city remained massacre-free during the war, in fact no massacres were committed within the entire department of Sacatepequez, where Antigua is located. This achieved relative calm during the war is even more notable when compared to the surrounding departments. For example, the departments of Sacatepequez and San Marcos had the same estimated indigenous populations of Sacatepequez: 20-50%, yet they endured a tragic 15 massacres. (McGill) The fact that not even during a civil war was Antigua dangerous works to its advantage today. Guatemala is caught dead in the war on drugs, but again, Antigua is the exception and remains as peaceful as ever.

Today, approximately twenty years after the war’s political end, it’s possible to travel to Antigua and be completely naive to the country’s torn past. Guatemala is still broken, but Antigua’s safety and environmentally kind conditions can and have come to its rescue. Various organizations are only minutes away from the city, and there are plethora with headquarters inside Antigua as well. These organizations have values and goals that encourage important ideals such as sustainable farming, indigenous rights, education, health care, and an end to poverty. Avocado groves, macadamia nut farms, and coffee plantations around the city value domestic economic prosperity as well as an international economic presence. Camino Seguro, or Safe Passage is an organization dedicated to helping the families of the Guatemala City garbage dump to break their cycle of poverty. They do this by holding free education classes for kids and mothers. I had housemates during my time in Guatemala who volunteered there, and it was required of them to live in Antigua and commute daily to the capital. Simply put, Antigua is less of a liability insurance wise. These programs can thrive because Antigua is such a safe haven: organizations feel comfortable sending their workers there.

Observing Antigua today brings on much melancholy. It’s beautiful from an economic standpoint, but this comes at a cost to the native population. Several middle class Ladino families struggle to live in Antigua, despite growing up there. Speaking Spanish is always helpful, yet it was very clear by the end of my first week that if I really wanted to, I could escape the linguistic challenge. Both of these are a result of the burgeoning ex-pat population that has migrated there. I met several foreigners that worked there, whether they were business owners or waitstaff. My host family couldn’t afford to go to the majority of restaurants or cafes in Antigua, nor could they purchase their own country’s finest good: coffee. These indescrepencies were extremely frustrating. Hypocritically, though, I was rejoicing over paying the equivalent of 2 USD for a beer, and becoming irritated when the fifth Mayan woman of the day desperately attempted to sell me a beautiful piece of her culture. Foreign imposition on a town shouldn’t create financial obstacles to its residents, but this is something I came to accept as a fact of life in my Western culture: my mind was bamboozled. Becoming aware of Guatemala’s cultural struggle made me realize that the world doesn’t have to tick to the capitalist clock. By a stroke of chance though, it has evolved this way.

Antigua’s charm will continue to draw in tourists for many decades to come. Hopefully, it will continue to utilize it’s environmental advantages and subsequent financial power to wield some much needed changes throughout Guatemala. With nearly half of the population holding indigenous values, it seems only right that the government’s policies adhered more to the unique culture of the Mayan.