Madre de Tierra: a long-winded account about dirt

Two of the many markets to befound in Xela.

We left for Fuentes Georginas early, as the sun was beginning to peek over the mountains and volcanic ridges. Sunlight streamed through the car windows as we left the city and climbed our way through the twists and turns leading up into the hills. Leaving behind the sprawl of the city and it’s many colors, we traded somewhat paved roads for dusty turns on a narrow dirt road, trading buildings for terraced sprawling plots. Right outside the city as the altitude climbs higher and higher, lies a vast vegetable region in hills so steep ropes are needed to assist the people going up and down. In a part of the highlands so mountainous, constantly seized by trembles and earthquakes, where the weather changes from brutally cold to scorching hot in a period of a few hours, there was a vast vegetable growing region in areas uninhabitable for conquests and sprawling cities. Xelaju the Mayan name for Quetzaltenago, Xela for short, means “under the ten” most likely referring to the vast outcrops of mountains and volcanoes surrounding the bed of the city, with Mayan pueblas creeping up the sides like hearty tendrils clinging for dear life. As we were cutting through the hills like switchbacks en el carro, it was hard to imagine how there came to be a road there. But to look around and see miles and miles of carefully cultivated plots rising out of precipitously shear gradients was staggering. The only thing working in the people’s favor was the soil was sure to be rich and fertile with nutrients from the ever-active volcanoes surrounding the region.

The existence of these volcanoes created a landscape both powerfully altered and fragilely beautiful. Fuentes Georginas was one of the gems hidden away high in the mountains. A natural spa with turquoise water only faintly touched with a sulfuric quality, long thought to be healing for the skin, is heated by the volcanic activity always present just beneath the surface in the Western Highlands. When we arrived at Fuentes Georginas, it was just past 7:30, the sun had yet to heat up the area despite being so high up. I was skeptical about going swimming, but immediately upon stepping into the largest of the four pools I had to pull my foot out—the water was scalding hot. Hotter than any hot tub I’ve ever been in, and as you moved through the pool the temperature varied, with different levels of pools with a range of luke-warm to muuuuuuy caliente. Each pool hot enough to create a dense cloud of steam vaporizing into the dense undergrowth of the bosque, or forest. The enveloping cloud forest created an atmosphere of serene beauty and relaxation tucked into the remote hills; the land of Guatemala is full of hidden surprises tucked up in its mountains or spread across its wide stretching plains.

The same tierra that nurtured a wonderful and terribly wild beauty, nurtures a culture born from harvesting the land. Each pequeña puebla has it’s own market day, where animals, colorful clothes and weavings, and especially vegetables and fruits are sold, traded, and admired. Everywhere in the large city of Xela on everyday of the week small markets can be found where vegetables, freshly picked, are haggled over for tonight’s supper and tomorrow’s breakfast. The markets are not a quaint feature of life in Guatemala, they are the way of life in Guatemala. Here there are no large-scale agricultural schemes. The families harvest their crops for their particular weekly market, or for the everyday goings on of the city, because it is the only way of life they have known. In a country that has never known a great economic infrastructure, the sweat and blood of the people is in the vegetables, in the land from which they were grown and carefully tended until the day where they will sustain the life that has bleed and sweat for them.