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I spent a week in Guatemala earlier this month with my oldest daughter. I have been wanting to travel to Guatemala to see and experience the textiles for a long time, and I realized her spring break would be a great time to do this trip. She was very excited to travel with me and see this beautiful country. I am going to share some highlights in this post, particularly focused on textiles, but if you have other questions, please leave them in the comments and I will try to answer them.
First, we only had a week (really, with travel times, less than a week) to explore so I decided to pick one place and venture out from there. I chose Panajachel on Lake Atitlan due to the beauty of the area, ability to make day trips out, and it has a lot of textiles to explore. It is also a great place for young people - there are young backpackers, nomadic workers, etc. everywhere and it was easy for my daughter to connect with other young travelers. If I had to do this trip again, I would spend a few days in Antigua instead of the whole time in Panajachel. But, now I have an excuse to go back. There are lots of places to explore in Guatemala!
I highly recommend the book A Textile Traveler's Guide to Guatemala by Deborah Chandler. I bought it over a year ago and it was helpful to plan this trip and understand what I was seeing. This book came out right before (or maybe during) the pandemic, so some things have changed since then, but for the most part, it was a great resource, especially if you are coming to Guatemala for the textiles.
As I said, my daughter and I stayed in Panajachel which is a small town located on the shores of Lake Atitlan, a large and beautiful lake, about 4 hours drive west from Guatemala City. The lake is surrounded by mountains and dormant volcanoes. And there are small towns around the lake, each one with its own feel (or vibe) and its own textile scene. We explored a few of these towns, but not all.
Panajachel
Panajachel seemed like the busiest, and perhaps grittiest, of the towns. It is a central place for tourists to come before going on to another village or town around Lake Atitlan. It is the largest town on the lake, busy with workers, businesses, and traffic. But it is still very small. The main street, Calle Santander, is lined with shops and restaurants, going from the edge of the lake (where there is a beautiful view) back about .75 miles. We really enjoyed walking up and down this street, and "window" shopping. There were very few windows as almost every store and restaurant is open-air, and the shops ranged from trinket shops with cheap souvenirs to high end shops with beautifully made one-of-a-kind garments and bags. There is a small "market" that goes away from the main street in a U shape and is lined with textiles from rugs to huipils to bags and belts and cheap t-shirts. This was a fun place to look through and the sellers are quite pushy. I am not a great bargainer, but we did get a few deals without meaning to and I bought a few items that I am sure were overpriced (but still felt like a fair price to me). The wool rugs in this market were beautiful and there were lots household items.
Wearing my 121 Guatemalan Gabacha at the market stalls in Panajachel.
More market stalls in Panajachel.
Some of the pretty rugs in Panajachel market stalls.
There are also some good restaurants along Calle Santander as well as some popular street food stalls that pop up after dark.
Panajachel is also a good place to get on a boat to just about any town on the lake. There are several public boat docks that have boats leaving every 10-15 minutes to the other villages.
Finally, there is a small textile market that happens at the fire station (Bomberos) every Tuesday and Friday morning. I walked to it on Friday morning and saw about 10 women selling huipils (traditional shirts), cortas (traditional skirts that is a large tube made of cloth), tablecloths (or things for the table) and a few other items. These were mostly older textiles, which I found out are highly sought after by many textile enthusiasts. These are always handspun, hand dyed, handwoven (usually on a back strap loom), and hand embroidered. They are very beautiful and exquisitely made, though sometimes their age shows with stains or faded colors. You can see in the photos below the front and back of hand embroidered band on a corte and how good the back side of the embroidery looks! The women who make these textiles are truly artists.
And, I heard (and saw) that most of the textiles in Guatemala are still handmade. There are some factory made, but most are still woven in homes all over. They are often now using factory spun and dyed threads, but the weaving still happens in the homes. Many of them are woven on back strap looms, but some on larger looms. Each village has their own type, or specialty, of textile - whether it is in the color scheme, pattern, or way of weaving. There is a type of ikat dyeing and weaving that is done in Guatemala, called jaspe, and it has different forms and colors. Some of it is very intricate and used on finely woven cloth and some is simpler and used in more coarsely woven or heavy cloth.
Santa Catarina Palopó
We took a boat over to the village of Santa Catarina one morning. From Panajachel, you should probably just walk (1.5 miles) or take a tuktuk (small taxi on 3 wheels). But, I didn't know, or think things through very well, and we took a private boat and it was actually a very beautiful ride over. Santa Catarina is a tiny town and is most know for its blue painted walls and the blue/aqua/teal weavings that the women in the village produce. From the docks we walked through a pretty avenue where women were selling textiles, and weaving them.
The street coming up from the lake in Santa Catarina.
Weaving at a stall in Santa Catarina.
There was also a small textile cooperative that was beside the school. The profits from this coop go to support this local school. I found some very pretty things there and they were very willing to sell me yardages of fabric also.
We wandered through the village on the many steep and windy foot paths and admired the walls and views. We came across a small "house museum" where there was a little bit of information about the village, weaving, and the lake. It took about 10 minutes to see everything, but it was interesting. Red used to be the traditional color of Santa Caterina's weavings and huipils, but in the 1940s someone told the women that blue would be better, to match the color of the lake and to create some interest in their textiles from tourists. So they changed their main color! And the whole village embraced it.
The blue walls of buildings of Santa Catarina.
San Juan
On another day, we took a boat across the lake and explored San Juan. In the morning we did a big hike and the hike ended in the village of San Juan. San Juan is a pretty little town with a nice church, good views of the lake, and some interesting small attractions. One of which is a small bee farm and museum. We got a small tour (no photos allowed) of the Mayan bees and their hives as well as a honey tasting. Very interesting.
Lake Atitlan from a point overlooking San Juan (on the right).
There is also a wonderful women's weaving cooperative in San Juan, Casa del Tejido y Tours. We stopped by and got a personal tour of the process - from ginning cotton by hand (pulling out the seed and processing the fiber), to spinning, to dyeing, to weaving. Many of the colors they use are natural dyes, made with the plants and insects (cochineal, for example) that they have in the area. They use banana stem charcoal for mordant. It was a beautiful stop and inspiring. The shop was also impressive, and not cheap, but after you see all the work that goes into making one item, you can understand the cost.
Being shown how to process cotton for making thread (all the colors in the background!).
Demonstration of spinning the cotton on a drop spindle. She could do this very quickly to make a uniform, fine thread.
Anne got to try her hand at spinning cotton on a spindle!
Small dye vats with banana stem charcoal as mordant. You can see some of the dye materials in the background.
And finally, the backstrap loom weaving. This loom is low-tech, yet intricate, and the weaving is fine. In the background, you can see the stool where the thread is wound and overdyed to make the jaspe, or ikats.
Chichicastenango
The largest Mayan market in Guatemala happens in Chichicastenango every Thursday and Sunday. We took a shuttle from Panajachel on Thursday to Chichi for the market -- only 14 miles, but it took an hour of winding over steep mountains to get there.
As suggested in the book, A Textile Traveler's Guide, I hired a guide right when we got off the shuttle at the beginning of the market. Carlos took us through the market, the churches, the cemetery, the Mayan sacred sites, and to his mother's stall who was selling old woven textiles. Again, you are supposed to be able to get amazing deals on textiles at this market. I am sure you are, but I am not a great bargainer and the older textiles, tablecloths, huipils, etc. are more expensive than the more recently made garments and cloth. They are antiques and are treated as nicer quality.
The typical colors of textiles in Chichicastenango are red and orange in zig-zag patterns on the huipils and black cortes with bright red/orange crosses embroidered in. And bright belts, or fajas. There were many stalls full of these garments and they were gorgeous!
The churches and cemetery were also good places to visit on market day and we learned a lot about Mayan traditions and ceremonies and how the Catholic church and traditional Mayan beliefs exist hand in hand here. I found the church and the offerings very moving.
We ended up at a fiesta for one of the town's minor saints (San Sebastian), where we drank atole and were blessed by a Mayan shaman (for a small fee). Atole is a thick corn masa and water drink. I've heard it is sweet and often flavored with cinnamon, but I think ours was just masa and water, served in a small gourd. That was another special moment and so very interesting.
My impressions of Chichicastenango were that it was a lot smaller than I expected. It may be the largest market in the country, but the market in Accra, Ghana was maybe larger than the whole of Chichi. I think it is a function of population (Ghana's population is much larger) and geography (Chichi is situated in the middle of steep and rugged mountains). I loved the colors, the activity, the churches, and the people. It was an interesting visit and we learned a lot. I would highly recommend a guide - it made the visit so much more interesting and informative. And they are not expensive.
The church of Saint Tomas in Chichicastenango with a Mayan alter in front (lower right).
Part of the Chichi market - inside with lots of vegetable, fruit, and herb/medicine booths.
Lots of fajas, or belts, hand embroidered and handwoven. The zigzag, or chevron, design is common in Chichi.
Rows and rows of the traditional cortes in this part of the market - dyed black with the bright red/pink/orange crosses embroidered on.
Old (antique) huipils in the Chichicastenango market.
A seller of backstrap looms (and all the pieces for one) at the Chichi market, right outside the main church. She was carving the loom pieces right here!
Overall, we thoroughly enjoyed this trip! I highly recommend Guatemala if you are interested in textiles. There are several tour groups that organize textile-based tours, and I nearly booked our own itinerary with Anywhere Guatemala which came up with a trip for us which was customized (and I felt it was at a decent price). Again, I would also visit Antigua if I went again. I heard lots of great things about Antigua from its beauty to great restaurants to amazing textiles.
The weather was really wonderful - it was warm during the day (you need sunscreen) and it was cool at night (you need a jacket). But the afternoons got hazy, and one guide told us that is typical of this time of year. December through February it stays very clear, and May through July/August is rainy. The food was great, and very fresh. People were nice and friendly. And, there were interesting views everywhere! While we focused on textiles during this trip, we also did a wonderful long hike, did yoga most days in front of the lake, danced salsa one night, and had one day of rest by the pool (interspersed with the "window" shopping mentioned above).
And if you have more questions about this trip, let me know in the comments! If you have been to Guatemala, also feel free to leave suggestions in the comments also!
Lorene
August 09, 2024
Thanks for your post on the Panajachel second hand market. Another website had stated it was closed permanently so I was glad to find this recent post. We went this morning and got some great stuff.