A Glimpse at Guatemala / And Some Notes on the Ancient Monuments of Central America

by Anne Cary Maudslay; Alfred Percival Maudslay

When once outside the house, the charm of the surroundings banished all thoughts of discomfort from our minds. The climate seemed to be absolutely perfect, and the brilliant blue sky, the bright sun, shaded now and again by the fleecy clouds one associates with a trade wind, the temperature never too hot or too cold, and the delicious freshness in the air stirred by gentle breezes, all together produced in me a feeling of exhilaration I never thought to experience in a tropical country. It all sounds too good to be true, but it is no exaggerated description of the climate as we found it. The situation of the city, too, is beautiful. It stands over 5000 feet above the sea-level on the north side of a plain surrounded by bold hills and towering volcanoes, and there appears to the eye to be only one gap in this circle of hills, where the slopes of Agua and Fuego overlap, and through this gap the road passes down to the Pacific coast. A few miles distant along this road are the remains of the Ciudad Vieja, once the capital of the country, for the city of Santiago, as the capital of Guatemala has always been named, has passed through many vicissitudes and changes of location.

ANTIGUA AND THE VOLCAN DE AGUA.

Early in the year 1524 Pedro de Alvarado entered the country from Mexico, and after subduing the Quichés and other powerful Indian tribes, led his conquering army of Spaniards and Mexican auxiliaries to Patinamit or Iximché, the stronghold of the Cachiquels; and here, on St. James’s day, 25th July, 1524, the solemn ceremony of founding a city and dedicating it to Santiago, the patron saint of Spain, took place, and the first municipal officers were nominated.

On this first site, however, the city can hardly be said to have had any real existence, for Alvarado and his captains were too much occupied with expeditions against Indian tribes in distant parts of the country to be able to give any attention to the building of a city, and the Cachiquels themselves rose again and again in revolt.

In the year 1527 the Cabildo, or Municipality of Santiago, met in the plain of Almolonga to decide on a permanent location for the city, and chose a site on the edge of the plain at the foot of the south-west slope of the Volcan de Agua. During the following year this new Santiago (now the Ciudad Vieja) was declared to be the capital of the province, and began rapidly to rise in importance.

Meanwhile the restless Alvarado had journeyed to Mexico and Spain, and the government of the province was left to others. In 1530 he returned to Guatemala with the full powers and title of Adelantado, and again took the direction of affairs; but the government of an already-conquered province did not satisfy his ambition, and with his mind bent on new and greater exploits he built a fleet with the intention of setting sail for the Spice Islands. From this project he was turned by the news of the marvellous successes of Pizarro in the south, and in 1534 he sailed on his ill-fated expedition to Peru. Within a year he was back again in Guatemala, and then, after another visit to Spain, he finally met his death on the 4th July, 1541, through an accident, whilst endeavouring to quell a local revolt in Mexico.

When the news of his death reached Guatemala (at the end of August) mourning was universal, and his widow Doña Beatriz de la Cueva was beside herself with grief. At the meeting of the Cabildo, the unusual step was taken of electing Doña Beatriz as governor in her late husband’s place, and the unfortunate lady signed her name in the books of the Cabildo on Friday the 9th September, with the prophetic additions of “la sin ventura,” the hapless one. It had been an unusually wet season, and from Thursday the 8th the rain fell without ceasing, and the gale was violent until Saturday the 10th, when soon after dark a flood of water and liquid mud, carrying with it huge boulders and uprooted trees, rushed down the mountain side and overwhelmed the town. The hapless one and her maidens were buried under the ruins of the chapel where they had taken refuge, and thirty or forty Spaniards and some hundreds of Indians shared a like fate.

The cause of this catastrophe is usually said to have been the bursting of the side of a lake which had been formed in the crater of the extinct Volcan de Agua; but an examination of the crater shows this explanation to be improbable, as the break in the crater-wall is in an opposite direction, and no water flowing from it could have reached the town. Moreover, there is no evidence to show that the deeper portion of the crater, which is still intact, has held water since the reported outbreak. Indeed, an accumulation of water during the exceptionally heavy rain, through some temporary obstruction in one of the deep worn gullies which indent the beautiful slope of that great mountain, and a subsequent landslip would probably account for the damage done without the aid of either an eruption of water from the crater or the supernatural appearances which are duly noted by the old chroniclers.

Again the Cabildo of the Ciudad de Santiago had to meet and decide on a more suitable position for their city, and the choice fell on the site of the present city of Antigua, on the other side of the plain and a few miles distant from the base of the treacherous mountain. There the town grew and flourished, and the half-ruined churches, convents, and public buildings still attest its former magnificence.