San Francisco El Alto Information & San Francisco El Alto Links at HealthHaven.com

The countryside of Paxixil, an aldea (village) of the municipality of San Francisco El Alto.

San Francisco El Alto is a municipality in the Totonicapán department of Guatemala.

The municipality includes the villages or aldeas of: Chivarreto, Chirrenox, Pabatoc, Paxixil, Rancho de Teja, Pachaj, Sacmixit, San Antonio Sija, Saquicol Chiquito, and Tacajalbé. The municipality also has the Sacmixit communal forest.

The church on the central plaza of San Francisco El Alto

[edit] History

Before the Spanish Conquest, Chusiguán was a K'iche' language Mayan community at the site of San Francisco El Alto. Chusiguán is K'iche' for "on the precipice," apt for its location at the top of a steep hill.[1]

Historical chronicler Francisco Antonio de Fuentes y Guzmán mentions the town in his 1689 Recordación Florida. This record confirms the town's pre-Columbian origins. He noted 2,880 Mayan inhabitants and 720 "tributarios."

Residents of San Francisco El Alto joined the revolt against excessive tributes that began on 1820-02-20 in Santa María Chiquimula.

Over the course of the last decade, San Francisco El Alto has remained mired in poverty, and the majority of the indigenous people that live there exist without electricity, or indoor toilets. They can be described as uneducated, poverty-stricken, and hostile towards people with fair skin. Educational opportunities are exceedingly limited, and most of the residents never finish primary school. Wealthy indigenous families often send their children to Qutzaltenango, nearby for vocational education, and fail to require them to dress in traditional clothing or learn indigenous customs. The Mayan culture is further eroded by migrants, and modern communication devices. Most inhabitants are involved in agriculture (but refuse to use modern methods), narcotics, prostitution, or weaving textiles. Recently, drug traffickers have utilized the town as a shipment point for Andean cocaine into Chiapas, Mexico. The affluence that you can observe in this town is based on the drug trade, and the migrants who send home remittances. Like most indigenous villages in the Guatemalan Highlands, double digit un-employment, lack of true educational opportunity, rampant alcoholism and the high infant mortality rate remain huge problems. In addition, many of the people continue to be hostile towards the non-Indigenous population, who as a result, do not extensively invest in infrastructure in the community.

During the Guatemalan Civil War, a large percentage of the indigenous population of San Francisco El Alto subscribed to the ideology of Karl Marx and Fidel Castro and took up arms against the government. Possessing no military training, they proved no match for the Guatemalan Armed Forces and their American military advisers. Most of the subversive indigenous insurgents were swiftly killed in battle and counterinsurgency operations. Attempts to ambush Guatemalan soldiers were ceased by the Kabiles, or Guatemalan Special Forces who were sent to the highlands to eliminate the insurgency under the Government of General Effrain Rios Montt, whom many Guatemalans view as a national hero. The most famous local dish is the corn tortilla, the fried chicken, and black beans with fried plantains.

[edit] External links

Municipal web page (Spanish)
totonicapan.org page (Spanish)

Painting from Municipal Hall that depicts the market in the central plaza of San Francisco El Alto

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Coordinates: 14°57′N 91°27′W / 14.95°N 91.45°W / 14.95; -91.45