Guatemala Solidarity Network

The writer, Aldous Huxley, famously wrote wrote of Lake Atitlán,"Lake Como, it seems to me, touches on the limit of permissibly picturesque, but Atitlán is Como with additional embellishments of several immense volcanoes. It really is too much of a good thing."

While, I’ve never been to Lake Como I have been to Lake Atitlán and it is stunning. However, there is a fear that the lake is dying and will become marshland through man-made interventions. These interventions include, for example, farming, tourism, and the lack and/or breakdown of public services to manage human waste.

This article by Danilo Valladares, on the Inter Press Service, is titled Environment-Guatemala: SOS from Lake Atitlán and begins, ‘a thick, chocolate-coloured scum floats on the normally clear blue waters of Lake Atitlán, in the southwestern Guatemalan province of Sololá, caused by agricultural fertilisers and untreated sewage from surrounding villages and farms’.

The always interesting series Entremosle a Guate features the challenges and possible responses to the current crisis currently facing the Lake, including a list of contacts. It is in Spanish.

Episodio 48 - Atitlán, El Clamor de Un Lago from Caminos del Asombro on Vimeo.