Panabaj

Panabáj, located on the edge of Lake Atitlán in the western highlands of Guatemala, is a small village (canton or aldea) within the municipality of Santiago Atitlán, bordering the city of Santiago Atitlán proper, in the department of Sololá. Prior to the disaster of Hurricane Stan in which nearly 500 persons from Panabaj and nearby Tzanchaj were killed or left missing, the town's population had numbered over 3,000.

Most of the residents are Tzu'tujil Maya people, one of the 21 Maya ethnic groups who live in Guatemala, often noted for their steadfastness in maintaining traditional cultural and religious practices. Evangelical Protestantism and Roman Catholicism are also practiced among a large percentage of them.

Political conflict

Like many indigenous populations around the lake, many residents of Panabaj suffered during the 36-year-long on-again off-again Guatemalan Civil War that ended in 1996. Often spurred and taught by revolutionary political groups from abroad, many considered it to be merely a continuation of the age-old conflict between the Spaniards and the indiginous peoples of the New World. In 1990, 13 unarmed civilians were gunned down while protesting and throwing rocks into an army base located in Panabáj. International media attention forced the Guatemalan government to close the base and declare Santiago Atitlán and its environs, which include Panabaj and the bordering town of Tzanchaj, a "military-free zone."

Landslide

During the early-morning hours of October 5, 2005, the town was flooded in a landslide triggered by torrential rains associated with Hurricane Stan. Mud poured off the saturated slopes of the volcano that loomed over the village, burying people and buildings. According to one report, the flow was "four kilometers long and up to 12 meters deep in places" while another said it was a "half-mile wide mudflow as much as 15 to 20 feet thick." Streets were inundated with mud, keeping rescue workers from reaching the area for two days. Rescue work was discontinued later in the week. From Panabaj and Tzanchaj, rescuers recovered 160 bodies, while 250 remained missing from both towns.

Relief provision was hampered by a large number of major natural disasters in 2005 in general and in particular by diversion of resources to deal with a severe earthquake in Pakistan that occurred just a few days after the mudslide.

Reconstruction

After the disaster, the mayor of Santiago Atitlán requested that Panabáj be declared a cemetery, not to be reinhabited; however, many of the townspeople returned, and most of the houses and stores have since been rebuilt and are now occupied by their original residents.

Crops were replanted in the region on the shoreward side of the main road–which now, due to the earth deposits from the mudslide, extends farther out into the southern watershed of Lake Atitlán–and the town is once again thriving much as it did before the catastrophe.

Many of the townspeople, with their skilled weaving and art, are benefiting financially from tourism, mainly from the U.S., Canada and European countries. Some of this work is included in the UNESCO-sponsored book, ‘'Arte Naif: Contemporary Guatemalan Mayan Painting, 1998.'‘ Many others subsist with farming and net-fishing in homemade wooden boats according to the traditional methods.

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