“The Lake“ or “El Lago”, the famous Lago Atitlan, the bottomless lake that was formed 1,8 million years ago among volcanoes, the one that has given home to colorful Maya villages on its shores and has attracted visitors from all over the world, has a brand new sensation: Its Monster is out! It has come up to the surface, it is apparent even from space, it is showing its large, greenish stinky body to the world. It feeds on sewage, industrial waste and agricultural run off. And we have fed it well! In fact so well that it will be able to live off on the food we’ve given it for years. It is growing into all parts of the lake to express its gratitude for all the wonderful feeding and caring we have provided it with. Please come and visit, meet the Monster!
I visited Lago Atitlan the fourth time in November and saw that the lake is now experiencing a large bloom of a toxic cyanobacteria. The bacteria overgrowth is most likely caused by a combination of dumping of sewage, industrial and agricultural waste, deforestation and an unusually dry year. We were there right around the third week after the overgrowth of the bacteria had become apparent all over the lake. What we could see was large areas covered by the greenish, brownish algae-looking thing that smelled like sewage. On the shores women were no longer were washing clothes, but were trying to collect bacteria with big nets to “clean” the lake. By talking to many people, all we could hear was people blaming each other for causing the problem, one village blaming the other, locals blaming tourists for not caring about the lake, tourism industry holding the farmers responsible and vice versa, others blaming the government for not constructing sewage treatment systems, government officials blaming each other for stealing the aid money they received from other countries after 2006, when Hurricane Stan seriously hit the area and caused massive landslides and destroyed all existing waste water treatment systems and others blaming the aiding countries for giving out the money without establishing reconstruction programs. The traditional believes are different: people say that this is God punishing us for our sins for not praying enough, at least that’s what they are being told at the church and others say that the Monster of the Lake has woken up.
There is one thing they would all agree on, and that is that we are in big trouble! We have woken up the Monster and it will take decades to calm it down again, and we can only do that if we all get together and start working on it now by creating a water cleaning system, by not damping more organic and inorganic waste into the water, by paying extra tourism taxes, by using harmless fertilizers on the fields, by not stealing the aid money and by creating programs that educate people about environmental issues. I think that God would like that too and would change his ways and would stop punishing us.
Women washing clothes, themselves and their kids in the lake - March, 2009.
crossing the lake - April, 2009
crossing the lake - October, 2009
Cyanobacteria - October, 2009
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