The Pacific Coast

Guatemala has a beautiful coast along the Pacific Ocean. From the beach you can sometimes see pods of dolphins swimming by or schools of enormous fish circling at the surface of waves. Just out of sight is a whole world of aquatic animals! Many Guatemalans who live on the Pacific Coast make their living by fishing. At night, the fishermen illuminate the waves with a strong light, which attracts the fish closer to shore. There are also fishing boats that ventures further out into the ocean to find larger fish.

During the months of October and November, female sea turtles use the beaches on the Pacific to dig their nests and lay their eggs. Some turtles can lay up to 150 eggs at a time. After laying her eggs, the female sea turtle returns to the ocean to continue her journeys. Meanwhile, her eggs incubate in the sand until they are ready to hatch. Of all the baby sea turtles that hatch, only one or two will actually survive all the dangers of the ocean to become parents themselves.

The land near the ocean is flat and hot. Before the arrival of the Spanish, this area was covered in tropical forests and swamps full of wildlife. Because of the ash from nearby volcanoes, the soil here is very fertile. In colonial times, the Spaniards used this land to produce cacao and indigo, a plant that was used to make blue dye. In the late 1800's, after Guatemala gained independence from Spain, large companies realized the value of the fertile coastal lands and began buying it up, often making arrangements with the corrupt government to steal the land from the indigenous people living there.

Today, instead of forests and swamps are endless rows of sugar cane and cotton. The production of these two crops is an important part of the Guatemalan economy, but the money mostly ends up in the hands of the rich landowners. In addition, the farming techniques used damage the environment and put the health of their workers at risk. In the past, Mayan men were forced to leave their families to work in miserable conditions on these plantations. Although there is no longer a law that allows this, many indigenous men still migrate yearly to harvest the sugarcane and cotton on the coast and continue to be exploited by the landowners.