6 places to experience Maya culture in Guatemala

Tethered to a backstrap loom that engaged her whole body in a seamless rhythm, the weaver guided her yarn back and forth. Passed down from mother to daughter for over 3,000 years, the art of weaving was said to have been gifted to the Maya by the goddess Ixchel. Thread by thread, I watched as she composed patterns that recalled her family, her community and the sacred geometry of the cosmos.

Guatemala is the spiritual heart of a vast Maya cultural area spanning south-eastern Mexico and western Central America. It is home to 22 distinct Maya ethnic groups, each with their own language, traditions and textiles. Together, they may make up as much as 60% of the country’s population, making Guatemala the most Indigenous and multicultural nation in Central America.

The Maya peoples are descended from one of the world’s most advanced and enigmatic civilisations. Their ancestors settled in the region thousands of years ago and went on to forge a mosaic of city-states adorned with pyramids, palaces and temples. Their cultural achievements included astronomy, mathematics, calendrics, hieroglyphics and art. In some ways, Maya culture remains unchanged. The hillsides of Guatemala are still cloaked with sacred maize, and the mountains, caves, springs and lakes continue to host ceremonies that honour a pantheon of otherworldly beings.

Maintaining harmony with the forces of time and nature is an ongoing responsibility. At its heart, the Maya cosmovision – their system of beliefs, understandings and perceptions of the universe – is profoundly ecological. It includes vast botanical knowledge and a sense of the world as a web of relations. In this system, plants, animals, rivers, the sun and the moon are all connected to each other and our human bodies.

Equally, Maya culture has been shaped by centuries of colonisation and resistance. Today, Catholic saints are invoked alongside Maya deities in Guatemala. Crucifixes can symbolise both Jesus Christ and the sacred ceiba tree. Church altars are laden with pre-Columbian offerings of sweet copal incense, cacao beans and even animal sacrifices.

To understand the Maya communities, you also need to know their recent history. Guatemala remains steeped in the collective memory of state-sponsored genocide, which claimed more than 160,000 Maya lives during the 1970s and ’80s. Its legacy is the challenges of poverty, discrimination and marginalisation that the Maya peoples face today.

At the same time, Guatemala’s troubles have also created fertile ground for robust civil society organisations that champion Indigenous languages, arts and identities. They remind us that Maya culture is not a static artefact, but a living fabric composed of untold brilliant threads.

Where to experience Maya culture in Guatemala

The tranquil, lapis-hued expanse of Lake Atitlán in Guatemala’s western highlands is enclosed by three volcanoes and a dozen Tz’utujil, Kaqchikel and K’iche’ Maya communities. The oldest and liveliest is Santiago Atitlán, a Tz’utujil town that plays host to Maximón, a venerated trickster saint with a predilection for cigars and alcohol. His statue is carved from wood and adorned with copious silk ties, and it resides in a different household every year. When you visit, leave a cash tip for his guardians and an offering of aguardiente (literally ‘firewater’) for the saint himself.

Dubbed the ‘Florence of the Americas’ for its abundance of artists, the Kaqchikel Maya town of San Juan Comalapa is home to around 500 painters who continue the creative legacy of Andrés Curruchich (1891–1969), a pioneer of Maya oil painting. The town is also the site of the longest mural in Guatemala – an eclectic 180m-long panorama that runs across the cemetery wall. It depicts more than 60 historical scenes, ranging from the town’s mythical founding by celestial forces to the atrocities committed by the Guatemalan military in the 1980s.

Xela (pronounced shayla) is Guatemala’s second city and the unofficial capital of the K’iche’ Maya. Home to a wealth of cultural centres, art collectives, weaving cooperatives and language schools teaching both Spanish and Mayan idioms, the city offers the chance for an immersive cultural exchange that goes beyond just observation.

The cool volcanic highlands surrounding Xela are dotted with hot springs, hiking trails and traditional communities, including Zunil, Cantel, Almolonga and San Andrés Xecul. Don’t miss Laguna Chicabal, a mist-swathed crater lake that serves as a site for Maya ceremonies.

The mountaintop town of Chichicastenango is a vital K’iche’ Maya spiritual centre. In the 18th century, a parish priest there discovered a copy of the Popul Vuh, a revered K’iche’ holy book recounting Maya creation myths. The town’s 400-year-old church of Santo Tomás, which was built on the platform of a pre-Columbian temple, has 18 steps to signify the 18 ‘months’ of the Haab – the Maya solar calendar. Vivid ceremonies led by cofradías (spiritual fraternities) blend Catholic and Indigenous traditions. On Thursdays and Sundays, the town hosts one of Central America’s largest and liveliest craft markets.

The Achí Maya town of Rabinal is celebrated for the Rabinal Achí, a pre-Columbian ritual drama performed every 25 January. Recognised by UNESCO as an Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity, it recounts an epic feud between the Rabinaleb and K’iche dynasties, which culminated in the destruction of four cities and the human sacrifice of a prince. Blending dance, theatre and music, the performance is laden with symbolic references to the ancestral history and mythology of the Achí people.

The Cuchumatanes are the impenetrable roof of the Maya world – the highest non-volcanic mountain range in Central America. Remote and brooding, they are dotted with hard-working Mam, Q’anjob’al and Chuj Maya communities. Traditional subsistence farming, known as milpa, is practised with great devotion in the Cuchumatanes, as is timekeeping based on the Tzolk’in, the Maya sacred calendar. The town of Todos Santos Cuchumatán, which hosts an infamous drunken horse race on 1 November, is a longtime favourite of anthropologists and adventurers, and the easiest entry point.

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