San Miguel Acatán

About San Miguel Acatán:

San Miguel Acatán lies 124 kilometres north of Huehuetenango city and 389 kilometres from Guatemala City. San Sebastián Coatán and Nentón border it to the north, Jacaltenango to the west, Concepción Huista to the south, and Santa Eulalia, San Rafael La Independencia and San Juan Ixcoy to the east. Most traffic leaves the RN-9N at Pet and covers the final twelve kilometres or so on a steep dirt road through San Sebastián Coatán, a stretch the roads ministry has been working to improve, along with the RD HUE-04 towards Villa Linda. A second route from Isnanconob, in Soloma, joins through Villa Linda but is hard going in the rains, and two dirt roads run west to Jacaltenango: 68 kilometres by Coyá or 45 by El Mul. Buses run to Huehuetenango, and from the town you can carry on through San Sebastián Coatán and San José Pueblo Nuevo towards Nentón and the Mexican border at La Mesilla or Gracias a Dios, an old trade route.

Money from the United States holds the local economy up. Families here reckon on at least two relatives working there, most of them men, and residents will tell you plainly that remittances are what keep the municipality going. Others leave for six to nine months at a time to work in Comitán, in Chiapas, or in Cancún, or pick coffee in the municipality’s own coffee areas and in Jacaltenango and San Antonio Huista at harvest. In the aldeas the living comes from small farms; in the town people work in shops and markets, schools, the health service, construction and municipal jobs. Lead has a history here too: the Compañía Minera de Huehuetenango, part of the Hoover mining group, worked lead mines from the late 1940s and laid off seven hundred workers after a fire in 1954, and small lead licences in the municipality still appear on the national mining register.

The ground is rolling at best and escarpment at worst, with the town itself at around 1,780 metres. The Río Grande, also called the Río San Miguel or Yulá, loops around the town and joins the Río San Sebastián to become the Nubilá, while the Ocheval, known locally as the Rosario, drains the east before feeding the Catarina into Nentón. These rivers run all year but shrink in the dry season, and none of the villages along them treats its wastewater, so households lean on small springs at places such as Poj, Naptaj, Quixic, Paiconop Grande and Cantón Calvario. Forest cover rose from 38 to 45 per cent of the municipality between 2006 and 2010, mostly mixed woodland growing back on its own. Down at Coyá, on the warm side towards Jacaltenango, farms grow oranges, limes, coffee and plantain and keep cattle.

About 34,000 people lived here at the 2018 census, and more than 99 per cent of them are Akateko Maya. Their language was long treated as a Q’anjob’al dialect and called “migueleño”; it was recognised as a language in its own right in 1971. Around the town lie the aldeas of Cheche, Chenicham, Chimbán, Coyá, Copá, Paiconop Grande, Paiconop Chiquito, Pozá, Tiquisislaj and Yalaj, with dozens of smaller caseríos such as El Mul, Pacalaj and Ixchoch, and electricity reaches 59 of the municipality’s 67 communities. The population is young, with roughly four in ten residents under fifteen. The fiesta for San Miguel Arcángel runs from 26 to 29 September, with the Danza de la Conquista, and it is the week when emigrant families come home and the town fills up.

Houses in San Miguel Acatán:

Block has overtaken adobe. By 2016 more homes had block walls than adobe ones, most of them still roofed in corrugated sheet and a minority under a concrete slab, and cement floors were replacing earth. The average house has two rooms used for sleeping, cooking and eating, and the more modern construction sits in the town and in the aldeas closest to a road. That last point decides cost: labour, the state of the access road and the distance materials have to be hauled all push up the price of building, so a house on a passable road is a different proposition from one reached on foot. When you look at houses for sale in San Miguel Acatán, ask whether the community is on the grid, which spring or system supplies the water, and how the roof and walls have held up through the rains.

Rentals in San Miguel Acatán:

Almost every family owns the house it lives in, so renting is something outsiders do. The tenants are mostly people posted to the town: teachers, health workers, state employees and staff of organisations working in the municipality, some of them for a few months only. At the last field count the whole municipality had a couple of hundred rented homes and a few dozen apartments. If you need rentals in San Miguel Acatán, look in the centre near the market and services, and expect the choice to shrink around the September fiesta, when relatives return from abroad.

Land and Lots in San Miguel Acatán:

Most farmland comes in small family holdings, and people without a plot of their own rent one or work on someone else’s. The lots for sale in San Miguel Acatán are mostly building plots near the town and parcels along the roads into the aldeas, such as Copá, where sellers point to the asphalt they expect next. Level ground is scarce in this terrain, which is why a seller will say so when a lot is flat. Altitude decides use: low parcels towards Coyá suit coffee, citrus and pasture, the middle slopes grow maize and beans, and the steepest ground is often better left to the trees that are already reclaiming it.

FAQ:

• How do I get to San Miguel Acatán from Huehuetenango?

  Take the RN-9N north to Pet, in Santa Eulalia, then the steep road through San Sebastián Coatán, about 124 kilometres in all. Buses cover the route daily. From the Huista side, the dirt roads by El Mul and Coyá connect with Jacaltenango; use a four-wheel-drive vehicle and avoid the Villa Linda route in heavy rain.

• Which municipality does a plot near Villa Linda, Coyá or El Mul belong to?

  Check it before anything else. In 1924 San Miguel Acatán lost 64 square kilometres to form San Rafael La Independencia, with the boundary fixed in 1931, and Coyá and El Mul were only added in 1945, so land near these edges can sit under a different council than its seller assumes. Confirm the municipality, then look the finca up in the Segundo Registro de la Propiedad in Quetzaltenango, which covers Huehuetenango. Many family plots pass by inheritance without ever being registered, so have a notary confirm if you are buying a registered title or only possession.

• Can mining affect land here?

  It can. Lead has been dug in San Miguel Acatán since at least the 1940s, and small lead licences in the municipality are still listed by the energy and mines ministry. If you are buying rural land, ask whether any licence covers or adjoins it, and visit the site to see what is happening nearby.

• Is it possible to rent long term?

  Yes, but supply is small and almost all of it is in the town, where teachers and public employees rent rooms, houses and a few apartments. Ask around the centre, and plan ahead if your stay overlaps late September.

• What can a plot in San Miguel Acatán grow?

  That depends on its height. With the land ranging from 820 to 3,300 metres, the warm ground towards Coyá carries coffee, oranges, limes and plantain, the temperate slopes around the town grow maize and beans, and the highest, steepest parcels are mostly woodland. Ask where the water comes from in the dry season, because the rivers fall and the springs are small.