San Rafael Pétzal

About San Rafael Pétzal:

San Rafael Pétzal shares borders with San Juan Atitán to the north, Santa Bárbara to the south, San Sebastián Huehuetenango to the east and Colotenango to the west. From Huehuetenango city you follow the CA-1 towards La Mesilla and the Mexican border, cross the San Juan bridge and turn off at kilometre 280.5, passing through a corner of San Sebastián before the HUE-09 climbs three and a half kilometres to the town. That road is narrow, two-way and the only one cars can use, so a single slide can cut the town off: in 2019 a landslide at kilometre 279 half-blocked the route for some 10,000 people. Buses and microbuses come and go at irregular hours, and tuk-tuks do most of the work, running residents up and down between the town and the highway all day. Guatemala City is 288 km away by road.

The municipality is young and its edges have moved. Pétzal Grande was an aldea of Colotenango until 21 May 1890, when it was made a municipality under the name San Rafael, and in the first half of the twentieth century it was folded back into Colotenango, recovering its status only in April 1947. Since then the aldea of Shémal has passed to Colotenango, and Santa Isabel, already a pueblo of 450 people in 1770, came across from San Juan Atitán in 1969. The name is Mam: petz means turtle and al great weight, so Pétzal is the heavy turtle. Today the four aldeas are Tuisnainá, El Oratorio, Xechul and Santa Isabel, with caseríos such as Tuismeyná, Tultzalaj, Ixquichbé and Hiedra Colorada and dozens of small farm holdings, the labores, scattered over the hills.

Daily life runs on small farms. Families grow maize and beans for the house, and wheat, broad beans, sweet potato, citrus, coffee and sugar cane on top of that. Nearly all cultivated land is owned rather than rented, most of it in microfincas of one cuerda up to less than a manzana, and in 2006 almost a quarter of households already had someone living outside the municipality, mainly for lack of work. The town is where everything happens: the municipalidad, the juzgado de paz, the market, and two fiestas, for San Antonio de Padua from 6 to 10 May and for San Rafael Arcángel from 20 to 24 October. Ninety-six people in a hundred are Mam, and women wear the red-and-white huipil with a red-and-black corte.

The town sits at 1,739 metres in the foothills of the Cuchumatanes, and the ground falls away steeply on every side. On much of the lower land the slope runs between 32 and 45 per cent, and the municipal plan treats more than four-fifths of the territory as forest land by nature, exposed to landslides, floods and erosion. The level, irrigable ground is down on the banks of the Selegua and at the bottom of the small valleys of the Chanjón, Secheu, Ocho, Valentón and Axolá rivers. There are 27 springs in the municipality, and forest still covered 44 per cent of the land in 2019. The people buying here are mostly families from the municipality and the neighbouring towns along the highway.

Houses in San Rafael Pétzal:

The older housing is adobe. In the mid-2000s more than four in five homes had adobe walls, most of them under clay tile or corrugated sheet, and block was still a minority. If you are looking at houses for sale in San Rafael Pétzal, check adobe walls on a slope for cracks and settlement before anything else. Services depend on where the house is. In the town and the aldeas closest to it, practically every home has piped water and electricity and about two in three are connected to drainage, while further out the figures drop to 85 per cent for water and 30 per cent for drainage. The water comes from springs and is not treated, so ask how the household deals with it, and whether the street is on the sewer that is meant to feed the treatment plant planned beside the CA-1.

Land and Lots in San Rafael Pétzal:

Parcels here are small and priced by the cuerda, and many family holdings are less than a manzana. The most useful farmland lies on the Selegua flats and the valley bottoms, where the municipal plan sees room for irrigation, but those same flats are where the flood risk sits. On the slopes above, a plot can be cheap and still be hard to build on, because the municipal land-use plan for 2020 to 2032 regulates building in landslide and flood zones. Before you agree on land for sale in San Rafael Pétzal, walk the access path in the rainy season, look at the slope with a builder, and ask where the nearest spring is and who holds the rights to it.

FAQ:

• How do I get to San Rafael Pétzal?

  Take the CA-1 from Huehuetenango towards La Mesilla. After the San Juan bridge, turn off at kilometre 280.5 and follow the HUE-09 up to the town, three and a half kilometres of narrow asphalt. It is 31 km in all from the departmental capital. Buses are irregular, so most people use the tuk-tuks that run between the town and the highway.

• Which municipality is my parcel actually registered in?

  Ask this first, because the map has changed more than once. Shémal went to Colotenango, Santa Isabel came from San Juan Atitán in 1969, and for years the whole town was legally an aldea of Colotenango. An older deed may name a different municipality from the one that collects your property tax today. Have a notary check the finca in the property registry, compare it with the municipal records, and confirm the parcel is not part of the land the municipal plan classes as community land.

• Is land by the río Selegua a good buy?

  It is the flattest and most irrigable ground in the municipality, which is why it is valued for farming. It is also where floods reach. The municipal plan regulates building in flood-exposed areas, so check with the municipalidad how a parcel is classified before you plan a house on it, and ask the neighbours how high the water has come.

• What is the water and drainage situation?

  Water is piped from local springs and reaches nearly every home in and around the town, but it is not chlorinated or treated. About a third of homes in the municipality are on a sewer network, which is due to be connected to a treatment plant beside the CA-1. Coverage falls away in the outlying caseríos, so confirm what a property has rather than assuming.

• What grows on a parcel here?

  Maize and beans go in almost everywhere, together with wheat, broad beans, sweet potato and citrus. Coffee and sugar cane are the permanent crops, and the river flats are where irrigation can be put in. On the steep slopes that make up most of the territory, the land is better suited to trees and permanent crops than to annual planting.