CHAPTER XI THE AWAKENING OF GUATEMALA RUISING up the shores of Cen- tral America we will make no stop until we reach Puerto Bar- rios, Guatemala. About ten years ago Minor C. Keith began operations to provide Guatemala and Salvador with railroad com- munication to the Atlantic coast. This was in furtherance of his plan to connect the United States by rail with the Panama Canal Zone. He had completed the main lines of the railroad system in Costa Rica, and now assumed, with his accustomed energy, the nsskof opening two more nations to the commerce of the world. Guatemala and Salvador are the two most populous na- tions in Central America. The total population of Pan- ama, Costa Rica, Nicaragua, Honduras, British Honduras, Salvador, and Guatemala is roughly 4,600,000, of which Sal- vador contains about i 3O4O,, and Guatemala i,goo,000- all of Central America containing much less than the popula- tion of New York City, but vastly more potential wealth. Little Salvador, with its area of 7,225 square miles, has a density of population not touched by any nation in the New World. Its showing of '44 inhabitants to the square mile is fully five times that of the United States and surpasses that of well-settled Pennsylvania. Salvador has no coast on the Atlantic side and is therefore cut off entirely with direct communication with the great outside markets for its agricultural products. Only5 per cent of the population of Salvador are Cau.. I04 AWAKENING OF GUATEMALA 195 casian, and nearly all citizens of this small fraction are of Spanish descent. Fully 55 per cent of the population are pure-blooded Indians, members of several tribes, most of which have displayed progress compared with the average native Indian population of Central America. Comparative immunity in recent years from revolution and internal strife is largely responsible for this outcome. Nearly all of the soil PUERTO BARRIOS, GUATEMALA, AND VICINITY of Salvador is under cultivation. The Pacific slopes of Salvador and Guatemala are ideal for the cultivation of a score of tropical products, among which are coffee, indigo, sugar, tobacco, rice, cotton, cacao, pineapples, and all kinds of tropical fruits. On the great plateau of Guatemala are scores of towns and cities, including Guatemala City with a population of ioo,000 or more, the largest city in Central America. It was for the 196 CONQUEST OF THE TROPICS purpose of giving these populous and productive districts an outlet to the Atlantic and communication with the trade of the world that Mr. Keith planned a railroad which would connect Puerto Barrios with Guatemala City, capital of the Republic of Guatemala, and San Salvador, capital of the Republic of Salvador, with branches touching various ports on the Pacific, also eventual contact with Mexico and South America. Like all other Central American countries, with the possi- ble exception of the colony of British Honduras, Guatemala had neglected and ignored its Caribbean lowlands. To the mass of the people of Guatemala, who lived in the highlands, the coasts were dreaded. They were the feared sections of the tierras calientes, the fiver-stricken hot lands. When the wealthy citizen of Guatemala went to Lisbon or Paris he es- caped byway of the Pacific coast, and thence to Panama or San Francisco, and from there to New York. It is only six years ago that he had the choice of any other route, and the American who had business in Guatemala City or San Sal- vadai first.bought a ticket for San Francisco or Panama City, then took a long and weary voyage along the Pacific coast, and finally was dropped from a sling to a lighter which rolled p'rilou4y in the swell which surges into the open roadsteads that take the place of harbors on most of the west shores of Central America. It seems strange, does it not, that the Guatemalan railroad was not constructed years and years ago? It seems such an obvious thing to do, yet our American tropics are filled with obvious opportunities and with political problems for which there are obvious remedies. We of the United States spend tens of millions of dollars on huge engineering plants in- tended to bring our deserts to cultivation, but our statesman- ship declines to glance south of the Rio Grande and of Te- huantepec, where uninhabited empires of rich soil are already provided with water and with the climate which must have existed in the Garden of Eden. When Mr. Keith and his associates decided to build a railroad from the Caribbean through these neglected coun- tries the United Fruit Company agreed to undertake the AWAKENING OF GUATEMALA 197 banana development of sections of the uninhabited eastern lowlands. The Motagua River empties into the sea on the border line between Guatemala and Honduras, and is the longest and most important river in Central America. it has a broad and very fertile valley reaching more than two hundred miles toward the Pacific, and scores of branches are also natural centres of cultivation. For seventy miles or more back of its mouth the Motagua flows between lands well suited to banana cultivation, and in 1906 the United Fruit Company acquired by purchase Typical scene at Guatemala railway station tracts with a total acreage of 50,000. There was at once developed an experimental plantation of 1,250 acres. The test was successful, and an additional 747 acres were planted in 19o7. in the following year the banana plantings were increased to 5,080 acres, but the company had not acquired any additional tracts of land, it had demonstrated that banana cultivation in the Motagua Valley was practical and profitable, but it did not attempt to take advantage of this knowledge and of its position to monopolize all or any con- siderable part of the natural banana lands. It was not until 1910, five years after the original pus'- 198 CONQUEST OF THE TROPICS chase of 5o,000 acres, that the United Fruit Company increased its holdings by the purchase of an additional 30,49 acres, and since that year it has gradually acquired other tracts which gave it in 1913 a total of 126,189 acres, of which 27,122 were devoted to banana cultivation. The annual report of President Preston for 1913 places the cost of the Guatemalan development at $3,884,807.27, thus placing it fourth (in money invested) in the list of tropical divisions of the company, Costa Rica, Panama, and Co- lombia leading in the order named, with Jamaica in fifth place. Guatemala, however, stands third in the production of bananas. Puerto Barrios has deep water and an excellent natural harbor, lying well within the shelter of an island which forms the Gulf of Amatique, but at the present time Puerto Bar- rios is the least attractive and sanitary of all of the ports largely used by the United Fruit Company. Work is now in rapid progress which will change all this. The low site of the native town of Barrios will be raised and protected with a sea wall. The squalid huts which line the beach will disappear, and in their place will rise a fine hotel and office structures for the company. All of the adjacent swamps and lowlands have been reclaimed and made sanitary, and the reconstruction of the small native town will solve the only remaining sanitary problem which has harassed the company. A few miles across the gulf is the attractive town of Living- ston, situated at the mouth of the Rio Dulce, which connects Lake Izabal with the Caribbean. Lake Izabal is, next to Lake Nicaragua, the largest body of fresh water in Central America, and is navigable for small steamships nearly fifty miles inland. The Rio Dulce is a winding, narrow canyon of great height and surpassing tropical beauty. There is nothing else of this nature in the American tropics, and those who can spare the time will not regret a trip through the wonders of these overhanging cliffs crowned with palms and graced with clinging vines, the voyager finally emerging to the placid surface of Lake Izabal, its far shores fading into the deeper blue of distant mountains. AWAKENING OF GUATEMALA IPO Leaving Barrios by train, we plunge almost immediately into the most perfect jungle I have ever seen in the tropics. On both sides of the track for mites is a tropical display of trees, plants, flowers, ferns, vines, and shrubs, all woven into an impenetrable network of a thousand hues so delicately blended that it would seem that some horticultural genius had spent a lifetime in arriving at this perfection. A New- port millionaire would give a fortune for an acre of this splen- did but worse than useless jungle. For miles it crashes its 4 ANTIGUA, GUATEMALA With the famous volcanoes Agua (water) and Fuego (are) in the distance pulsating beauty in the face of the beholder. Orchids which would drive a connoisseur to frenzy flame their delicate colors from thousands on thousands of trees. Other tower- ing trees are veritable masses of huge flowers, some of them purple, others tantalizing shades of red, blue, orange, and violet. Why has no artist ever painted such a jungle? He could not do it justice, but he might try. I have never seen on canvas any creation which even pretended to depict in form and color the representation of this native tropical jungle. 200 CONQUEST OF THE TROPICS We leave the jungle and strike the Motagua River and the banana country. For fifty mites or more we run west and fairly parallel with the Motagua, with bananas on both sides of us most of the time.