Publications /  The Potato, Treasure of the Andes
From Agriculture to Culture

Today, among Guatemala’s Maya descendants, maize and potatoes live in harmony. Rather than compete with each other, the crops are alternated year after year. Potatoes are sown unsprouted in shallow furrows to prevent torrential rains from eroding the soil. The humidity helps the sprouts to break through the soil, which is fertilized with humus from the decomposing foliage of coniferous forests. In three months' time, the potatoes are harvested and the fields are planted with maize.

In the volcano-ringed valleys of Quetzaltenango, Huehuetenango and Quiché, farmers produce potatoes for Guatemala’s markets, as well as for those of neighboring El Salvador and Honduras. Thanks to the region's climate, the diversity of altitudes and the quality of the soil, all the different stages of potato cultivation can be observed there at the same time. On the same day, farmers can be seen selecting, sowing or harvesting potatoes, storing the product of their harvests and sending potatoes to market.

In humid areas such as El Rincón, at 1,700 m, potatoes are harvested next to maize and bean plants that stand half-grown. For many years, this region was ravaged by a guerrilla war that claimed thousands of lives. Perilous land mines still lie buried.

Santos Cabrera and his children - like the other 1,500 farmers who live in this area - are well aware of the danger. Each time they haul their sacks of potatoes from their jungle plots to the roadside, where they will sell them to intermediaries, they walk a narrow line between life and death.