Word: guatemala
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...travel book Beyond the Mexique Bay, Aldous Huxley compared Guatemala's Lake Atitlan to Italy's Lake Como. The Italian body of water, he wrote, "touches the limit of the permissibly picturesque." Atitlan, however, "is Como with the additional embellishment of several immense volcanoes. It is really too much of a good thing." Guatemalans have interpreted this declaration by the author of Brave New World to mean that Lake Atitlan is the most beautiful lake in the world - which is the billing on most of the tourist brochures, despite Huxley's ambivalent phrasing...
...sludge has huge implications for the area and Guatemala. The towns around Atitlan have become reliant on tourism. Scores of restaurants and hotels have opened. Generations of boatmen made a living by shuttling visitors across the lake. And armies of three-wheeled taxis, known as tuk-tuks, were imported from Asia to help move tourists around. Business is down significantly this year. Hotels say they have about half as many guests as usual. Tuktuk drivers report they barely make enough to pay for gas. Restaurant owners are considering giving up. The global recession may be a major factor...
...would be phosphorous, which is abundant among the hills and three towering volcanoes around Atitlan. The situation is aggravated by government distribution of chemical fertilizer containing extra phosphorous to poor farmers who liberally apply it to their fields. Widespread deforestation allows the soil to leach into the lake during Guatemala's six-month-long rainy season. (See more about Guatemala...
...government-led conversion to organic farming for 80% of farmers in the lake's watershed during the next three years, and for educating residents and tourists about the environment. The cost: about $350 million, a huge expenditure for an impoverished country. "The problem has been accumulating for years but Guatemala has other expensive problems and, apparently, this was not a priority," says Margaret Dix, a Universidad Del Valle scientist who has studied the lake since 1976. "It needs money, input and a commitment. ... I think it can be restored to a large extent in four or five years...
...Outside the U.S., according to Amnesty International, lethal-injection executions have been carried out in China, Thailand, Guatemala and the Philippines, although the last two of these countries recently outlawed capital punishment. (Taiwan technically permits lethal-injection executions but has never killed anyone with the method.) China, which executes more people than any other nation by far, is phasing out death by gunshot in favor of lethal injection; the government provides mobile execution vans, which travel to smaller cities and towns that don't have permanent death chambers. While that morbid procession wouldn't fly in Virginia, the state clearly...