San Juan La Laguna

The fishing industry has taken a hit in recent years, with the lake's fish population steadily declining. This is in part due to the introduction of the non native Black Bass 1958 in an attempt to attract more recreational fishing tourism. It has since caused disruption of the lake's natural ecosystem, causing the extinction of local bird and fish species. Most fishermen are still able to make a living by taking tourists out in their traditional boats, but worry about the future. which tends to diphthongize vowels, while every other municipal dialect retains a more original K'iche'an system of 5 long and 5 short vowels. It is noteworthy that the original Proyecto Lingüístico Francisco Marroquín team that worked to document Tzutujil in the 1970s included at least two native speakers from San Juan, alongside at least two from Santiago Atitlán. And while the main offices of the Tz'utujil linguistic community for the Academia de Lenguas Mayas de Guatemala are located in San Pedro La Laguna, the ALMG Tz'utujil used to promote the syllable internal pre consonantal velar fricative / j/ (corresponding to [X] in the alphabet of the International Phonetic Alphabet), most common in San Juan La Laguna and the adjacent townships of Santa María Visitación, San Pablo La Laguna, and to a lesser extent, San Pedro La Laguna, as a critically distinctive characteristic of Tz'utujil, which had later been lost in Santiago and among young people in San Pedro. Despite these facts, residents of Santiago Atitlán, who make about half of the total population of Tz'utujils, sometimes claim to be the only ones who speak the pure form of the language, which they refer to as "qtz'oj'bal" or "our language." They claim that the townspeople of San Pedro La Laguna speak a dialect of Tz'utujil called "Pedrano," while the inhabitants of San Juan La Laguna speak "Juanero." [8]

While Tz'utujil is the primary indigenous language of San Juan Laguna, and that language is still spoken as a first language by a majority of the residents of the township's lakeside cabecera or head town, a notable portion of the population of the township's three main villages, Palestina, Panyevar, and Pasajquim (Pa Saq K'iim), now speak K'ichee'. Located in the mountains west and southwest of the cabecera of San Juan, these three villages began being settled by K'ichee' colonists during the Colonial Period, while San Juan La Laguna was still known as "San Juan Atitlan." The Testamento Ajpopoljay, the only colonial titulo written in the Tz'utujil language known to have survived to the twentieth century, was authored by a Juanero named Jerónimo Mendosa in 1569 and was later presented by his descendants to the Spanish colonial government as part of San Juan's land titles in 1640, during a dispute over land invasions by K'iche' people from Santa Clara La Laguna and Santa Catarina Ixtahuacan. Given that the document has not been locatable by the Archivo General de Centroamérica since the late 1990s, it is presumed to have been stolen after the last known direct consultation with it by a scholar in the early 1990s. Although Guatemalan scholar Mario Crespo M. published an analysis of the document's contents based on a line by line preliminary translation of it sometime before 1968, it does not appear that he or anyone else transcribed the actual Tz'utujil text. Robert Carmack reportedly photocopied the document in the 1960s, but that copy has disappeared.

The Guatemalan Civil War was fought between government forces and leftist rebels, the Revolutionary Organization of the People in Arms (ORPA) (Spanish: Organización Revolucionario del Pueblo en Armas). Spanning 36 years between 1960 and 1996, the war devastated the male population of Guatemala, leaving the women with few options to support themselves, their children, and the elderly. This is when the women's weaving cooperations of Guatemala sprouted into existence. San Juan hosts one such co op, Trama Textiles, which employs just over a dozen women at any given time.