The Chameleon Town of Chichicastenango

Chichicastenango (Chichi) is both a popular Guatemalan tourist destination for gringos and an undiscovered gem. One day you may see dozens of other tourists walking the hectic market, the next day you might be the lone gringo in this sleepy town.

Both are true because Chichi is a chameleon town. On market days, Thursdays and Sundays, the town is buzzing with locals browsing stalls, Guatemalans from nearby towns stocking up for the week, and tourists experiencing the colors and chaos of the market. But the out-of-towners and tourists flee with the market, leaving Chichi as a sleeper town on non-market days.

Chichi is in the Guatemalan highlands and has a population of over 71,000. It lies halfway between Xela and Antigua, and due north of Lake Atitlan. Its proximity to these three places, all popular with tourists, makes it a popular day trip for travelers on market days.

This popularity is well deserved. Its market is large, chaotic, and beautiful. The distinguishing aspect of Chichi’s market, and the reason tourists visit, is the textiles. On market days, streets are lined with vendors selling traditional Guatemalan and Mayan fabrics, wooden masks, ceramics, jewelry, leather goods, and everyday items such as produce and tools.

The fabrics light up the market with deep reds, blues, and yellows. Their contrasting colors appear hand-picked from a color wheel to maximize aesthetic appeal. These fabrics, created with the same techniques used by Mayans, are the market’s main attraction.

But every corner of the market contains fascinating gems. At the edge of the market on the steps of Santo Tomas Church, for example, spiritual guides burn copal incense, candles, and flowers, filling the air with heavenly smells.

The burning of incense and flowers is a Mayan spiritual practice that predates colonization. For many now, however, this has transformed into a Catholic practice representing offering prayers toward saints and God. It’s one of many examples of how pre-colonial customs merged with post-colonial practices to create beautiful traditions and practices. This is a pattern seen throughout Guatemala.

The Church’s location itself is another example of blending old and new. The Spanish built the Church in 1540 over a Mayan temple, aiming to stamp out Mayan religious practices. An extension of the conquest to the spiritual realm. The result, however, is that the Mayan religious practices continued at the site, only rebranded as a Catholic practice with Mayan roots.

Returning to the market, it’s never clear where it ends and the rest of the town begins. Vendors erect stalls and booths wherever space allows around the city center. Booths spill into adjacent roads, slowly thinning until a regular town appears from the chaos. The transition is similar to a color palette that slowly morphs from black to gray to white, with no clear line marking where black ends and white begins.

Shoppers and vendors at the market work and move as a single organism, with porters - workers who transport goods to booths - serving as the market’s veins.

Using wheelbarrows or large bags strapped to their backs and heads with ropes, these tireless individuals replenish booths with wares. Shoppers reflexively part to the sides as these Guatemalans carry their heavy cargo down aisles, straining as if one more bunch of bananas will be the final ounce causing their collapse.

Vendors, meanwhile, relentlessly market their goods. They tell every passerby of their offerings and those who stop to look are invited to step closer, take a look, and even hold select merchandise that is presented to them. The vendors hawk tirelessly to stand out amongst the dozens of other booths selling the exact same stuff.

The vendors’ marketing pleas blend with the market’s general commotion and road traffic to create a continuous mid-pitched stream of noise. This stream is only broken by calls of “Mascaras!”, “Mantas!”, or “Manzanas!” echoing near vendor booths, or occasional dog barks and car horns.

The market’s organic flow makes you feel that you are walking within a living organism. This flow is sporadically disrupted, however, by stray gringos who stop in aisles to take pictures, causing traffic jams and a rerouting of pedestrians.

One question stayed on my mind as I walked through the market: “Why is this here?”

On one hand, every town in Guatemala has a market on set days. On the other, this one is huge. Much larger than you would expect of a town this size. And the beautiful fabrics are a rarity.

Chichi’s market size springs from the city’s role as an administrative hub within its section of the Guatemalan highlands. Although the city only has 71,000 people, the municipality - the city and the surrounding rural area of over 92 towns - has over 150,000 people.

Extending further out, the region served by the market could have as many as 500,000 people.¹ This makes the market a regional hub to buy and sell goods.

The market is an illustration of Adam Smith’s observation in The Wealth of Nations that “the division of labor is limited by the extent of the market.” The region’s highly specialized fabric weavers and pottery makers would not exist if their market was limited to their village. In such a situation, specialization is not economically viable due to a lack of sales (lack of a sufficient market).

However, buyers and sellers have agreed that Thursdays and Sundays in Chichi is when buying and selling will take place. This extends “the market” through aggregation and leads to more specialization and the beautiful fabrics we see today.

Chichi is a must on market days. But it is also worth visiting on non-market days, just for different reasons.

Once the market chaos subsides, Chichi transforms into a quiet small town. In a way, it is unrecognizable. You walk where the market once stood and see bare alleys with small storefronts lining the streets. Storefronts that a day prior were hidden by stalls, booths, and chaos.

The biggest difference is what you don’t see. The stalls lining every alley are gone. The people are gone: the out-of-towners stocking up for the week are back at home, the gringos have moved on to Lake Atitlan.

The noise is also gone. No street vendors telling pedestrians of their goods and little traffic. The locals and solitude are all that remain.

Non-market Chichi lets you experience an authentic mid-sized town in the Guatemalan highlands. And there are still plenty of restaurants and a couple coffee shops for remote work. I recommend the rooftop patio at Atrio for coffee, work, and a meal.

Even when the market is not ongoing, the town’s central park - Parque Municipal - remains a spot to sit, relax, and people watch. You will find locals gossiping while sipping on Atol de Elote, which they purchased from street carts around the park. You will find kids running and playing on the handful of old playground items in the park’s interior.

There is also a stage in the park and one night, bands played traditional music well into the night; with locals sitting and listening, and the occasional daring couple dancing. So, Chichi is still a charming stop even when the market is not rolling through.

Overall, Chichi on non-market days is a good way to get out of the tourist zones in Xela, Lake Atitlan, and Antigua. So come for the market and linger a few days for quiet and culture.

Footnotes

1. I derived this figure after a long conversation with GPT-5.2 Thinking on how best to determine the market’s size.

   Methodology (summarized by GPT 5.2): The “~500,000 people” figure is an approximation of the market’s likely hinterland using an explicit, system-based definition rather than a formal administrative boundary. It was calculated by summing Guatemala’s official INE 2025 municipal population projections (from the 2015–2030 projections dataset) for a conservative set of nearby, economically connected municipalities in central Quiché that plausibly fall within the market subsystem anchored by Santa Cruz del Quiché and served by Chichicastenango as a major market node: Santo Tomás Chichicastenango, Santa Cruz del Quiché, Joyabaj, Zacualpa, San Antonio Ilotenango, Chiché, Chinique, San Bartolomé Jocotenango, and Patzité. The combined 2025 projected population across these nine municipalities is 531,791, rounded here to “~500,000.” This should be read as a transparent, reproducible estimate of a market service area—not as an official catchment defined by INE or another agency. ↩