🇬🇹 Guatemala · Highlands and the west
High in the Cuchumatanes, the tallest non-volcanic mountain range in Central America, hides one of the most singular towns in Guatemala: Todos Santos Cuchumatán. Set in a valley more than 2,400 meters up, surrounded by cold peaks and steeply pitched maize fields, this Mam Maya town preserves its culture with an intensity that is hard to find anywhere else in the country.
The first thing that surprises you is the dress. Unlike almost all of Guatemala, where traditional male dress has practically disappeared, in Todos Santos the men still wear an unmistakable outfit every day: red-and-white striped trousers, a striped shirt with an embroidered collar, a wool jacket and a straw hat with a blue band. The women wear equally distinctive purple and blue huipiles. It's one of the few places in the world where the complete male costume is still a natural part of everyday life.
This guide covers Todos Santos Cuchumatán with a practical and respectful eye: how to reach this remote Cuchumatanes town, what to see and which walks to do, how to approach its Mam culture and, above all, what to know about its most famous event: the unbridled horse race of 1 November, one of the most vibrant —and most intense— traditions in Guatemala. It's a destination for travelers after authenticity at altitude, in every sense.
Todos Santos Cuchumatán is an ancient Mam Maya settlement in the highlands of the Cuchumatanes range, in the department of Huehuetenango. The Mam region was conquered by the Spanish in the 16th century, after the siege of Zaculeu (the Mam capital) in 1525. During the colonial era, the towns of the area were organized as pueblos de indios around doctrinal churches; the name 'Todos Santos' comes from the Catholic calendar (the feast of All Saints, 1 November), combined with 'Cuchumatán', for the range that surrounds it. Its great altitude and its remoteness kept the town relatively isolated for centuries, which helped preserve its Mam language, its dress and its traditions. The famous horse race of 1 November, its hallmark, has roots that tradition links to the colonial era and to the community's cultural appropriation of the horse. Like the whole region, Todos Santos suffered the impact of the internal armed conflict (1960-1996), with violence and displacement. In the decades that followed, the town has also seen heavy migration to the United States, which transformed its economy. Despite everything, Todos Santos remains one of the most vibrant strongholds of Mam culture and a fascinating destination for travelers. The full history is on our history page.
Read the full history ↓The far northwestern department, dominated by the Sierra de los Cuchumatanes, the highest non-volcanic range in Central America: land of the old Mam kingdom of Zaculeu, of many Maya peoples and languages, of high moorland and of a world-famous coffee.
Read the history of Huehuetenango →No exact prices: a scale from $ (budget) to $$$$$ (luxury), with 2-3 options per category.
Origins, formation and what the sources say.
Every 1 November, while the rest of the world remembers its dead in silence, in a town lost more than 2,400 meters up the men get drunk, mount their horses and gallop tirelessly from one end of a dirt track to the other, back and forth, hour after hour, until they drop from exhaustion or fall from the saddle. There is no winner and no finish line: this is the carrera de las ánimas of Todos Santos Cuchumatán, one of the most intense and enigmatic rituals in Guatemala. And those who ride it wear an outfit that barely exists anywhere else in the country: red-striped trousers, an embroidered shirt and a straw hat. To understand why this corner of the sierra has preserved what almost all of Guatemala has lost, you have to look at its history. Todos Santos Cuchumatán sits in a high valley of the Cuchumatanes range, the tallest non-volcanic mountain chain in Central America, in the department of Huehuetenango. Since pre-Hispanic times this region has been the territory of the Mam Maya people, one of the great Maya linguistic communities of Guatemala, spread across Huehuetenango, San Marcos and Quetzaltenango.
The great altitude of the place —the town sits above 2,400 meters, ringed by peaks topping 3,000— and its distance from the centers of power shaped its history. The Mam of this area lived from high-altitude agriculture, above all maize grown on steep slopes, supplemented by raising sheep and other animals adapted to the cold. The cold, windy moorland landscape molded a hardy culture deeply bound to the mountain.
Remains such as the ruins of Tojcunanchén, near the town, recall the antiquity of human settlement in this area. The Mam language, still spoken in Todos Santos today, is one of the firmest roots of local identity, passed down through the generations despite centuries of outside pressure.
The Mam region was brought under Spanish rule in the 16th century, as part of the conquest of the Guatemalan highlands. The decisive episode was the siege of Zaculeu, the capital of the Mam lordship, in 1525, when the forces of Gonzalo de Alvarado subdued the Mam population after a long blockade. With the fall of Zaculeu, the Mam towns of the whole region —including the communities of the high Cuchumatanes— came under Spanish control.
During the colonial era, the friars and the administration reorganized the indigenous population into pueblos de indios, grouped around a doctrinal church and placed under the patronage of a saint or a Catholic feast. That is how Todos Santos Cuchumatán got its present name: 'Todos Santos' for the Catholic feast of All Saints (1 November), and 'Cuchumatán' for the range that surrounds it. This pattern of naming towns by combining a Christian saint or feast with an indigenous place name is common throughout Guatemala.
Despite the colonial imposition, the remoteness and harshness of the setting meant that the Spanish presence and, later, that of the state was always limited at these altitudes. That allowed the town to preserve, with remarkable strength, its Mam language, its communal organization and its traditions, while adopting and reinterpreting elements of Catholicism, such as the feast of All Saints itself.
Two features made Todos Santos Cuchumatán famous worldwide: the persistence of its traditional dress and the horse race of 1 November. As for the dress, Todos Santos is one of the very few places in Guatemala —and in the world— where men still wear the traditional male outfit every day: red-and-white striped trousers, a shirt with an embroidered collar, a wool jacket and a straw hat with a band. In most of the country, indigenous male dress disappeared decades ago, which makes this case exceptional. The women, for their part, wear their distinctive purple and blue huipiles.
The horse race of 1 November is the event that has given the town international fame. It's a ritual, marathon race, part of the All Saints' Day festival, in which riders in traditional dress gallop up and down a track for many hours. It isn't a competition with a winner in the conventional sense but an act loaded with cultural symbolism, endurance and celebration, deeply rooted in the community. Tradition links its origin to the colonial era and to the way the community made the horse —introduced by the Spanish— its own.
The festival combines the race with marimba music, food, drink and the observance of the Day of the Dead, in an intense and festive atmosphere that draws travelers from all over the world. It's one of the most singular living cultural expressions in Guatemala, though it's best approached with respect, understanding that it is above all a celebration of the community itself.
Like much of Guatemala's Maya highlands, the Huehuetenango and Cuchumatanes region —Todos Santos included— felt the impact of the internal armed conflict that devastated the country between 1960 and 1996. The rural and indigenous areas of the west were the scene of violence, militarization, forced displacement and human rights violations, especially in the hardest years of the conflict, at the start of the 1980s.
The historic isolation of Todos Santos, high in the sierra, did not spare it these events, which left a painful mark on the memory of the Mam community. As in other highland regions, the population suffered the consequences of a conflict that struck indigenous peoples with particular harshness, as the Commission for Historical Clarification later documented in its report 'Guatemala: Memoria del Silencio' (1999).
Despite everything, the community held on to its language, its dress and its traditions, including the 1 November festival. The cultural resilience of Todos Santos —its capacity to preserve Mam identity in the face of centuries of pressure and the traumas of the 20th century— is one of the things that most impresses anyone who learns its history.
In the decades after the conflict, Todos Santos Cuchumatán went through another transformative phenomenon: intense migration to the United States. Many men and families from the town emigrated in search of work, and the remittances they send became a pillar of the local economy, visible in the building of new houses and in changes to daily life. This migration connects this remote Cuchumatanes town with communities of todosanteros in cities across North America.
The process has brought transformations, but the town has managed to keep its identity alive: Mam is still spoken, traditional dress is still everyday wear, and the 1 November festival, with its horse race, remains the great event of the year, drawing back even those who return from abroad to take part.
Today, Todos Santos is at once a stronghold of Mam culture and a destination that attracts travelers in search of authenticity: people interested in living Maya culture, in the high-altitude landscape of the Cuchumatanes, in learning the language or Spanish at its schools, or in witnessing its famous festival. Visiting with respect —honoring its customs, asking permission before photographing and valuing its history— is a chance to glimpse one of the strongest and most resilient expressions of Guatemalan indigenous identity.