The largest lake in Central America and its volcanic island

Lake Nicaragua, also known by the indigenous names Cocibolca or Ukurikitucara, has an área of 8,264 km2, which makes it the largest in Central America.

In this large lake there are two main island groups, the volcanic island of Ometepe and the Solentiname archipelago.

The island of Ometepe (of the Nahuatl Ometepetl = two mountains) has a strange and magical geographical configuration. It is the largest volcanic island in the world that is located inside a lake. The two summits that dominate the insular landscape are the Concepción and Maderas volcanoes with respective altitudes of 1,610 and 1,234 meters. The Concepción volcano whose indigenous name was Choncoteciguatepe (the Chorotegas called Mestliltepe), has had recent activity, with lava spills that in 1953 forced the evacuation of the island. The Madera volcano has not been active for several centuries and its crater is occupied by a lagoon.

The surface of Ometepe is 276 km2 and has a population of 35,000 people. The main urban center, with about 3,000 inhabitants, is Astagalpa or Altagracia in the northeastern end of the island. In the grounds of the main church of the town a park was created with the archaeological sculptures that were found in several points of the territory. They are anthropomorphic figures with animal heads, which seem to represent totems, similar to those that are exhibited in the Gregorio Aguilar de Juigalpa museum in the nearby Sierra de Amerrique.

It is considered that the sculptures are related to the Matagalpa culture that prospered in pre-Hispanic times on the lake margins.

Currently the Matagalpas are a deeply diminished ethnic group, linked to the Lencas and Mayas of Guatemala, Yucatan and Honduras and to the Guatusos that live near the Arenal Volcano in Costa Rica.

One of the local nations, recently recognized as belonging to this ethnic trunk, are the Amerindians, former inhabitants of the Sierra de Amerrique, also called Cordillera Chontaleña

According to theories that have recently been publicized, the name "Amerrique" would have given rise to the name of the American continent.

The origin of the name "America"

The Sierra de Amerrique, the ancestral territory of a group of Matagalpas known as the Americos, is known for its gold deposits located in the old mines of La Libertad and Santo Domingo, still in operation.

The repetition of the name "amerrique" by the first European crews at the end of the XV century and the beginning of the XVI century, referring to a region rich in this metal, was spread in the port populations of Europe, spreading throughout the continent. The idea that the word America derived from the Florentine cartographer Américo Vespucio was generated from certain publications known in later times.

This hypothesis was developed "in extenso" in two books that we published some time ago: "Amerrique, Los Huérfanos del Paraíso" and "La Mentira del Milenio" (Ed. Piriguazú, D.Antón, 1997 y 2000).

 Reproduced from "Chronicles of the Human Peripecie", Danilo Anton, Piriguazu Ediciones

Freshwater sharks in Lake Cocibolca (Lake Nicaragua)

In the coastal and volcanic regions of America, lake landscapes abounded. There were lakes in the Purépecha country of Michoacán, in the Otomi and Nahua central region of Mexico, in the volcanic plateaus and valleys of the Mayan country, in the Lenca and Guatuso lands of Central America, and further south, in the coasts, mountains and plateaus of the South American continent.

These lakes were privileged sites for human occupation. In addition to supplying fresh water for towns and cities, they contained very rich ecosystems with fish, birds, invertebrates and aquatic plants that could provide food for many people.

On the shores of the lakes, fishing villages were established, which in addition to fishing took advantage of other resources of the lacunar environment, such as crustaceans, mollusks, batrachians, algae or plant fibers.

In Mesoamerica progress was made in the use of lacunar waters and a productive agriculture was developed by means of floating gardens, called chinampas in the Mexican lakes.

In larger bodies of water, such as the lakes of the Anahuac valley in the Mexican plateau, lake Titicaca in the Peruvian-Bolivian plateau and Lake Cocibolca in Nicaragua, lake surfaces provided an adequate environment for navigation and trade between the coastal regions. In many ways these lakes represented prosperity and abundance and allowed the development of complex societies with dense demographic concentrations and high productivity.

European colonization produced profound changes in the relationship of populations with the interior waters of the continent. After five centuries of Creole occupation of the lacunar coasts, the landscape is no longer the same.

Many lakes in America have suffered human predation. Some have disappeared. Others have been reduced to a minimal expression. There are lakes that are polluted and do not harbor animal life in their waters. And finally there are the degraded, who have lost diversity, with extinct or endangered species.

The Great Lake of Nicaragua, called Cocibolca by the Nahuas and Ukurikitucara by the Guatusos and Matagalpas was for a long time home to sharks. It was a unique species of freshwater sharks. The scientists called him Carcharhinus nicaraguensis.

It is a species that is closely related to the Bull Shark that abounds in tropical seas.

The studies made it possible to verify that the Shark of the Lake migrated by the San Juan River to the Caribbean, in the style of the salmon, and then returned. This was confirmed by means of some labeled specimens.

Formerly the species was very abundant. Although there were stories about their aggressiveness, attacks on people, the danger they could represent, in fact it was a fairly harmless fish.

In 2004, it was reported that in the waters of the San Juan River, a massacre of the species was occurring as a result of the very high price paid for the fin of the animal in Japan and other countries in the East. The figure of $ 256 per pound (more than $ 500 per kilogram) was mentioned. The indiscriminate fishing continues and it is thought that the shark of the lake is about to become extinct.

Or maybe it's already extinct.
Reproduced from "Chronicles of Human Peripecy", Danilo Antón, Piriguazú Ediciones