Language: Spanish
Currency: Quetzal (GTQ)
Calling Code: 502
Guatemala- is a sovereign state located in Central
America, at its northwestern tip, with a wide native culture,
product of the Mayan heritage and Castilian influence during the
colonial era. In spite of its relatively small territorial
extension, Guatemala has a great climatic variety, product of its
mountainous relief that goes from the level of the sea to the 4220
meters on that level, this propitiates that in the country exist
ecosystems so varied that they go from the mangroves of the Pacific
wetlands to the high mountain cloud forests. It borders to the west
and north with Mexico, to the east with Belize, the Gulf of Honduras
(Caribbean Sea) and the Republic of Honduras, to the southeast with
El Salvador, and to the south with the Pacific Ocean. The country
has an area of 108,889 km², its capital is Guatemala City,
officially called "Nueva Guatemala de la Asunción". The official
language is Spanish, although there are twenty-three Mayan
languages, the Xinca and Garífuna languages, the latter spoken by
the African descendants population in the Caribbean department of
Izabal.
The territory where Guatemala is currently located is
part of Mesoamerica and the Mayan and Olmec cultures were developed
along with the neighboring countries. After the conquest of America,
Guatemala became part of the Viceroyalty of New Spain as a General
Captaincy. After its independence from Spain in 1821 that same year
was formed in the Kingdom of Guatemala, what is now Guatemala became
part of the First Mexican Empire as well as the Federal Republic of
Central America; not until 1847 when the current republic was
established and when the country began to open up with neighboring
countries and establishing diplomatic relations with some world
powers. After the triumph of a liberal reform in 1871 a series of
dictatorial regimes and few democratic ones were established until
1944, the year in which the Guatemalan Revolution of 1944 took
place. This revolution lasted until 1954, the year in which a
liberation movement The national government resumed the country's
power and precipitated the country into a civil war that began in
1960 and ended in 1996.
Already in the 21st century,
Guatemala had a relatively stable economic policy that currently
positions it as the ninth largest economy in Latin America, however,
the levels of poverty and income inequality remain high, even more
than when the agreements were signed. of peace in 1996.
Antigua is a pleasant town famous for its beautiful parks and magnificent Spanish architecture.
Bocas del Polochic is an extensive nature preserve of diverse ecosystem in Guatemala.
El Mirador Archeological Site is one of the largest, one of the oldest and least uncovered Mayan city state.
El Remate is famous for small eco- friendly hotels designated for tourists who like seclusion and pristine untouched nature.
Grutas de Lanquín is underground cave system with beautiful geological formations situated in Guatemala.
Lake Atitlán is situated 16 km (10 mi) South- East of Antigua in Guatemala. It covers a surface area of 130.1 sq km (50.2 sq mi).
Semuc Champey Natural monument famous for its colorful waters is situated in Alta Verapaz Department.
Tikal is an ancient Mayan site located in El Petén Department of Guatemala was first settled in the 4th century BC.
The name "Guatemala" comes from the Aztec word Cuauhtēmallān, meaning "place of many trees", derived from the Quiche word for "many trees", or possibly trees of the genus Eysenhardtia. This name was given to the territory by the Tlaxcala soldiers who accompanied Pedro de Alvarado during the Spanish conquest.
Guatemala is located within the geographical area known as
Mesoamerica. Several cultures developed within its territorial limits.
Among them the Mayan Civilization that was notable for achieving a
complex social development. He excelled in several scientific
disciplines such as architecture, writing, an advanced calculation of
time by means of mathematics and astronomy. The Mayan calendar,
according to historians, was more accurate than the Gregorian calendar
we use today. They were hunters, farmers, practiced fishing,
domesticated animals such as turkeys and ducks; they were transported in
canoes to navigate the rivers and to travel to nearby islands. They also
excelled in painting, sculpture, goldsmithing and copper metallurgy,
woven cotton and agave fiber, developed the most complete writing system
in pre-Hispanic America, among the sports they practiced, the ball game
stands out, which more than a game was a ceremony.
In 1523 the
Spanish conquistadors arrived from the west, coming from Mexico, under
the command of Captain Pedro de Alvarado, with the intention of
exploring and colonizing the territories of present-day Guatemala. They
clashed first with the K'iche', and then briefly allied with the
Kaqchikeles, founding their first settlement on July 25, 1524 in the
vicinity of Iximché (Tecpán), capital of the Kaqchikeles, a town that
received the name Santiago de los Caballeros de Guatemala in honor of
the chief apostle.
On November 22, 1527, this city was moved to
the Almolonga Valley — located in the Moderna neighborhood of San Miguel
Escobar in Ciudad Vieja, Sacatepéquez—, due to the constant siege it
suffered from the attacks of the natives.
The regular orders of
Dominican priests were established in 1529, while the Franciscans did so
in 1530 and the Mercedarians in 1536. Between 1530 and 1531 Captain
Alonso de Ávila accidentally on his route from Ciudad Real to Acalán
discovered the lagoon and Peñol de Lacam-Tún. The inhabitants of this
area who traded with the peoples previously conquered by the Spaniards
avoided a direct confrontation by using the jungle as a refuge. There
were several unsuccessful attempts to conquer the Lacandons: Juan
Enríquez de Guzmán tried from New Spain; Francisco de Montejo tried it
from the Yucatan Peninsula; Pedro de Alvarado from Guatemala with
Captain Francisco Gil Zapata and Pedro Solórzano from Chiapa. Then the
Dominicans tried to carry out a peaceful conversion in the "War Lands"
of Tezulutlan.
The second location of the capital in the
Almolonga Valley (today the neighborhood of San Miguel Escobar in Ciudad
Vieja, Sacatepéquez), was destroyed in the early morning of September
11, 1541 by an avalanche of mud and stones that came from the top of the
Agua Volcano or Hunahpú Volcano, as the Guatemalan indians knew it,
burying the then capital of the region and burying the city with most of
its inhabitants. Among them was the governor Doña Beatriz de la Cueva,
widow of Pedro de Alvarado. This forced the city to be moved again to
the nearby Panchoy Valley, about 6 kilometers downstream, where the city
of Antigua Guatemala is currently located.
In 1543 the Audiencia
and Royal Chancellery of Santiago de Guatemala was created, known simply
as the Real Audiencia de Guatemala, which was initially established in
another city "by order of the Council of the Indies of September 13,
1543, the Audiencia is commanded to reside in the villa de Valladolid de
Comayagua". Then, on May 16, 1544, the Royal Audiencia moved to Gracias
a Dios in Honduras, and remained there until 1549. By Royal Decrees of
October 25, 1548 and June 1, 1549, the transfer of the Royal Audiencia
to its definitive seat was granted, settling in the city of Santiago de
Guatemala, being the highest court of the Spanish Crown in the Captaincy
General of Guatemala, for the modern territory of Guatemala, El
Salvador, Honduras, Nicaragua and Costa Rica and the Mexican state of
Chiapas.Moderna tribunal de la Corona española en la Capitanía General
de Guatemala, para el moderno territorio de Guatemala, El Salvador,
Honduras, Nicaragua and Costa Rica and the Mexican state of Chiapas.
In 1609, the Captaincy General of Guatemala also began to be called
the Kingdom of Guatemala, because the captain general who exercised the
military command, was the civil governor (police and treasury) in the
whole territory, and was also the president of the Audiencia and Royal
Chancellery of Santiago de Guatemala, and all those powers were
centralized as if it were a kingdom.
Mayan Periods in Mesoamerica
Formative period of collectors and
hunters
It was the time when the settlers arrived at the first
settlements in the region.
Preclassic 1300 BC to 300 AD
It is
mostly known for the development of agriculture and its irrigation
techniques, which allowed them to settle far from the coast. Hunting,
fishing and gathering became complementary activities after the
domestication of corn.
Classical Period 300 A.D. to 900 A.D.
Also called the Mayan Golden Age. During this period the cultural
process of the Maya reached its maximum development, both in the
technological field and in the social, economic, political, religious
and artistic. Irrigation canals were built. The society was based on a
theocratic government.
Postclassic Period 900 A.D. to 1521 A.D.
Most of the regions entered a rapid decline, especially in the southern
lowlands, which were abandoned. There was division among the Maya, a
militaristic stage began and consequently ceremonial rituals became less
and less important according to Maya 'B'anob'äl (Mayan Kaqchikel
language).
Mayan archaeological sites
The Mirador Basin has an
area of 2169 km2 that is located north of Tikal, Petén, and houses,
among other sites, El Mirador — the largest city of the Mayan
civilization—, and Tintal —the second largest city. There is also Nakbé
- the oldest Mayan city in the lowlands of the Yucatan Peninsula—, and
at least twenty-six other sites that were developed in the Preclassic,
between 1500 BC and 300. The first organized political state on the
American continent, the Kingdom of Khan — a kind of Mayan Camelot — was
settled in that place, at the same time that the Olmecs were beginning
their development and who, even before the discovery of these cities,
were considered the mother Culture of Mesoamerica. There is conclusive
evidence that the Mirador Maya developed a writing, mathematical,
agricultural and astronomical system that made the Maya, the most
developed and sophisticated culture, about a thousand years earlier than
was believed and accepted until the 1980s.
Tikal is one of the
largest urban centers of the pre-Columbian Mayan civilization. It is
located in the municipality of Flores in the department of Petén, in the
current territory of the Republic of Guatemala and is part of the Tikal
National Park that was declared a World Heritage Site by UNESCO in
1979. According to the glyphs found at the site, its Mayan name would
have been "Yax Mutul". Tikal was the capital of a belligerent state that
became one of the most powerful kingdoms of the ancient Maya. Although
the monumental architecture of the site dates back as far as the fourth
century BC. C., Tikal reached its apogee during the Classic Period,
between 200 and 900 A.D. During this time, the city dominated much of
the Mayan region in the political, economic and military sphere, and
maintained links with other regions throughout Mesoamerica, even with
the great metropolis of Teotihuacán in the distant Valley of Mexico.
After the Late Classic no major monuments were built, some palaces of
the elite were burned and the population gradually declined until the
site was abandoned at the end of the tenth century. With a long list of
dynastic rulers, the discovery of many of their respective tombs and the
study of their monuments, temples and palaces, Tikal is probably the
best understood of the great Mayan cities of the Mesoamerican lowlands.
On the other hand, Uaxactún was inhabited since the Middle
Preclassic Period around 900 BC and the entire Classic, having its
maximum splendor from 500 AD to 900 AD. The earliest inscription is in
328 AD on Stela 9 and the last one in 899 AD on Stela 12. This indicates
that it was the city with the longest occupation of the Petén. It was
considered for a long time as the oldest, until the discovery of Nakbé
and El Mirador, to the northwest, showed that these cities corresponded
to the Early Preclassic period (1000 BC - 200 BC). Like many other
cities of the Classic, Uaxactún was abandoned at the beginning of the x,
being covered by the jungle, until its discovery at the beginning of the
xx, in 1916, by Sylvanus Morley during the government of Manuel Estrada
Cabrera. It was in Uaxactún where the foundations for the investigation
of the Mayan Civilization were laid and where a thorough study of the
site was initiated, carried out mainly, but not exclusively by the
Carnegie Institution of Washington. In fact, the excavations initiated
by John Lloyd Stephens and Frederick Catherwood, made the Mayan Culture
popular and known all over the world.
On January 31, 1676, by Royal Decree of Charles II, the Royal and
Pontifical University of San Carlos Borromeo was founded, the third
university founded in America, where many important figures of the
country studied, including Fray Francisco Ximénez, discoverer of the
manuscript Popol Vuh — and who also translated it into Spanish adapting
it to the Catholic religion — and Doctor José Felipe Flores, eminent
protomedicist of Guatemala and personal physician of the King of Spain.
In the art of the seventeenth century, the master painter Pedro de
Liendo and the master sculptor Quirio Cataño stand out.
The
capital of the Kingdom of Guatemala would be located in Santiago de los
Caballeros, until its transfer in 1775 to the Valle de la Ermita, the
current location of the capital. King Philip II of Spain and Portugal
granted it the title of "Very noble and very loyal City of Santiago de
los Caballeros de Goathemala". During the Spanish domination, which
lasted almost 300 years, Guatemala was a strategic region (Captaincy
General of the Kingdom of Guatemala), forming part of the Viceroyalty of
New Spain. The Captaincy General of Guatemala extended from the Chiapas
region (currently belonging to Mexico) to present-day Costa Rica. Their
political divisions would frequently vary, as would the borders between
the various provinces. In the middle of the seventeenth century, the
kingdom as a whole had thirty-two provinces, of which twelve were in the
Moderna territory of the Republic of Guatemala: the valley of Guatemala,
where the city of Santiago de los Caballeros de Guatemala, seat of the
Royal Audiencia; the Mayor's Offices of Amatique, Suchitepéquez and
Verapaz, the municipalities of Acasaguastlán, Atitlán, Chiquimula,
Escuintla, Guazacapán, Quetzaltenango, Sololá (Tecpán-Atitlán) and
Totonicapán. Due to its strategic location on the Pacific coast,
Guatemala became a complementary node to the Manila Galleon's
trans-Pacific trade connecting Latin America with Asia via the
Spanish-owned Philippines.
At the end of the eighteenth century,
when the enlightened reformism of the Bourbons implemented the regime of
Intendencies in some regions of the Spanish Empire, the number of
provinces of the Captaincy General of Guatemala was reduced to 15, of
which 9 were in the current territory of Guatemala: the Mayor's Offices
of Chimaltenango, Escuintla, Sacatepéquez, Sololá, Suchitepéquez,
Totonicapán and Verapaz, and the Corregimientos of Chiquimula and
Quetzaltenango. When the Constitution of Cádiz was promulgated in 1812,
the kingdom of Guatemala disappeared as a unit, and was replaced by two
provinces, without subordination to each other: the province of
Guatemala, which comprised the territory of Chiapas, El Salvador,
Guatemala and Honduras, and the Province of Nicaragua and Costa Rica. In
1821, during the Liberal Triennium in Spain, this Constitution came into
force again, separating the Provinces of Comayagua (Honduras), Chiapas
and El Salvador from the Province of Guatemala.
In 1810 José de
Bustamante y Guerra was appointed captain general of Guatemala, at a
time of great independence activity; he developed an enlightened
reformist policy, but before the revolution of Miguel Hidalgo y Costilla
and José María Morelos in Mexico he prepared troops in Guatemala and
created the "Fernando VII volunteer corps" and from his post he faced
the local constitutionalists, harshly repressing the insurgents; he
opposed the liberal constitution of 1812. Since October 28, 1813, and
after the election of the rector of the Royal and Pontifical University
of San Carlos Borromeo, several meetings organized by Fray Juan
Nepomuceno de la Concepción had been held in the priory cell of the
Convent of Bethlehem. Those who gathered there swore to keep the treaty
secret, however, it is likely that they read a proclamation by José
María Morelos and discussed the possibility of dismissing the Captain
General of Guatemala José de Bustamante y Guerra. In November there was
another meeting at the home of Cayetano and Mariano Bedoya, younger
brothers of Doña Dolores Bedoya de Molina, and brothers-in-law of Pedro
Molina Mazariegos.
On December 21, 1813, Bustamante and Guerra,
upon learning that seditious people were gathering in the Convent of
Belén to attempt an uprising, issued an order for Captain Antonio Villar
and his assistant, Francisco Cascara, to arrest the religious of that
monastery. The captain general noticed the plot through Lieutenant
Yúdice, to whom José de la Llana and Mariano Sánchez would have joined.
Likewise, Bustamante commissioned his nephew the Carmelite Fray Manuel
de la Madre de Dios at the Casa de Correos, to open any correspondence
that fell into his hands. Bustamante y Guerra later denounced his
successor named Juan Antonio de Tornos, Intendant of Honduras, for
alleged liberal tendencies and thus achieved his confirmation in his
post by Ferdinand VII in 1814. He was dismissed in August 1817 and
returned to Spain in 1819.
The Spanish crown focused on the
catechization of the indigenous. The congregations founded by the royal
missionaries in the New World were called "doctrines of Indians" or
simply "doctrines". Originally, the friars had only a temporary mission:
to teach the Catholic faith to the indigenous, and then give way to
secular parishes such as those established in Spain; for this purpose,
the friars should have taught the gospels and the Spanish language to
the natives. Once the indigenous people were catechized and spoke
Spanish, they could start living in parishes and contributing with the
tithe, as the Peninsulars did.
But this plan was never carried
out, mainly because the crown lost control of the regular orders as soon
as the members of these embarked for America. Protected by their
apostolic privileges to help the conversion of the indigenous, the
missionaries only attended to the authority of their priors and
provincials, and not to that of the Spanish authorities or those of the
bishops. The provincials of the orders, in turn, were accountable only
to the leaders of their order and not to the crown. Once they had
established a doctrine, they protected their interests in it, even
against the interests of the king and in this way the doctrines became
villages of Indians that remained established for the rest of the
colony.
The doctrines were founded at the discretion of the
friars, since they had complete freedom to establish communities to
catechize the indigenous, in the hope that these communities would
eventually pass to the jurisdiction of a secular parish to which the
tithe would be paid. In reality, what happened was that the doctrines
grew out of control and never passed into the control of parishes. The
collective administration by the group of friars was the most important
feature of the doctrines since it guaranteed the continuation of the
community system in case one of the leaders died.
The colonial
authorities established steps or stadiums by race in Guatemala; members
of lower categories were prohibited from claiming the privileges of
those in higher categories, becoming the role and social position of
people and peoples.
People who were in the lower parts of the
hierarchy were given the opportunity to access higher echelons and
therefore, everyone was looking for better marital, social and cultural
relationships; the inhabitants of the colony were in a constant struggle
to approach and resemble the features of the dominant group of that
time: the Spaniards and Creoles.
The area occupied by Belize on the Yucatan Peninsula was never
occupied by Spain or Guatemala, although Spain made some exploratory
expeditions in the sixteenth century that served as a basis for later
claiming the area as its own; Guatemala simply inherited that argument
to claim the territory, although it never sent expeditions to the area
after independence due to the wars that occurred in Central America
between 1821 and 1860. For their part, the English had established
small settlements since the middle of the seventeenth century, mainly
for buccaneer bases and then for logging; the settlements were never
recognized as British colonies although they were somehow ruled by the
English government in Jamaica. In the eighteenth century Belize became
the main smuggling point in Central America although then the English
recognized the Spanish sovereignty of the region through the treaties of
1783 and 1786, in exchange for ending hostilities with Spain and that
the Spaniards authorized the subjects of the British crown to exploit
the precious woods that were in Belize.
After the independence of
the Central American region from the Spanish crown in 1821, Belize
became the spearhead of British commercial penetration in the Central
American isthmus; English trading houses settled in Belize and began
prosperous trade routes with the Caribbean ports of Guatemala, Honduras
and Nicaragua.
The liberals took power in Guatemala in 1829 after
defeating and expelling the members of the Aycinena Clan and the regular
clergy of the Catholic Church and initiated a formal but unsuccessful
claim over the Belizean region; this, despite the fact that on the other
hand, Francisco Morazán - then president of the Central American
Federation - personally initiated commercial deals with the English,
especially the mahogany trade. In Guatemala, Governor Mariano Gálvez
gave several territorial concessions to English citizens, including the
best hacienda in La Verapaz, Hacienda de San Jerónimo; these British
deals were taken advantage of by the parish priests in Guatemala -since
the secular clergy had not been expelled for not having property or
political power - to accuse the liberals of heresy and initiate a
peasant revolution against the liberal heretics and in favor of the true
religion. When Rafael Carrera came to power in 1840 after the triumph of
the revolution, not only did he not continue with the claims on the
Belizean territory, but he established a Guatemalan consulate in the
region to watch over Guatemala's interests in that important commercial
point. Belizean trade was predominant in the region until 1855, when
the Colombians built a transoceanic railway in Panama in 1855, allowing
trade to flow more efficiently in the Guatemalan Pacific ports; from
this moment, Belize began to decline in importance.
By 1845,
Rafael Carrera was solidly in power, and began negotiations with the
British crown. Near the village of Salamá was the old convent abandoned
after the expulsion of the Dominicans in 1829, which was finally sold to
an Englishman surnamed Bennett thanks to the intervention of the English
minister before Governor Gálvez. Bennett baptized it as Hacienda de San
Jerónimo, and soon it was surrounded by sugar cane and coffee
plantations, which were maintained thanks to the renovation of the old
irrigation system; Bennett replaced the vineyards of the Dominicans with
sugar cane plantations and the wine was replaced by the "San Geronimo
Cigar" a spirit that became famous throughout the Republic.
In
order to be able to expel the American filibuster William Walker
definitively from Central America, President Rafael Carrera was forced
to request arms from England, which in return forced him to define the
boundaries with Belize. On April 30, 1859, the convention was held
between the representatives of Great Britain and Guatemala to define the
borders with Belize, after which a decree was issued in which Guatemala
was favored in the seventh article, which stipulated that England would
open on its own a land communication route from Belize City to Guatemala
City. The road was never built because the conservatives did not agree
with the Belizeans on the exact location of it and then, when the
liberals took power in 1871 they declared the treaty null and void
because the road had not been built.
The colonization began with the expedition of the ship sent by the
Monarch Leopold I of Belgium in 1842. When the Belgians observed the
natural riches that the Izabal region possessed, several settlers
decided to settle in Santo Tomas de Castilla to build infrastructures in
the region; the government gave them the region in perpetuity in
exchange for the company paying sixteen thousand pesos every year to the
government of Guatemala.
In 1844, the district of Santo Tomás de
Castilla was colonized by the Community of La Unión, sponsored by the
Belgian Colonization Company; the government of the State of Guatemala
had granted the district of Santo Tomás to said company by means of the
decree of the Constituent Assembly of Guatemala on May 4, 1843. The
settlers had to convert to Catholicism and become Guatemalan citizens,
but they had the privilege of having their own government.
However, by 1850, the colony had already failed due to the inhospitality
of the region and the Belgian settlers had dispersed to the interior of
the Republic of Guatemala.
In the second half of the nineteenth century, President Justo Rufino
Barrios (1835-1885) began awarding La Verapaz land to German farmers.;
the Germans established a colony in Alta Verapaz thanks to generous
concessions also granted by liberal presidents Manuel Lisandro Barillas
Bercián, José María Reyna Barrios and Manuel Estrada Cabrera. German
immigration to Guatemala began with Rodolfo Dieseldorff, in 1863; after
him came groups of German immigrants were mostly young people who
learned the Q'eqchi language, and several of them mixed with some
indigenous women. In Cobán, a large community of Germans was centered
who came to dominate the coffee growing lands, where their workers were
paid with coins minted by each owner, besides that they could only buy
in the farm's pantry, with which the employer obtained a secure extra
profit.
Decree 170 (or Decree of Redemption of Censuses)
facilitated the expropriation of the lands from the indians in favor of
the Germans, by encouraging the sale by public auction of the communal
lands. Since this time, the main economic activity was the
agroexportation, especially of coffee, bananas and cardamom. Communal
property, dedicated to subsistence crops and which had been preserved by
the government of General Rafael Carrera, became private property aimed
at large-scale cultivation and marketing of agricultural products.
Therefore, the fundamental characteristics of the productive system
since that time were the accumulation of property in a few hands, and a
kind of "farm easement", based on the exploitation of the "young
settlers".
The Germans organized themselves into a very
close-knit and supportive community, carrying out social activities at
the German Club or Deutsche Verein, in Cobán, founded in 1888. In the
beginning, this group was only composed of German partners. The place
was remodeled and equipped to give a pleasant atmosphere, where Germans
felt like at home. It had a library, with books and magazines donated by
those traveling to Germany.
Due to the growing number of
Verapacanese German children, a German school was formed so that
academic education would be more faithful to Deutschtum (Germanization).
In 1935, Juan Schlatermund was in charge of the committee for the
foundation of the German School or Deutsche Schule in Cobán. In 1936,
dormitories and a dining room were set up for children living on distant
estates. In the first year, there were 12 students; the next year, there
were 30. Julio Justin was the first director. The educational
establishment reached 60 students before it was closed in 1941. Years
later, some farms had their own schools, where the children of the
Germans — the employers — studied with the children of the Q'eqchí — the
workers. The Germans were allowed dual citizenship, the children of
Germans could be Guatemalans by birth and live there without losing
being Germans on the part of their parents.
The German influence
lasted in Cobán and Verapaz: descent, trade, coffee and cardamom
production, as well as infrastructure and agricultural systems. There is
a large number of surnames that the Germans inherited to their children
and due to the miscegenation with the Mayan-q'eqchi' population, many
surnames have remained in q'eqchi'es people.
Independence of
Central America
In 1820, Atanasio Tzul, faced with the interest of
his people to end ecclesiastical taxes and tribute, joined forces with
Lucas Aguilar and the mayor of Totonicapán, Narciso Mallol. Together
they fought against the power of the Spanish colony, managed by the
captain general of the Kingdom of Guatemala, the Archbishop of Guatemala
Ramón Casaus y Torres, the local Ladino elite and the caciques of
Totonicapán, who had privileges with respect to the rest of the
indigenous population due to their support for the European conquest.
The royal taxes had been suppressed in 1811 by the cortes of Cádiz, but
were imposed again by King Ferdinand VII. Tzul was flogged for nine days
and later imprisoned in Quetzaltenango, after the movement suffered a
repression at the hands of about a thousand militiamen. On January 25,
1821, he and other leaders requested the grace of pardon, which was
granted on March 1, 1821, after a demonstration by Totonicapenses
individuals.
In Mexico, the revolution obtained a complete
triumph and through the Plan of Iguala declared its total independence
from the Spanish Empire on February 24, 1821. This news baffled the
Spanish authorities in Guatemala and at the same time served as a
stimulus to the pro-independence cause. On March 9, under pressure from
the pro-independence liberals, the captain general left the post to be
filled by army sub-inspector Gabino Gaínza. Gaínza was a man of a very
advanced age, of a weak and mercurial character. Under his leadership,
Central America experienced a social upheaval of intolerable levels that
forced the provincial council to request a meeting from Gaínza to
discuss the difficult issue of independence. Captain General Gaínza,
then, heeding this call, assembled a board of notables composed of the
archbishop, the deputies, the high military officials, the prelates of
the religious orders, and employees of the treasury. In that memorable
meeting, chaired by Gaínza himself, the Creoles present expressed their
opinion freely. José Cecilio del Valle took the floor and in a long
speech, demonstrated the necessity and justice of independence, but
stating that, to proclaim it, the vote of the Provinces must first be
heard.
After a brief period of political uncertainty, on January
5, 1822, the Central American provinces were annexed to the Mexican
Empire, an idea of Agustín de Iturbide to counter the American
expansion. The Mexican Empire wanted to be a monarchy that would lead to
a union of what were inhabitants of the Viceroyalty of New Spain under a
single, Catholic and powerful flag. However, a year later, the empire
collapsed and Republican military established a democracy and a Mexican
state; Guatemala and its provinces separated from it, declaring their
independence again and going on to form the United Provinces of Central
America in July 1823.
On April 12, 1829, after trying to stay in
power after making a pact with the president of the Central American
Federation, Manuel José Arce y Fagoaga, the conservatives in Guatemala,
led by Mariano de Aycinena and Piñol, signed a Capitulation Agreement
with the liberal Honduran general Francisco Morazán, who had managed to
get the rest of the Central American provinces to rebel against the
conservative power of Guatemala. Aycinena was sent to prison along with
his fellow government; Morazán, for his part, annulled the document on
the 20th of the same month, because its main objective was to eliminate
the power of the conservative Creoles and the hierarchy of the Catholic
Church in Guatemala, whom the liberal Creoles detested for having been
under their rule during the Spanish colony. Rafael Carrera, who was
barely fifteen years old and whose family suffered numerous humiliations
at the hands of the Morazán troops, participated in the fighting as a
soldier; the poet and military man José Batres Montúfar and the officer
Miguel García Granados also participated, who were taken prisoner by the
liberal troops.
By 1837, an armed struggle began in the State of
Guatemala against the one who governed the State of Guatemala, liberal
like Francisco Morazán, Doctor José Mariano Gálvez. Driven by liberal
reforms and conservative propaganda, insurgent movements began in the
mountains of Guatemala and Rafael Carrera y Turcios was the top leader
of them; among the revolted troops were numerous indigenous people who
fought for two years to achieve Guatemalan secession from the
federation. The uprisings began by assaulting the towns, without giving
the opportunity to have meetings with the government troops and
propagated the idea of the enemies of Gálvez, which consisted of
accusing him of poisoning the river waters to spread cholera morbus to
the population. However, the government was not to blame for such
poisoning: population growth and the limited capacity of the city's
sanitary structure contributed to the spread of the disease. This
accusation favored the Career goals, turning a large part of the
population against Mariano Gálvez and the liberals; within the liberals
themselves they began to attack Gálvez: José Francisco Barrundia and
María Josefa García Granados even went so far as to publish satirical
newspapers against him.
The Los Altos area was populated mostly
by indigenous people, who had maintained their ancestral traditions and
their lands in the cold highlands of western Guatemala. Throughout the
colonial era there had been revolts against the Spanish government.
After independence, the local mestizos and creoles favored the liberal
party, while the indigenous majority was a supporter of the Catholic
Church and, therefore, conservative. During the administration of the
government of Dr. Mariano Gálvez, the Higher-ups disapproved of the
changes introduced by the head of the government, but the leaders of the
region were not conservatives, but liberals who opposed Gálvez. For
their part, the Creoles and Ladinos of Los Altos had a great resentment
against the merchants of Guatemala City —the members of the Aycinena
Clan— who monopolized trade and flatly opposed the construction of a
port on the Pacific and a highway that would serve Los Altos to trade
with foreign countries directly.
When the Gálvez government fell,
the Creole representatives of Los Altos took the opportunity to secede
from the State of Guatemala on February 2, 1838. Governor Valenzuela
could not do anything about it, and the congress of the Central American
Federation recognized the Sixth State on June 5, 1838 with a provisional
government junta composed of Marcelo Molina Mata, José M. Gálvez and
José A. Aguilar, while the Mexican General Agustín Guzmán - a former
officer of the army of Vicente Filísola who had settled in
Quetzaltenango — was left in command of the State army. The flag of Los
Altos was a modification of that of the United Provinces of Central
America, with a shield in the center showing a volcano in the background
and a resplendent quetzal — a local bird representing freedom- in front.
On March 18, 1840, when the liberal leader Morazán was the head of
state of El Salvador, he invaded Guatemala with 1500 soldiers to
eliminate once and for all the conservative threat to Central America
that had its main stronghold in Guatemala. Morazán easily seized the
capital, as Carrera faked a retreat. When the invaders were celebrating
and starting the sack of the city, Carrera attacked them with 400
soldiers and artillery pieces and contrasted the square, having
triumphed and recovered the city the next day, March 19. The disaster
was such that Morazán had to flee Guatemala with those closest to him
shouting "¡Que viva Carrera!"to save his life, while his soldiers were
left in the city, at the mercy of the Career troops. Shortly after,
Rafael Carrera, upon learning that Los Altos had declared itself
independent again, thinking that Morazán had defeated him, directed his
forces against that state and reincorporated it into the State of
Guatemala in 1840.
Already in power, Rafael Carrera would begin
the construction of a conservative regime, reversing the liberal reforms
made earlier. During his rule, the conservative aristocrats and the
Senior Clergy regained the power they had lost. The liberals, for their
part, accused him of being an illiterate military man, and said that he
signed with the name "Racaraca". For conservatives, he was better known
as the "Adored Caudillo of the Peoples".
Carrera was appointed
president for life in 1854 and ruled Guatemala until his death, which
occurred on Holy Thursday, April 14, 1865. The Carrera government was
influenced by the war in Yucatán to a certain extent; the nonconformity
of the Mayan people was evident since before the independence of Mexico.
The conditions of vassalage of the Mayan indians who had been conquered
in the sixteenth century and their enormous numerical superiority in the
Yucatan Peninsula kept the region in a permanent state of social
tension. The Caste War arose in Yucatan due, in part, to the precarious
living conditions of the Mayan indians in the peninsula: only the
Creoles and some mestizos were Yucatecans with full rights and, in
general, they used to occupy the upper part of the social and economic
scale, so the Mayans, belonging to the impoverished class, did not feel
part of them, they were simply Mayans, outsiders in their own territory,
in the land of their ancestors.
In 1854 the Concordat with the
Holy See was established, which had been signed in 1852 by Cardinal
Jacobo Antonelli, Secretary of State of the Holy See, and Fernando
Lorenzana, minister plenipotentiary of Guatemala to the Holy See. By
means of this treaty, which was designed by the leader of the Aycinena
Clan, Juan José de Aycinena y Piñol, Guatemala granted the education of
the Guatemalan people to the regular orders of the Catholic Church. The
concordat maintained the close relationship between Church and State and
was in force until the fall of the conservative government of Marshal
Vicente Cerna y Cerna.
On the death of General Carrera in 1865, he was succeeded by Marshal
Vicente Cerna y Cerna, who did not promote any renewal in the country.
This circumstance was taken advantage of by the liberals, who had taken
refuge in the territory of Los Altos (currently Quetzaltenango), and who
led by Miguel García Granados and Justo Rufino Barrios, who after
receiving help from Mexican war supplies (in exchange for recognizing
the federation of the State of Chiapas to Mexico, the territories of the
southern zone of the State of Campeche and Soconusco as part of Chiapas)
invaded Guatemala under the slogan of the Liberal Reform of 1871. Miguel
García Granados was provisional president after the overthrow of Cerna,
ruling until June 4, 1873. His government launched the anti-conservative
reforms again, decreeing among other things freedom of the press and
freedom of worship, the suppression of tithes and religious orders and
expelling the Jesuits, in addition to promoting secular education.
Two important economic factors occurred in this period: the
large-scale production of coffee was introduced. This was due to the
fact that the liberal landowners of the West were the main promoters of
the Revolution; and, in order to reward the military who collaborated
with the revolution, the lands of Indians were expropriated, expanses of
land where the Guatemalan indians had lived since colonial times.
Likewise, the rotations of the indigenous people between the properties
of the new landowners were instituted.
Barrios, meanwhile, held
important military positions, succeeding García Granados as President of
Guatemala. During his administration he continued the policy initiated
in the previous presidency, undertaking a vast program of reforms that
included, among other aspects, the Church, the economy and education. He
founded the Mortgage Bank, the so-called Hospital de Oriente, the
Polytechnic School and ordered the construction of the General Cemetery
of Guatemala and the Central Penitentiary of Guatemala. In addition,
during his presidency, the first telegraph and railway lines were laid
in Guatemala, and the contract for the construction of the Southern
Railway was signed. In the administrative and legal order, the Penal
Code, the Military Code and the Fiscal Code were promulgated. Likewise,
the departments of Hyalhuleu and Baja Verapaz were created and free
public education was established, through schools throughout the
country, while at the same time the brotherhoods and religious orders
were abolished. Barrios also promulgated the 1879 Constitution and, the
following year, was re-elected President for a six-year term.
Likewise, the Regulation of Day Laborers is decreed, labor legislation
that placed the indigenous population practically at the disposal of the
interests of the new coffee landowners, and the traditional
conservatives. As a result of this regulation, there was a noticeable
increase in exports, and the exchange with capitalist countries was
activated; both the old conservative aristocrats and the new coffee
landowners benefited from these measures. However, there was one
conservative landowner who was attacked and stripped of the privileges
he had enjoyed during the 30-year government: the Catholic Church. The
coffee-growing liberals were forced to attack the Church because of the
power it had and because of the strong opposition it made to sharing
power with the liberals.
On the other hand, Barrios fiercely
persecuted the opposition, forcing many Guatemalans to flee into exile
from Guatemalan lands. His government was characterized by the
plundering of the national coffers, a fortune that was enjoyed by his
widow in New York, after the death of the general. Barrios was also the
object of criticism after the signing, in 1882, of the Herrera-Mariscal
Boundary Treaty with Mexico, by which Guatemala renounced all claims to
the Soconusco region and its credits against Mexico, without receiving
any compensation for it for the country: it had received Mexican weapons
during the revolution of 1871 that it used to overthrow Cerna, but
nothing more.
In the early 1880s, the Guatemalan president tried
to re-establish the United Provinces of Central America and, in
principle, had the support of El Salvador and Honduras, but Salvadoran
President Rafael Zaldívar later decided to leave the union, with the
support of Mexico. The Mexican president, Porfirio Díaz, feared the
liberal reforms of Barrios and the competition of a strong state in
Central America, where the Barrios plan had borne fruit, so the Mexican
government favored and supported the dismemberment of Central America
into small nations in which the United Mexican States could influence
and maintain its geopolitical interests. The United States also opposed
the union. Barrios then launched a military campaign to forcibly restore
Central American unity, obtaining the backing of Honduran President Luis
Bográn, but Costa Rica, El Salvador and Nicaragua allied to oppose his
claims. To put his plans into practice, Barrios invaded El Salvador in
March 1885, while troops from Costa Rica and Nicaragua were preparing to
confront those from Honduras. However, the Barrios attempt ended
suddenly, as the Guatemalan president was killed in the Battle of
Chalchuapa, shortly after his troops invaded Salvadoran territory.
At the death of Barrios, and following the resignation of the
provisional President Alejandro M. Sinibaldi, the National Assembly
declares that the second appointed to the presidency of the Republic
will assume power. The person indicated was General Manuel Lisandro
Barillas Bercián who arrived at the moment of the burial of General
Justo Rufino Barrios and demanded that power be handed over to him,
claiming that a regular number of troops came with him and indicating
that it was quartered in the vicinity of the city. Before Barillas used
that ruse to push for the immediate entry of the presidency, he held the
position of chief politician of Quetzaltenango. The troop he was talking
about did not exist and so he marched to the Government Palace to assume
the first magistracy of the Nation. What was framed within the law was
that Barillas would call elections at a later time, an aspect that he
ignored to stay in power imposing a dictatorial government.
During the liberal governments, the German colonization of La Verapaz
began; the Germans organized themselves into a very united and
supportive community. They carried out their social activities at the
German Club or Deutsche Verein, in Cobán, founded in 1888. In the
beginning, this group was only composed of German partners. The place
was remodeled and equipped to give a pleasant atmosphere, where Germans
felt like at home. It had a library, with books and magazines donated by
those traveling to Germany. Today, where this club used to be, the
Charitable Society is now located. The Germans formed their own world in
Alta Verapaz thanks to generous concessions granted by liberal
presidents Manuel Lisandro Barillas Bercián, José María Reina Barrios
and Manuel Estrada Cabrera. Due to the growing number of Verapacanese
German children, a German school was formed so that academic education
would be more faithful to Deutschtum (Germanization).
Reyna
Barrios' main project was the construction of an interoceanic railway
that would be attractive to foreign investors, and to promote it, she
held the Central American Exposition in 1897. Unfortunately, the railway
could not be completed on time and the exhibition was a failure, which
left Guatemala with a large external debt, mainly with English banks,
and which from then on was called the "English debt". In order to solve
the problems of the country, he wanted to extend his government, asking
the Assembly to modify the Constitution of 1879 to that effect. Due to
the popular discontent caused by the prevailing inflation (due to the
realization of the Central American Exhibition, the beautification
projects and the entry of Brazil into the coffee market), the Quetzaltec
Revolution of 1897 took place, which was put down and ended with the
execution of prominent Quetzaltecos citizens, among them the first mayor
of Quetzaltenango, Sinforoso Aguilar and the philanthropist Juan
Aparicio, jr.
In 1898, José María Reina Barrios was murdered by a
British citizen of Swiss origin named Edgar Zollinger (who had been an
employee and friend of Aparicio) and who was killed by the police
without giving time to say what was the cause that motivated him to
perpetrate the assassination. The first appointed to the Presidency,
Manuel Estrada Cabrera, after a skilful political game, took power.
On August 31, 1901, President Manuel Estrada Cabrera granted "The Central American Improvement Comp."the exploitation, conservation and completion of the northern railway line. In January 1904, Minor C. Keith of New York - who was the owner of the United Fruit Company and William C. Van Horn of Montreal acquired this concession, which remained in their possession for ninety-nine years, after which it would pass to the State of Guatemala. It is important to note that American economic policy at that time was known as the "Great Cudgel of US President Teddy Roosevelt's Banana Wars" and was directed towards the Panama Canal: with the canal under construction, its main purpose was to ensure a peaceful and stable atmosphere throughout the Central American region. For this reason, there was an increase in the operations of North American companies in Central America, including the exponential growth of the operations of the United Fruit Company in Guatemala. These operations were frequently reinforced by the United States Marines. In this way, the population and the US economic and political interference in Guatemala began to increase, especially in the Izabal region.
Manuel Estrada Cabrera (known as "don Manuel"; or simply as "Cabrera"
by his detractors) ruled Guatemala from 1898 to 1920. Thanks to the
concessions granted to foreigners, by 1901 the United Fruit Company
(UFCO) began to become the main economic force in Guatemala, both
political and economic. The government was often subordinated to the
interests of the Company (one of the main in Central America). The UFCO
came to control more than 40% of the arable land of the country and
other Central American countries, as well as the facilities of the ports
(especially Puerto Barrios). It should be remembered that the North
American economic policy at that time was directed towards the Panama
Canal: with the canal under construction since 1903, its main purpose
was to ensure a peaceful and stable atmosphere throughout the Central
American region without the intervention of European powers. For this
reason, there was an increase in the operations of North American
companies in Central America, including the exponential growth of the
operations of the United Fruit Company. In addition, Estrada Cabrera
also had another reason for approaching the United States: the main one
was that he could ask for military help in case England sent a military
fleet to demand the payment of the debt that Guatemala had with the
English banks, and which increased after the government of Barrios and,
especially, after the failure of the Central American Exposition of
1897; and this fit perfectly with the North American policy of the "Big
Stick" of the "Banana Wars" promoted by President Theodore Roosevelt to
maintain peace in the region and use its resources.
Another of
the countries that tried to influence the policy of Guatemala during the
government of Estrada Cabrera was Mexico, which was governed by General
Porfirio Díaz and was concerned about the growing American presence,
which had increased since the war with Spain over Cuba in 1898 and then
with military aid during the Separation of Panama from Colombia that
allowed the Americans to build the Panama Canal. Díaz and the rest of
the presidents of the region saw with concern how Estrada Cabrera had
bowed to American interests.
The Totoposte War in 1903 caused a
shortage of corn in the country and the work of Guatemalan workers was
hired by the government with very low remuneration. At the end of this
first period of government, the exchange rate with respect to the US
dollar was $12 per US$1.
Despite suffering several attacks
against him, Manuel Estrada Cabrera ruled with an iron fist until 1920,
when he was overthrown by the revolution led by the Unionist Party, led
by members of the conservative party.
After the fall of Estrada
Cabrera, the National Assembly selected Carlos Herrera Luna as interim
president, who was later declared constitutional president. Interim
President Carlos Herrera y Luna inherited a fiscal, monetary and banking
disorder, with rampant inflation; he opposed ratifying several contracts
with North American companies that had been signed by Estrada Cabrera
and that Herrera considered harmful to the country.
As for
education, the Herrera government dissolved the "Estrada Cabrera
University", which had been founded in 1918 and replaced it with the
Faculty schools of the National University, to which it granted autonomy
for the election of authorities. But at that time there were barely
three hundred students in the entire university, and the illiteracy rate
in the country was 93%, mainly due to the "Regulation of Day Laborers"
that had been instituted by Justo Rufino Barrios and that forced
indigenous day laborers to work on farms, without giving them time for
their education.
Herrera was overthrown in December 1921, by
General José María Orellana, who ratified all these contracts; this coup
d'état would be part of a series of abuses committed in Latin America by
the United Fruit Company. The governments of Orellana and Chacón
undertook an educational reform, granting scholarships abroad to
graduates of the Normal School for Boys and other teachers' schools in
the country. Orellana died in office under suspicious circumstances in
1926 and was replaced by his vice president, Lázaro Chacón González.
Following the death of José María Orellana and after participating in
the 1926 elections, in which he lost against the also liberal Lázaro
Chacón González, General Jorge Ubico Castañeda retired to private life;
but with the instability that occurred after General Chacón’s
resignation at the end of 1930 due to illness, and the economic crisis
that existed in the country due to the Great Depression caused by the
bankruptcy of the New York Stock Exchange in 1929, he became involved in
the political arena again. In December 1930, the interim president
Baudilio Palma was overthrown and assassinated in a military coup by
General Manuel María Orellana Contreras – cousin of General José María
Orellana –, but the government was not recognized by the president of
the United States, a country that by then already had strong investments
in Guatemala. The National Legislative Assembly appointed José María
Reina Andrade, who had been Minister of the Interior during much of
Estrada Cabrera's government, and immediately called for elections, in
which Ubico Castañeda stood as the sole candidate.
At that time,
there were many countries that were leaning towards authoritarian
governments; thus, once in power, Ubico Castañeda assumed dictatorial
powers and methods of espionage and repression similar to those of
Barrios and Estrada Cabrera, and maintained a puppet Legislative
Assembly obedient to his commands. Intelligent, dynamic and
temperamental, he was obsessed with controlling even the smallest detail
of life in Guatemala, one of his main objectives being to achieve a
reorganization of the public administration, for which he appointed
several of his associates, the so-called "Ubiquistas", to key positions
in the government. His government was characterized by an effort to
stabilize state finances by reducing public spending: he proved to be a
very capable administrator by reducing the salaries of public employees
by 40% to counteract the government deficit; he encouraged coffee
production during the Depression of 1929 through the "vagrancy law" and
the "road law" and also through the actions of a relentless police and
judiciary against crime, corruption and any type of opposition to the
regime. Finally, he completed the centralization of power by eliminating
the popularly elected mayors by intendants who were appointed by the
president himself. Thanks to the almost free labor available under his
laws, his drive to build public works, especially roads, to benefit the
coffee industry, dominated by German immigrants in Verapaz (where he had
been Political Chief) and by Guatemalan landowners in the rest of the
country, is significant. For the construction of roads, he used forced
labor from indigenous people, supervised by the army corps of engineers.
Through decree 1995 of 1934, he cancelled the unpayable debts that day
laborers had with the landowners. But to counteract a potential shortage
of labor for the farms, he promulgated Decree 1996: "The Vagrancy Law,"
which forced every peasant who did not have a minimum amount of land to
work a certain number of days a year in the service of a landowner; if
this could not be proven, the day laborer had to work for free on the
roads.
Like many Latin American rulers, he extended his mandate
and became the country's leader. It was not difficult for him to be
re-elected: the people who could vote (practically the inhabitants of
the capital city and several departmental capitals) were grateful to his
administration for the improvement in living conditions. Although he was
an admirer of the dictatorial governments of Benito Mussolini, Francisco
Franco and Adolfo Hitler, he maintained cordial relations with the
United States and it can be said that his administration was maintained
thanks to the banana monopoly of the "fruit company" (the United Fruit
Company). As the events of the Second World War progressed, American
policy and its commitments to the "fruit company" forced him not only to
declare war on the Axis nations - Germany, Italy and Japan - but to
allow the establishment of American bases in Guatemala. Among the
benefits he received from the American government in exchange for his
alliance in the war were modern weapons for the army and training at the
Polytechnic School by American soldiers.
Ubico severely repressed
crime with the so-called Ley de Fuga, through which those accused of
serious crimes were extrajudicially executed by presidential order. He
also fought corruption in the State with the creation of the General
Comptroller of Accounts of the Nation and the Court of Accounts. With
this, prisons became a deterrent to theft from the public treasury. He
forced the legislative assembly to decree a donation of two hundred
thousand dollars of the time for him for his contributions to the
country. Finally, in his economic focus on increasing the country's
production at any cost, he exempted coffee growers and banana companies
from criminal responsibility for mistreatment of their servants and day
laborers.
In 1944, after more than 12 years of iron dictatorship,
his government began to show clear signs of weakness. Demonstrations by
the population against him multiplied, demanding his resignation. These
demonstrations were led mainly by teachers and students of the National
University. On June 25, 1944, during the course of one of these
demonstrations, Professor María Chinchilla was killed, which, together
with the "311 memorandum" and popular pressure, led to the resignation
of General Ubico, and on July 1, 1944, he formally agreed to resign from
his post: Ubico left in power a military triumvirate made up of Generals
Federico Ponce Vaides, Buenaventura Pineda and Sandoval Ariza, whom he
took out of the ostracism in which he kept them during his government
and then left for political exile in New Orleans, where the headquarters
of the United Fruit Company was.
It is important to note that
with the payment of the "English Debt" made by General Ubico Castañeda
at the end of his administration, the revolutionary governments had a
solid economic base to carry out their projects.
General Ponce Vaides was only in command for 110 days and continued
with the repressive way of governing of his predecessor, giving
instructions to the police to attack his adversaries.89 In those days
the newspaper El Imparcial published strong editorials against the
intentions of Federico Ponce Vaides to perpetuate himself in power. As a
result of these events, on the first of October the director of El
Imparcial, journalist Alejandro Córdova, was assassinated in front of
his residence in the capital city. The crime accelerated the
preparations for the military civic movement of October 20, 1944. Days
later, Ponce Vaides and the director of the National Police, Colonel
Moisés Evaristo Orozco, were accused as the intellectual authors of the
murder. All these events ended up igniting the passions repressed for
several years. It was on October 20, 1944 when a popular uprising
occurred, in which lawyers, teachers, workers, university students and a
part of the Army participated. The fight was established between the
other part of the Army and the police who were loyal to General Ponce.
After these events, the news spread that Ponce Vaides had requested
political asylum in Mexico and the government had been taken over by a
triumvirate composed of a civilian and two military personnel: civilian
Jorge Toriello Garrido, Major Francisco Javier Arana and Captain Jacobo
Arbenz Guzmán.
The main functions of the transitional government
were to repeal the decrees that had been made by the previous
administration. He convened a National Constituent Assembly that
produced a new Magna Carta. The Revolutionary Junta of October 20, 1944
was instituted, with the purpose of guaranteeing Guatemalans a
constitutional framework to lead Guatemala to a representative
democracy.
The government of the first democratically elected
president in the history of Guatemala, Juan José Arévalo, was
distinguished by its numerous educational achievements and benefits for
the majority of the poorest layers of the population, the middle class
and the most consistent intellectuals. However, he faced numerous
obstacles. President Arevalo Bermejo began his government in 1945, and
according to liberal historians, from the beginning he used a sometimes
dissociative language, which began to polarize Guatemalan society,
causing among the landowners the feeling that he was only the ruler of a
part of the Guatemalans. On the other hand, in the autobiographical book
Despacho Presidencial de Arévalo, he recounts that his government began
with sanctions on the opposition - every time a plot against the
government was suspected, civil liberties were restricted, suspects were
arrested and then sent to exile-, economic interventionism of the State
- with the issuance of the Economic Emergency Law- and determined
support for a newly emerged trade unionist movement. Thus, the forces of
opposition to the Arevalist government – moderate revolutionaries and
landowners or "ubiquists" - were gradually marginalized and began to
fear the implementation of socialism in the country. On the other hand,
it is important to note that President Arevalo took office with limited
power, restricted by the military, which were led by Lieutenant Colonel
Arana.
The front of struggle of the Arevalist government was
predominantly urban and, unlike its successor, did not face the problems
of land tenure and agricultural work, despite the fact that the majority
of the population was rural and indigenous, except in relation to the
workers of the North American technological agriculture located in the
vast and fertile regions of Bananera and Tiquisate. On the other hand,
the revolutionary regime, promoted and directed by members of the middle
strata directly and indirectly, strengthened the positions of the latter
and increased them; that is to say, he chose to favor the sectors of the
urban and Ladino population that make up what some sociologists call
"the moral instances of society", that is, the university, secondary
schools (which doubled in the first 6 years), the courts, the
bureaucracy (mainly the military), the press, the churches,
intellectuals, professors and university professionals, whom he
encompassed through compulsory enrollment. For its part, the landowning
sector was organized through the associations of farmers, merchants,
industrialists, bankers, insurers and financial speculators, etc.
The prices of coffee, the main agricultural product exported by the
Guatemalans, since bananas were the exclusive business of the North
Americans, reached the prices they had lost in 1930. And, although the
coffee growing elite benefited in the first place, there was enough
money to open new businesses or expand existing ones in the intermediate
social ranks of the capital and some departmental capitals. Likewise,
during the Arévalo government there was a considerable expansion of the
urban and Ladino middle classes of the country, which even the newly
organized trade unionism favored, since many of the new leaders and
workers' deputies came out of their different layers.
As for the
press and the opposition, the government attacked the newspapers El
Imparcial and La Hora when they published information that directly
attacked government policies; unlike the governments of his
predecessors, Arévalo did not use the Central Penitentiary to lock up
and torture his political enemies. The custom was to force out into
exile those who opposed the government.
Among the reforms that
were put in place since the fall of the government of Ponce Vaides and
that were tried to consolidate with the Constitution of 1945, the
restructuring of the Army had great significance: the suspension of the
generalship, decreed from the first moments of the triumph of the
revolutionary movement, symbolized this transformation, which was
completed with a concern to modernize, professionalize and
institutionalize the Army. For the first time in the country's history,
a Constitution granted an entire chapter and 13 articles to the subject
of the Army, establishing a model that would be taken up in subsequent
Constitutions. The constitutional norm established a reorganization of
the Army that turned out to be complex and not always operational: it
sought to confirm the functional autonomy that was conferred on it for
the first time. He created the Superior Council of National Defense, a
consultative and collegial body, made up of 15 members, some by election
and among which the President of the Republic was not included, despite
being considered commander-in-chief of the Army.
Not a few
rivalries were generated between the two leaders during the ten years of
validity of the 1945 Constitution, such as those that opposed Major
Francisco Javier Arana, leader of the right until his assassination in
1949, with Colonel Jacobo Arbenz Guzmán, leader of the left. On the
other hand, some interpretations have insisted that it was precisely the
legal status and organizational structure that the 1945 Constitution
recognized to the Army that determined that officialdom entered fully
into the political game. In this sense, the votes to integrate the
Superior Council of National Defense and the very nature of this body,
promoted the discussion for decision-making on the military policy that
the Guatemalan Army should adopt and turned it into a deliberative body.
Colonel Jacobo Arbenz Guzmán came to power after winning the
elections that took place in the Republic of Guatemala in 1950. He was
supported by the National Renewal and Revolutionary Action parties of
the Capital and the National Integration party of Quetzaltenango. The
workers, peasants, teachers and students gave him their full support,
winning the electoral process. When his government began, Guatemalans
seemed doomed not to prosper. In 1950, 76% of the inhabitants owned less
than 10% of the land; while 2.2%, 70%. The United Fruit Company owned
more than 50% of the arable land in the country, of which it cultivated
only 2.6%; and the peasants had miserable salaries. On the other hand,
since the government of Manuel Estrada Cabrera there were North American
monopolies of subsidiary companies of the UFCO and that were dedicated
to the transportation of cargo by rail and steamers, those that left
Puerto Barrios, Izabal, a port controlled by La frutera. They also
controlled the generation of electricity, telephones and telegraphs in
the country. These companies did not pay any kind of tax for the use of
national resources, thanks to the generous concessions granted by
Estrada Cabrera, and ratified by the governments of José María Orellana
and Jorge Ubico.
Arbenz was a leftist nationalist and attacked American monopolies
head-on from the beginning of his government. Many liberal authors
indicate that he was a communist, because apart from attacking American
interests there were other factors: (a) the members of his private
circle were leaders of the Guatemalan Labor Party (PGT), which was the
communist party of Guatemala, (b) CIA propaganda accused him of being a
"puppet of Moscow," (c) the McCarthyist atmosphere in the United States
after World War II, (d) the work of the anti-communist person in the
State Department, John Peurifoy, who was named US ambassador to
Guatemala between November 1953 and July 1954, and coordinated CIA
support for the Castillo Armas movement, and (e) after leaving
Guatemala, Arbenz went into exile in Czechoslovakia, the Soviet Union,
China and Cuba, all of them communist countries, since no other country
dared to join him. receive it.
Based on his government plan, he
did (or tried to do) the following: he promulgated Decree 900 for an
Agrarian Reform that generated significant fears among large landowners,
as well as in certain urban and rural middle sectors, because feeling
their interests threatened they joined the campaign that identified
social changes with a political-ideological orientation of the regime
towards communism; he began the construction of the highway to the
Atlantic to compete against the railroad monopoly, which was controlled
by the fruit company through its company International Railways of
Central America (IRCA); he began the construction of the port "Santo
Tomás de Castilla" where the port Matías de Gálvez was located, to
compete with Puerto Barrios, a port controlled by the UFCO through its
Great White Fleet; and he began the studies for the "Jurún Marinalá"
generation plant, to compete with the electric company in the hands of
North Americans.
The United Fruit Company (UFCO) executives had
worked hard in the circles of the Harry S. Truman and General Dwight
Eisenhower administrations to make them believe that Colonel Arbenz was
trying to align Guatemala with the Soviet Bloc. In fact, the UFCO was
threatened in its economic interests by Arbenz's agrarian reform, which
took away significant amounts of idle land, and the new Guatemalan Labor
Code, which no longer allowed it to use Guatemalan military forces to
counter the demands of its workers. As the largest landowner and
employer in Guatemala, Executive Order 900 resulted in the expropriation
of 40% of its land. U.S. government officials had little evidence of the
growing communist threat in Guatemala, but they did have a strong
relationship with UFCO officials, demonstrating the strong influence
that corporate interests had on American foreign policy.
After
the cancellation of Operation PBFORTUNE, the CIA organized Operation
PBSUCCESS, which consisted of the training and financing of a
paramilitary rebel army (National Liberation Movement (MLN)). This
Movement entered through the Republic of Honduras, entrenched itself in
Esquipulas and carried out the Coup d'état of 1954, overthrowing Colonel
Árbenz, who had to go into a tortuous exile that took him to
Czechoslovakia, the Soviet Union, Uruguay, Cuba, Switzerland and Mexico.
Once the coup was completed, Colonel Carlos Castillo Armas assumed the
leadership of State.
On October 10, 1954, the military junta called a plebiscite in which
Castillo Armas obtained 99.9% of the favorable vote. The almost
unanimous result reflects the absence of alternatives, since in the
plebiscite the population was asked whether or not they accepted him as
president of the Republic. The vote was public and compulsory, while the
counting was secret. And the act took place in a climate of terror that
affected Arbenz's supporters and sectors of the left opposition in
general. In this way Castillo Armas was elected President of the
Republic for the period that was to end on March 15, 1960, as set by the
National Constituent Assembly, which was elected at the same time.
Of the arbencista projects, Castillo Armas only repealed the
agrarian reform immediately after taking power, but he had to finish the
road to the Atlantic, under the direction of Engineer Juan Luis
Lizarralde, Minister of Public Works, because of the importance it had
for the country's economy; the road was completed in 1959, and after its
completion what Árbenz had expected happened: the UFCO railway could not
compete against vehicular transport in trucks. Likewise, and for the
same reason, he continued with the planning works of the port of Santo
Tomás and the Jurún Marinalá hydroelectric plant, which was completed
and inaugurated in 1970. The port was built after the 1976 earthquake,
but by then the United Fruit Company had already gone bankrupt and its
successor, Chiquita Brands International no longer had the same power
and influence in the United States government.
The Castillo Armas
regime appointed a new Supreme Court of Justice and initiated a period
of intense political persecution against communist leaders,
intellectuals and suspects in general. The rights acquired during the
1944 revolution were annulled, especially those granted by the Agrarian
Reform. The body of anti-communist laws was completed later, when the
transitional article 6 of the Constitution of 1956, empowered the head
of the Executive to expatriate or prevent the entry to the country, for
five years, communists who had been exiled or exiled from Guatemala for
political reasons.
Castillo Armas was assassinated in 1957; after
his death there was a period of transition. Luis Arturo González López
was called to be President of the Republic on an interim basis, who
governed for less than three months; then Colonel Guillermo Flores
Avendaño came to the Government, who was governing for five months and
called elections. In the elections, the general and engineer Miguel
Ydígoras Fuentes was victorious, who assumed the First Magistracy, on
March 2, 1958. Ydígoras Fuentes showed during his term an apparent
democracy, without going to the extremes of revolutionary governments,
but initiated a culture of corruption that has remained embedded in the
government ever since.
During his government Miguel Ydígoras
Fuentes, former Minister of Public Works in the government of Jorge
Ubico Castañeda and a detractor of the policies of the Arévalo and
Arbenz governments, lent the Wealeu department in Guatemala to train
Cuban activists who attempted the failed Bay of Pigs Invasion in 1961
against the communist government of Fidel Castro.
In response to
his increasingly autocratic rule, a group of lower-ranking military
officers, including Marco Antonio Yon Sosa, rebelled, attempting to
overthrow him in 1960. When they failed, several fled and established
close ties with Cuba. This group would become the nucleus of the armed
insurgency forces that would fight against the military governments for
the next 36 years. Its four main leftist guerrilla groups carried out
economic sabotage and armed attacks against members of the state
security forces.
The government of Miguel Ydígoras Fuentes ended
on March 30, 1963 after the coup d'état of Colonel Enrique Peralta
Azurdia: Dr. Juan José Arévalo returned to Guatemala on March 29 of that
year, after the government of General Miguel Ydígoras Fuentes suggested
that he would be allowed to participate again in the presidential
elections. The following day, the government was overthrown by the coup
d'état led by the then Minister of Defense, Colonel Peralta Azurdia, on
the grounds that the corruption of the government was intolerable. Dr.
Arévalo went into exile again.
Soon after there were democratic
elections and Julio César Méndez Montenegro was elected President in
1966. The renowned journalist Clemente Marroquín Rojas was elected as
vice president. Although at first it seemed that a transparent democracy
had been achieved, the army, which protected the government, launched a
strong campaign against the insurgency that largely broke the guerrilla
movement in the countryside and began the civil conflict that was to
cause hundreds of thousands of victims. During his government, the sky
was established as the color of the National Flag and Decree 2795
promulgated by the government of General Jorge Ubico Castañeda was
reinstated in 1967, which granted coffee farms and banana companies
permission to punish day laborers settlers: "The owners of farms will be
exempt from criminal liability...».
His government was
controlled by the military; and there were even persistent rumors that
Licenciado Méndez Montenegro was only a puppet president, and that the
army high command kept him intoxicated in the liquor dispensaries that
were located in the vicinity of the National Palace. He appointed as
Minister of Foreign Affairs of Guatemala the Ambassador of Guatemala to
the United Nations, Emilio Arenales Catalán; Arenales, in turn, was
appointed president of the 23rd.The General Assembly of the United
Nations.
During his administration, the possibility of ceding the
nickel mines in El Estor, Izabal to a Canadian company was discussed,
but the concession did not materialize. On the other hand, the railway
concession for the International Railways of Central America (IRCA),
which began in 1904 during the government of Manuel Estrada Cabrera,
came to an end during his administration. The company, which had
suffered substantial losses after the construction of the Atlantic
highway during the governments of Jacobo Arbenz Guzmán and Carlos
Castillo Armas, expressly created a state of insolvency so that it would
become the property of the State of Guatemala, a fact that was executed
outside the public administrative procedure, which allowed the IRCA to
avoid liability for the liabilities left.
Upon assuming the
presidency, the Guatemalan army, who was the one who actually had the
power, did not allow him any room for action, and the attempts to reduce
violence by both the extreme right and the extreme left were not enough.
In fact, political violence increased during his government: the
guerrillas had strengthened, which led the army to implement an
important counterinsurgency campaign, especially in the east of the
country and in Guatemala City. A fact that moved Guatemalan society
during this government was the kidnapping, torture and murder of the
Miss Guatemala of 1958, Rogelia Cruz Martínez who had joined the leftist
guerrilla after the student days of 1962. She was abducted in December
1967 by government forces, and found dead on January 11, 1968 near a
bridge near Escuintla, with terrible signs of torture. The PGT
retaliated by attacking a group of US military personnel. USA., killing
two and injuring a third.
On June 8, 1968, Guatemalan guerrillas
assassinated the U.S. Ambassador to Guatemala John Gordon Mein, being
the first U.S. ambassador to Guatemala. USA. on being killed while
serving his country abroad. In retaliation, the Guatemalan Army
assassinated several leaders of the Rebel Armed Forces. Apparently, the
Rebel Armed Forces (FAR) tried to kidnap him, but they killed him when
he tried to flee.
Faced with the guerrilla's advance, the
Guatemalan army took drastic measures to crush it. The operations
against subversion in the East of the country were effective: its
weapons depots, its communication and supply lines were destroyed.
From that time until the 1970s, the Guatemalan guerrilla's activity
was almost nil, being limited to isolated and minor acts of sabotage.
Among the latter, on February 27, 1970, the Minister of Foreign Affairs,
Alberto Fuentes Mohr, was kidnapped and on March 16, the labor attaché
of the United States Embassy, Sean Holly. The Rebel Armed Forces (FAR)
claimed responsibility for both crimes.
The Jurún Marinalá
Hydroelectric Plant was started and completed during the period of
President Julio César Méndez Montenegro; it was a project initiated by
the government of Colonel Jacobo Arbenz Guzmán before his overthrow in
1954. Also, during his government the "Primero de Julio" colony was
built on the outskirts of Guatemala City and in addition, the public
access television station was created with the creation of Televisora
Nacional de Guatemala, Canal 8 which was the successor of TGW-Canal 8,
which had been closed in 1965.
In 1967, the Guatemalan writer
Miguel Ángel Asturias won the Nobel Prize for Literature and the
government of Méndez Montenegro ordered a bust of the writer to be made
in his honor.
Colonel Carlos Manuel Arana Osorio (1970-1974), of the far-right
National Liberation Movement party, was the first of a long series of
military heads of government, who, with the excuse of stopping insurgent
action, launched two counterterrorism campaigns. In 1970 two new
guerrilla groups sponsored by the Soviet Union and Fidel Castro, the EGP
and the ORPA, intensified the insurgency against the military
governments. General Arana was married to Mrs. Alida España, who was his
advisor on counterinsurgency security issues.
The reason he was
chosen as the party's candidate was because he was a fervent
anti-communist and because of his remarkable triumphs against the
guerrillas in the Guatemalan east. During his government, to counter the
insurgency, far-right paramilitary groups proliferated, starting a
climate of great insecurity and violence. Groups such as the Secret
Anti-Communist Army (ESA), the New Anti-Communist Organization (NOA),
the Anti-Communist Council of Guatemala (CADEG), the Anti-Guerrilla
Repression Committee (CRAG), the White Hand and the Organized
Nationalist Action Movement (MANO) begin to commit all kinds of actions
against anyone considered a suspect.
After allowing mining
company executives to practically rewrite Guatemala's mining law, the
government granted a 40-year concession for nickel exploitation to the
company Explotaciones y Exploraciones Mineras de Izabal, S.A. (EXMIBAL),
a subsidiary of the Canadian company International Nickel Company
(INCO). During the government of Julio César Méndez Montenegro the
possibility of ceding the nickel mines in Izabal was discussed, but as
soon as General Carlos Arana Osorio began his management on 1.In July
1970, he reopened EXMIBAL's case and began working to transfer the
concession to him. Many social sectors opposed it, as they argued that
it would be very burdensome for the country. One of the main opponents
was the Commission that the University of San Carlos created to analyze
the issue; among the members of the commission was the graduate Oscar
Adolfo Mijangos López, by then a deputy in Congress and a respected
Guatemalan intellectual. Mijangos López flatly opposed the conditions
of the concession proposed by the Government to EXMIBAL; on February 13,
1971, he was assassinated by unknown persons as he was leaving his
office at La 4.ª avenue of zone 1 of Guatemala City. On May 8, 1971, the
government of Arana Osorio finally granted the concession to EXMIBAL; it
covered 385 square kilometers in the area of El Estor, with an initial
investment of US$228 million. The mine, built in the mountains of the
Q'eqchi indians included a residential complex of seven hundred houses,
numerous offices, a hospital, a small shopping center, school, a golf
course and a large industrial processing area.
In 1974, General
Kjell Lauguerud García defeated General Efraín Ríos Montt in a
fraudulent presidential election. During his rule the earthquake of 1976
occurred; the area most affected by the earthquake covered about 30 000
km2, with a population of 2.5 million people. About 23,000 people were
killed and 77,000 were seriously injured. Approximately 258,000 houses
were destroyed, leaving about 1.2 million people homeless. 40% of the
national hospital infrastructure was destroyed, while other health
centers also suffered substantial damage. Guatemala City was in chaos,
thousands of people were buried in the rubble, many dead or seriously
injured. As the bodies were recovered the magnitude of the disaster was
laid bare; the authorities organized the excavation of mass graves. Many
bridges, power towers, light and telephone poles, roads collapsed or
were destroyed and the rails of the railway lines twisted. Several
departments of the country were affected by the earthquake:
Chimaltenango, Chiquimula, El Petén, Guatemala, Izabal and Sacatepéquez
as well as many towns and cities; the port facilities of Puerto Barrios,
the head of the department of Izabal, were destroyed. The department of
Chimaltenango was the most affected as it recorded almost 14,000 deaths
and many towns such as San Martín Jilotepeque were left in ruins.
After the presidential elections of March 5, 1978, the results of
the elections led to protests, violence and allegations of fraud. The
Congress held the second degree election on the 13th of that month,
dismissing the evidence of the victory of the former head of state,
Colonel Enrique Peralta Azurdia, and candidate of the National
Liberation Movement (MLN). The tendency to electoral abstention was
accentuated with 63.5% of non-voters, resulting in the least voted
electoral binomial in the history of the country, proof of the little
legitimacy of the military model and the political regime. The 1.On
July 1978, General Romeo Lucas García assumed power and immediately his
government undertook the construction of pharaonic infrastructure works
such as the Chixoy Hydroelectric Plant and San Juan de Dios General
Hospital, and also continued working in the Northern Transverse Strip,
where both he and members of the military leadership, politicians and
businessmen had strong economic interests due to the wealth in oil,
minerals and precious woods in the region.
Meanwhile, in
Nicaragua, after the assassination of Pedro Joaquín Chamorro Cardenal on
January 10, 1978, a great unrest broke out in the country and in March
1979 the different factions of the communist guerrilla group Sandinista
National Liberation Front signed the unity agreement; then, in June they
called for the "Final Offensive" and called for a general strike. After
intense fighting, the United States was forced to ask for the
resignation of Anastasio Somoza Debayle, who left the country on
Tuesday, July 17, 1979. The Sandinistas entered Managua on July 19,
1979, ending the Somoza dictatorship and assuming the responsibilities
of government. This triumph meant a new hope for the guerrilla fighters
of Guatemala and El Salvador, who now saw how they could obtain
logistical and military resources not only from Cuba, but also from
Nicaragua; for this reason, during the government of Lucas García there
was an intensification of the Guatemalan guerrilla movement.
On
Thursday, January 31, 1980, the Guatemalan civil war attracted world
attention with the burning of the Spanish Embassy, in which 37 people
were burned alive, including several Spanish citizens, former Vice
President Eduardo Cáceres Lehnhoff, former foreign minister and member
of the International Court of the Hague Adolfo Molina Orantes, student
leaders of the University of San Carlos, peasants and militants of the
Guerrilla Army of the Poor. The mobilization in the form of a protest by
a group of indigenous people to Guatemala City, to draw the world's
attention to the abuses of landowners and military in El Quiché, (a
region in which the strongest Guatemalan guerrilla group, the Guerrilla
Army of the Poor, operated), was the prelude to the case of the burning
of the Spanish Embassy.
With the Sandinista triumph in Nicaragua
in 1979, the events of the Spanish Embassy and the strike of the sugar
cane workers of the South Coast, (both promoted by CUC activists), the
climate of political and social agitation of the time reached the apex.
During the demonstration of 1.In May 1980, it was called to "establish a
revolutionary, democratic, and popular government" and to "overthrow the
Luquista regime", slogans that were seconded by the insurgent groups,
similar to the Final Offensive that the Sandinista National Liberation
Front had requested in Nicaragua in mid-1979.
After these events,
in the month of June, the forced disappearance of 27 members of the
National Workers' Central (CNT) took place. In August, 17 people,
including trade unionists and university students who are members of the
Trade Union Orientation School, were also kidnapped from the Emmaus
retreat farm. These acts of repression marked the high point of the
repression against trade unionism, which was finally destroyed.
For its part, the guerrillas intensified their attacks. On September 5,
1980, a terrorist attack by the Guerrilla Army of the Poor took place in
front of the National Palace with the intention of dissuading the
Guatemalan people from attending a demonstration in support of the
government of General Lucas García that was planned for Sunday,
September 7, in the Central Park. In that attack, six adults and a child
were killed by the explosion of two bombs located in a vehicle.
The guerrilla organizations justified these actions by arguing that
they affected, on the one hand, the economic interests of the State and
the productive sectors, and on the other, that they violated the Army;
the EGP said that destroying infrastructure always had an explanation in
relation to the war that was being lived and in relation to the tactical
moment so that the Army did not pass and so that it did not continue
with its barbarism, to cut off its advance and retreat. And when they
blew up electricity supply towers, they said that they were doing it to
cut off the power that reached the Army barracks, even if they affected
the rest of the population, creating discontent among the people. Later,
these sabotages were generalized to provoke a total lack of control
throughout the country and to prepare conditions for an almost
pre-insurrection period.
The government then concentrated its
efforts on annihilating the internal enemy, limiting itself not only to
fighting the guerrillas but systematically attacking the social movement
and the population in the areas with a strong guerrilla presence, mainly
those further away from Guatemala City, where said presence was
strongest. In the Government of Lucas García, the counterinsurgency
strategy focused on eliminating the urban and rural social movement,
which had grown significantly during the previous years, as well as
fighting the guerrillas.
The guerrilla attack against financial,
commercial and agricultural targets increased, as the guerrilla groups
considered these institutions as "bourgeois reactionaries" and
"exploitative millionaires" who collaborated with the "genocidal
government" of Lucas García.
To counter the rise of the guerrilla
offensive after the triumph of the Sandinista Revolution in Nicaragua in
1979, the government of Lucas García initiated the Scorched Earth
offensive in the region where the Guerrilla Army of the Poor operated,
in the area of Chajul, Nebaj and Ixcán in Quiché, to eliminate the
social base of said guerrilla group. As part of this offensive, there
were intense attacks on civilian populations that resulted in massacres
that were recorded by the report of the Commission for Historical
Clarification. After October 1981 there are more testimonies of
massacres and they are characterized by a more indiscriminate pattern,
which suggests that after that date the massacres were more important,
were planned with greater premeditation and carried out a more global
destruction of the communities, in congruence with the great offensive
developed by the Army from Chimaltenango towards large areas of the
Altiplano. One out of every six massacres was carried out on an
important day for the community; whether it was a market day, a holiday,
or religious gatherings, the attacks on designated days tried to take
advantage of the population concentration to develop their actions more
massively and in some cases had a clear symbolic meaning. This aspect,
together with the concentration of the population, and the control of
the situation shown by the Army, shows that the attacks were planned.
However, with the beginning of the Civil Self-Defense Patrols by the
Army, there were also massacres by the guerrillas, who attacked the
patrollers by surprise, and killed them based on lists they kept for the
purpose.
Of this account, no sector was more affected by the
violence during the years of the Guatemalan Civil War than the peasant
population, because it was caught in the fires of the Army and the
leftist guerrillas; the war left an unprecedented balance of deaths and
destruction in the countryside, generating among other reactions the
massive flight of thousands of Guatemalan peasants. In the period
1981-82, in which more than four hundred towns and villages were razed
and thousands of Guatemalans were killed, the reaction of the survivors
trapped between two fires was to flee, or to put themselves under the
control of the army forced to participate in the civil self-defense
patrols (PAC) or relocated to the "model villages", where they were
concentrated. Some fifty thousand totally dispossessed people escaped to
jungle areas of the department of Quichéo spending those years hidden
from the outside world and out of government control forming minimal
urban groups that later formed the Communities of Population in
Resistance (CPR).
On March 23, 1982 Lucas García was deposed by a
coup d'état led by young officers of the Guatemalan Army.
In the
first communications, it was indicated that the military coup was led by
a group of "young officers" of the Guatemalan Army, whose objective
would be to "end corruption." The rebels took control of Guatemala City
and managed to get General Lucas García to surrender to the military
that had surrounded the National Palace hours earlier.
After the
departure of Lucas García, the leaders of the rebels requested the
appearance at the palace of General Ríos Montt and the vice-presidential
candidate for the fascist National Liberation Movement party in the last
elections, Lionel Sisniega Otero.
Once the government junta was
assembled, made up of General Ríos Montt, Colonel Horacio Maldonado
Shaad and Colonel Francisco Gordillo, it announced that it would call
new elections, but did not specify the date. The Board, he announced,
will prepare a "work plan that will be presented to the people as soon
as possible." The Governing Junta dissolved the Congress and abolished
the Constitution after the coup triumph. In an appeal broadcast on radio
and television, the coup plotters called for "international
understanding," and claimed that the military that ruled Guatemala until
March 23, 1982 had fostered an image of the country abroad that did not
correspond to the true characteristics of the people. They also assured
that they were democratic and that they respected "the human rights of
all Guatemalans."
In June 1983, the United States Department of
Defense received a message from its intelligence office in Guatemala, in
which it was explained that a coup d'état against Ríos Montt was
expected, which could occur between June 30 –Army day – and August 2 –
the day of the commemoration of the uprising of the cadets against the
liberationists. According to the US statement, the Minister of Defense,
Oscar Humberto Mejía Víctores would be replaced by a military man
related to the uprising, who after the overthrow of Ríos Montt would
call elections to form a national constituent assembly within sixty days
after the coup occurred. The new constituent assembly would be the
interim congress, in which general elections would be called, which the
Americans considered would be in a matter of three years after the
overthrow of Ríos Montt. The reasons why Ríos Montt would be overthrown
were listed in the US statement:
General Ríos Montt was a very
popular public figure who was liked by the Guatemalan press, but people
had become disillusioned with him. His last Sunday presidential messages
were practically evangelical sermons in which he said his
well-remembered phrase "You Dad, You Mom!"using numerous variations on
the familiar theme, expressed with increasing frenzy until the messages
were over.
There was more corruption now than there had been in
previous governments.
A Guatemalan person acting as a CIA agent
reported that government officials asked him for up to 20% in
commissions for purchases they made from him.
The same agent reported
that there were high officials of the government of Ríos Montt who had
deleted the phrase Republic of Guatemala in the government purchase
orders, and had replaced it with the New Guatemala, which referred to
the evangelical Christians in power with Ríos Montt and who greatly
annoyed the Catholic majority of the country.
It was also said that
Ríos Montt had won the 1974 elections, in which General Kjell Eugenio
Laugerud García was fraudulently victorious; however, Ríos Montt
accepted defeat in exchange for being appointed military attaché to
Spain and receiving secret payments of six thousand dollars a month when
he was in that country.
The general was also said to have been
embezzling state funds to support his evangelical church.
Finally, it
was said that the twenty-two officers who had engineered the coup d'état
of March 23, 1982 and Ríos Montt's wife supported him in the government.
Ríos Montt was overthrown on August 8, 1983 by a coup d'état
executed by General Mejía Víctores, his Minister of Defense who in
effect initiated the transition to democratic regimes in the country.
General Mejía Víctores allowed a check on democracy in Guatemala,
starting with an election on July 1, 1984 for a Constituent Assembly to
draft a democratic constitution. On May 30, 1985, after 9 months of
debate, the Constituent Assembly finished drafting a new constitution,
which entered into force immediately. Vinicio Cerezo, a civilian
politician and the candidate for president of the Christian Democracy
party, won the first elections held under the new constitution with
almost 70% of the vote, and took office on January 14, 1986.
After his inauguration, in January 1986, President Vinicio Cerezo
announced that his priorities would be to end political violence and
establish the rule of law government. The reforms included new habeas
corpus and amparo (court-ordered protection) laws, the creation of a
legislative human rights committee, and the establishment in 1987 of the
Office of the Human Rights Procurator. The Supreme Court also undertook
a series of reforms to fight corruption and improve the effectiveness of
the legal system. In 1979, the Guatemalan currency, the quetzal was
quoted at one US dollar; but by the end of 1985 the exchange rate was
Q1.47 per dollar, in 1987 it was Q2.53 and by 1990 it had fallen to
Q5.57 per dollar; this phenomenon had an unequal impact on society: on
the one hand, for the producers of articles each modification of the
exchange rate is quickly transferred to the consumer, by revaluing the
prices of; on the other hand, the vast working majority of the
population does not have a similar compensation mechanism and the
devaluation results in a constant erosion of their income. These
changes were based on the neoliberal economic approach that indicates
that by hierarchizing the satisfaction of needs, rationing the use of
their scarce resources, a freedom of choice is generated for consumers;
however, the result was the limitation of their purchasing power.
With the election of Cerezo, the military moved away from the
government and returned to the more traditional role of providing
internal security, specifically fighting armed insurgents. The first 2
years of Cerezo's administration were characterized by a stable economy
and a marked decrease in political violence. Dissatisfied military
personnel made two coup attempts in May 1988 and May 1989, but the
military command supported the constitutional order. The government was
heavily criticized for its unwillingness to investigate or prosecute
cases of human rights violations.
The last two years of Cerezo's
government were also marked by a declining economy, strikes, protest
marches and accusations of widespread corruption. The government's
inability to deal with many of the nation's problems - such as infant
mortality, illiteracy, poor health and social care, and rising levels of
violence - contributed to popular discontent.
On November 11,
1990, parliamentary and presidential elections were held and engineer
Jorge Serrano Elías was elected, who assumed the presidency on January
14, 1991, thus completing the first transition from a democratically
elected civilian government to another in the history of the country. As
his party, the Solidarity Action Movement (MAS) won only 18 of the 116
seats in Congress, Serrano signed a weak alliance with the Christian
Democrats and the Union of the National Center (UCN).
On May 25,
1993 Serrano illegally dissolved Congress and the Supreme Court and
tried to restrict civil liberties, as he claimed to fight corruption.
The self-coup failed due to unified and strong protests by the majority
of Guatemalan society and international pressure, so the army, in
compliance with the decisions of the Constitutional Court, which decreed
against the coup attempt, removed him from power. Serrano fled the
country two weeks after this self-coup, which was colloquially called
"the Serranazo".
On June 6, 1993, Congress, in accordance with
the 1985 constitution, elected the human Rights Prosecutor, Ramiro de
León Carpio, to complete the presidential term of Serrano Elías. De León
was not a member of any political party and lacked a political base, but
enjoyed strong popular support; he launched an ambitious anti-corruption
campaign to “purify” Congress and the Supreme Court, demanding the
resignations of all members of both bodies.
Despite considerable
resistance from Congress, presidential and popular pressure led to an
agreement in November 1993 between the administration and Congress,
brokered by the Catholic Church. This package of constitutional reforms
was approved by the popular referendum on January 30, 1994. In August
1994, a new Congress was elected to complete the unexpired term. It was
controlled by the Guatemalan Republican Front (FRG) parties headed by
former General Ríos Montt, and the center-right National Advance Party
(PAN).
Under the government of De León the peace process, now
with the participation of the United Nations, took on new life. The
government and the URNG signed agreements on human rights (March 1994),
the resettlement of displaced persons (June 1994), historical
clarification (June 1994), and indigenous rights (March 1995). They also
made significant progress on a socio-economic and agrarian agreement.
More than 200,000 people died in the civil war. The United Nations
has called the conflict a genocide in several reports. Most of the
victims were members of the indigenous Mayan community, accused of
supporting the rebels. According to the Commission for Historical
Clarification, government forces were responsible for 93% of the
violence of the conflict, while guerrilla groups were responsible for 3%
(4% unidentified).
In the presidential elections of January 7,
1996 Álvaro Arzú Irigoyen of the PAN defeated Alfonso Portillo of the
FRG by only 2% of the votes. Arzú won due to his strength in Guatemala
City, where he had previously served as mayor, in addition to the
surrounding urban area. Portillo won in all rural departments except
Petén. Under Arzú's administration, the negotiations were concluded and,
on December 29, 1996, the government signed the Peace Accords, ending a
36-year conflict. During this government, state institutions were sold
to private capital, thus achieving privatization, which caused entities
such as Guatel and Empresa Eléctrica to pass into the hands of private
entities.
Guatemala had presidential, legislative, and municipal elections on
November 7, 1999, and a presidential election runoff on December 26. In
the first round the FRG won 63 out of 113 legislative seats, while the
PAN won 37. The New Nation Alliance (ANN) won 9 legislative seats, and
three minority parties won the remaining four. In the run-off on
December 26, Alfonso Portillo of the FRG won 68% of the votes against
32% of Óscar Berger of the (PAN). Portillo won in 22 departments and in
Guatemala City, which was considered the fortress of BREAD.
Guatemala had presidential, legislative, and municipal elections on
November 7, 1999, and a presidential election runoff on December 26. In
the first round the FRG won 63 out of 113 legislative seats, while the
PAN won 37. The New Nation Alliance (ANN) won 9 legislative seats, and
three minority parties won the remaining four. In the run-off on
December 26, Alfonso Portillo of the FRG won 68% of the votes against
32% of Óscar Berger of the (PAN). Portillo won in 22 departments and in
Guatemala City, which was considered the fortress of BREAD.
Portillo was criticized during the campaign for his relationship with
the president of the FRG, former General Ríos Montt, the de facto
president of Guatemala in 1982-83; however, Portillo's impressive
electoral victory, with two thirds of the vote in the second round,
manifested a clamor of the people for a mandate that would realize his
reform program. President Portillo promised to maintain strong ties with
the United States, increase cooperation with Mexico, and actively
participate in the integration process in Central America and the
Western Hemisphere. He vowed to support the continued liberalization of
the economy, increase investment in human capital and infrastructure,
establish an independent central bank, and increase revenues by imposing
stricter tax levies, instead of raising taxes. Portillo also promised to
follow the peace process, appoint a civil defense minister, reform the
armed forces, replace the presidential military security service with a
civilian one, and strengthen the protection of human rights. He
appointed a pluralistic cabinet, including counting on indigenous
members and others unaffiliated with the FRG, the ruling party.
Progress in realizing Portillo's reform agenda was slow during his first
year in office. Consequently, public support for the government plunged
to near record levels in early 2001. Although the administration made
progress on such issues as taking state responsibility in past human
rights cases and supporting human rights in international forums, it
failed to show significant progress in combating impunity in past human
rights cases, military reforms, a fiscal pact to help finance the
realization of peace, and legislation to increase political
participation.
Portillo became the most detested ruler for the
formal economic power of Guatemala in the xxi century since he directly
confronted said group and in a way that reflected rather a
self-satisfaction than a political goal. For example, Portillo opened
up import quotas for chicken meat, flour, sugar and other products to
combat the rising prices of basic consumer products, which were
controlled by monopolistic groups in Guatemala. In addition to the
defiant speeches he made that earned him enmity with Guatemalan
businessmen, by weakening the fight against drug trafficking and showing
sullenness in front of US diplomatic representatives he cultivated an
animosity that sooner rather than later turned against him.
The
monopolies that Portillo faced were those of beer - which had been the
monopoly of the Castillo family until then -, cement - Guatemalan
monopoly of the Novella family-, chicken - monopoly of the Gutiérrez
family- and sugar, importing sugar from Cuba and Brazil at a lower price
than that produced in Guatemala by the mills of the Herrera family.
Portillo read the conclusions of an investigation by the
Presidential Commission on Human Rights (COPREDEH), established in July
1991 by then-President Jorge Antonio Serrano Elías, and in which he
admitted the responsibility of the State specifically in two massacres
committed by the Army in 1982, at that time governing the de facto
Government of Efraín Ríos Montt: that of the villas Plan de Sánchez, in
the central department of Baja Verapaz, and Dos Erres, in Petén, to the
north, where ninety and two hundred civilians respectively, as well as
in eight political crimes produced up to 1990.
The resolution of
the crime of Bishop Gerardi Conedera, which occurred during the last
months of the government of President Álvaro Arzú Irigoyen, was carried
out thanks only to the efforts of some magistrates supported by civil
society. The trial began in March 2001 and was preceded by the murder of
prosecution witnesses and death threats against lawyers assigned to the
case. Overcoming these brutal intimidations, the trial continued and on
June 7, 2001 the Third Sentencing Court of Guatemala sentenced three of
the defendants to thirty years in prison: retired Colonel Byron Disrael
Lima Estrada, former director of Military Intelligence, his son, Captain
Byron Lima Oliva, and former Sergeant José Obdulio Villanueva, a member
of the escort service of the Presidential General Staff -EMP-.
On
June 6, 2003, the Registry of Citizens refused to register the candidacy
of General Efraín Ríos Montt, a refusal that was sustained by two
pronouncements of the TSE, on June 16, and of the CSJ, on July 5. Then,
the victim complained to the Constitutional Court -CC-, the supreme
judicial magistracy of the country, which ruled in his favor on July 14,
reversing the ruling of the CSJ and ordering the registration of the
application. Everything could have ended here, but on July 18 the
opposition party National Unity of Hope (UNE) requested protection from
the CSJ against the ruling of the CC, to which it agreed two days later,
leaving the candidacy on hold. On July 21, Ríos Montt, irritated,
warned of possible "acts of violence" if the CSJ did not let him run in
the elections while raising a complaint to the CC. On July 24 and 25,
hundreds of angry ferregistas, many hooded, sowed chaos in Guatemala
City, they attacked media outlets with incendiary bombs, beat
journalists, erected barricades on main arteries and besieged the Palace
of Justice and zones 9 and 10, which had never been affected by this
type of unrest. The passivity of the National Civil Police was manifest
and Portillo decided to take out the Army to impose order although he
was harshly criticized for not doing so before, even though he did not
respond as the military governments of the 1970s and 1980s would have
done. Ríos Montt got what he wanted: on July 30, after submitting a new
appeal for extension and clarification, he obtained from the CC the
orders to the CSJ to rescind the protection granted to the UNE and to
the TSE to proceed without delay to register the candidacy.
In
2004, Mr. Óscar Berger Perdomo took over as president. The country is
plunged into poverty, corruption and crime without measure denounced by
the UN. The expansion of the La Aurora Airport, which achieved A
certification for the first time, began; and the Mundo Maya
(International), San José (International, as an alternative to La
Aurora), Quetzaltenango, Puerto Barrios, Coatepeque and Huehuetenango
airports were remodeled. During his government he also revitalized a
good part of the road infrastructure, including the expansion of the
CA-9 in its first phase, road to Antigua Guatemala; the expansion of the
Los Altos highway began, the extension of the highway to El Salvador
from the Santa Elena Barillas crossing to Barberena and recapeo of the
route to the Atlantic.
As soon as it was inaugurated, the
administration of President Berger relentlessly persecuted the senior
staff of the government of Alfonso Portillo, accused of having promoted
corrupt acts; the same former President Portillo, after losing his
immunity as a deputy of the Central American Parliament, escaped from
Guatemala and took refuge in Mexico; former Vice President Juan
Francisco Reyes spent several months in prison accused of intentionally
defrauding the state and former Minister of Public Finance, Eduardo
Weymann, was jailed for signing - when he was no longer an official-
some minutes that supported an alleged meeting of the Superintendency of
Tax Administration in which the transfer of about 30 million quetzals
that were stolen from the treasury would have been decided. This
persecution raised a high expectation according to which the government
would dismantle the corrupt structure of the State but since that reform
was not undertaken, after a few months the level of acceptance of the
president among the public plummeted.
Hurricane Stan hit Guatemala with Category I hurricane-force winds in
the first days of October 2005 and caused damages and losses to the
country of about one billion dollars, according to a study by the
Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC).
According to the report, the hurricane directly affected fourteen of the
twenty-two departments of Guatemala; in addition, it caused six hundred
and seventy deaths, eight hundred and fifty disappeared and three and a
half million victims.
But there were several high-impact crimes
that marked the Berger government: on September 7, 2006, an eight
million dollar robbery occurred at the La Aurora International Airport;
on September 25 of that same year, the security forces commanded by the
general staff of the Ministry of the Interior, seized the facilities of
the Pavón prison, after which seven inmates out of the sixteen hundred
and fifty-one inmates living in the prison were killed.
On
December 12, 2006, the United Nations and the Government of Guatemala
signed the Agreement on the creation of an International Commission
against Impunity in Guatemala (CICIG), which, after the approval of the
Constitutional Court in May 2007, was subsequently ratified by the
Congress of the Republic on the 1st.º of August 2007. The CICIG thus
emerged as an independent international body, whose purpose is to
support the Public Prosecutor's Office, the National Civil Police and
other State institutions both in the investigation of crimes committed
by members of illegal security forces and clandestine security
apparatuses, and in general in actions aimed at dismantling these
groups.
But shortly after, in February 2007, three Salvadoran
deputies of the Central American Parliament -PARLACEN- were brutally
murdered, who had just arrived in Guatemala from El Salvador. As a
result, four Guatemalan policemen were captured, who were sent to the
country's maximum security prison - El Boquerón - and despite this, they
were killed inside the prison. At that time, the Guatemalan authorities
accused gang members as those responsible for the multiple homicide of
the agents; however, there were prisoners who assured that there was a
kind of operation that included vehicles, in which the murderers entered
the compound and directly went to where the policemen were being held to
kill them.
On November 4, 2007, engineer Colom was elected
president who took office on January 14, 2008 and in August 2010, five
non-commissioned officers of the Spanish Civil Guard and three
inspectors of the Spanish National Police Corps dismantled the former
Government leadership of Oscar Berger's government in Guatemala, who
were accused of murders, kidnappings and money laundering. Guatemala
had ordered the international search and capture and imprisonment of at
least eighteen high-ranking officials of the National Civil Police (PNC)
and the former Minister of the Interior, Carlos Vielmann, the former
general director of the PNC, Erwin Sperisen, to the deputy chief, Javier
Figueroa, and to the former head of the Investigation Division of the
National Police, Soto Diéguez. The investigations of the Spanish
investigators pointed to the possibility that one of the Guatemalan
agents had intervened in the execution of hundreds of people.
Colom ended his management in January 2012. Several of his actions were
criticized by the population. Among them are the lack of actions related
to national security, corruption, the creation of a social assistance
plan for low-income families for electoral purposes and finally the
divorce of his then wife Sandra Torres so that she could aspire to the
presidential candidacy (as it was established after judicial debates,
the wife of a president could not be a candidate for the presidency).
On November 11, 2011, retired General Otto Pérez Molina won the
election against Manuel Baldizón in the second round of the 2011
Guatemalan General Election. In April and May 2015, the International
Commission Against Impunity in Guatemala discovered serious cases of
corruption carried out by senior officials of the Pérez Molina
government, which forced the resignation of Vice President Roxana
Baldetti and several of her cabinet members. The most serious cases are
that of a smuggling network controlled by the highest authorities of the
Superintendency of Tax Administration of Guatemala and another in which
the board of directors of the Guatemalan Social Security Institute
awarded a contract to a company that did not meet the minimum
requirements to provide the service being tendered.
Upon coming to power, the Pérez Molina government privatized the
Quetzal Port Company in Escuintla on the Wednesday of the first Holy
Week they spent as rulers. Later, Vice President Roxana Baldetti
appointed Claudia Méndez Asencio as Customs intendant at the
Superintendency of Tax Administration of Guatemala (SAT). As his
government progressed, Pérez Molina de facto intervened the SAT and
placed military personnel in customs, arguing that it was to increase
collection and curb smuggling. Later, the Pérez Molina government
wanted to privatize customs collection by hiring an Argentine company,
but citizen opposition stopped them.
When the PP took over the
reins of government, in 2012, the presence of Baldetti Elias reaffirmed
the power role of retired General Luis Francisco Ortega Menaldo in
Guatemala, given the closeness between the two and that was consolidated
during the government of Jorge Serrano Elias. Considered as the heir to
the leadership in the military current known as the "Brotherhood",
Ortega Menaldo would operate the threads of national politics behind the
scenes, something that has not been proven but that is persistently
rumored in the country. Therefore, the two emblematic figures in the
current government — Pérez Molina and Baldetti Elías - would result from
the alliance between the two main military currents that emerged during
the Guatemalan Civil War: the "Union" and the "Brotherhood". But the
appearance of Luis Mendizábal - owner of the Emilio Boutique, where the
members of the Line met - according to the CICIG investigation,
confirmed how the third current of the army also positioned itself
within the government: that of retired General Marco Tulio Espinosa
Contreras, a general of the Air Force, who positioned himself during the
government of Álvaro Arzú to displace the other two during the period
that administration lasted. For his part, the merchant and member of the
intelligence community Luis Mendizábal is a figure that appears at
conjunctural moments in the history of Guatemala since the Government of
Fernando Romeo Lucas García.
The government of the Patriot Party
has been going through a constant tax collection crisis since 2012,
characterized by the failure to meet the collection goals agreed between
the SAT and the government. The collection at customs decreased in 2013
from Q 15.8 billion to Q 15.3 billion, and slowed down in 2014; the same
happened with the Value Added Tax (VAT) on imports. The fiscal gaps in
these years amount to about Q 7 billion, which have been filled through
the issuance of treasury bonds and the contracting of loans, increasing
the public debt. The financial crisis led the government to contemplate
the creation of new taxes on telephony, cement and mining activities to
finance the 2015 budget, of which the first was provisionally suspended
by the Constitutional Court.
In September 2014, retired Captain
Byron Lima Oliva, who had been in prison for fifteen years in the
Pavoncito prison, convicted of the murder of Bishop Juan José Gerardi,
was captured when the International Commission against Impunity in
Guatemala (CICIG) discovered that he controlled that prison and that he
was practically in control of the Guatemalan prison system. The
investigations showed that Lima Oliva entered and left at will in
armored vehicles and with an escort; when he was captured and taken to
the tribunal tower to testify together with the director of prisons —
Edgar Josué Camargo — and others captured he said over and over that he
was a friend of President Otto Pérez Molina. The CICIG reported that
Lima Oliva had allegedly created a multimillion-dollar empire by
dedicating himself to the control of the prison and charging up to
twelve thousand dollars for the sale of prison transfers. It was not
the first time that he was captured for being involved in illegal acts:
in February 2013 he was captured outside the prison when he was in an
armored vehicle and with an escort.
In April 2015, the Guatemalan
government was discussing requesting a two-year extension of the CICIG's
mandate from the United Nations. On April 16, a case of corruption in
Guatemalan customs was discovered by the International Commission
against Impunity in Guatemala (CICIG) in 2015. The CICIG investigation
involved several high-ranking officials of the government of retired
General Otto Pérez Molina, including the private secretary of the vice
presidency, retired Captain Juan Carlos Monzón. Monzón was in Seoul,
South Korea, accompanying Vice President Roxana Baldetti, who was
awarded an honorary doctorate in that city for her social work, when she
learned of the charges against him and went on the run. On May 9 of that
year Baldetti Elias submitted his resignation from office, and after
several days of changes and elections in Congress, the judge of the
Constitutional Court of Guatemala Alejandro Maldonado Aguirre was
appointed as the fourteenth vice president of Guatemala.
On
August 21, 2015, the International Commission Against Impunity in
Guatemala and the Public Prosecutor's Office issued an arrest warrant
for former Vice President Roxana Baldetti and a request for a
preliminary trial against President Pérez Molina for the crimes of
passive bribery, illicit association and special case of customs fraud.
At the press conference that both entities gave that same day, they
reported that evidence obtained during the operations of April 16 showed
that Juan Carlos Monzón - former private secretary of the former vice
president- he was not the leader of the customs fraud network called "La
Línea", but the president and the former vice president would have been;
moreover, they suggested that both would have been involved in the
network since before they were elected as rulers.
On September 2,
2015, he resigned from the Presidency of the Republic after being
disaffected by Congress a day earlier, and on September 3, he appeared
at the Tribunal Tower to face his first hearing for the La Línea case.
On September 3, Alejandro Maldonado Aguirre, vice president of Guatemala, was sworn in as the new president of the Republic after the resignation of Pérez Molina. Maldonado Aguirre, 79, became the first citizen to serve as vice president and president of Guatemala in the same period without having been elected — previously, Ramiro de León Carpio had been appointed president in 1993, but he had not served as vice president.
He became the fiftieth president of Guatemala, on January 14, 2016, taking over from Alejandro Maldonado Aguirre. On October 25, 2015, he was elected president of Guatemala in the second round of elections in 2015, favored by the political atmosphere that originated after the corruption cases discovered by the International Commission Against Impunity in Guatemala from April of that year.
It is known as the political crisis of 2023 to events of an
anti-democratic nature that have occurred in the country. On Sunday,
June 25, the general elections were held in which the President, Mayors
and Deputies were elected, leaving as candidates for the second round of
elections, in the category of president, Sandra Torres, from the UNE
party, a candidate who could be the first woman president of the
country, who has been charged with several crimes and who belongs to a
party that has been involved in corruption cases, and Bernardo Arevalo,
from the Semilla Movement party, who is a sociologist, philosopher and
anthropologist, he is the son of Juan José Arévalo (who is believed to
have been the best president of Guatemala) and belongs to a
social-democratic party that was financed by small donations.
These votes were full of controversies, since the TSE (Supreme Electoral
Tribunal), which is known to have received money from people related to
a party, which is the entity that guarantees democracy in the country,
eliminated Carlos Pineda, a businessman and public figure who was the
favorite of his followers to pass to the second round, from the race.
It was a great surprise for the media, and for the other political
parties, that the Seed Movement candidate passed to the second round.
That day, for the first time in years, the people came out to celebrate
the "Obelisk", a place where Guatemalan representatives who win
competitions are celebrated, the classification of Bernardo Arévalo to
the second round of elections.
On June 30, a coalition of more
than 5 parties, including the UNE party, filed an amparo that sought to
analyze the records and votes of the different polling stations in the
country, since in the second round there is a candidate who will fight
against corruption in the country.
On July 1, the Constitutional
Court, which is responsible for ensuring compliance with the
Constitution, received the amparo and gave the green light for the TSE
to evaluate the situation, thus violating the laws written in the same
Constitution. There were many people dissatisfied, since the minutes and
ballots could be altered over the course of the days. International
observers have made statements in this regard in which they emphasize
that the minutes coincide with the data they have.
Many important
people were worried about the situation. The Guatemalan and CEO of
Duolingo, Luis von Ahn published "This is a key moment in the history of
Guatemala, in which we decide whether we are a democracy or a
kleptodiction. It is imperative that the results of the elections are
respected." Marcos Antil posted: "If the Constitutional Court approves
the amparos she could become a dictator. It would be a coup d'etat."
On July 2, the Supreme Electoral Tribunal, under the pressure of the Constitutional Court, of all the parties that requested the amparo and of payments in between, decided to accept the amparo and analyze the minutes, leaving the final results in the category of president without effect. During this period, many sectors of society, both national and international, expressed their concern. The U.S. Embassy issued a statement expressing its concern about the current government's efforts to intervene in the election result. The presidential candidate Bernardo Arévalo commented through his Twitter account: "We have won the right to participate in the second round of elections through the popular will and we believe that this right may be affected during the processing of this amparo." The institutions involved took advantage of the tweet limit problems that Twitter implemented in that time period161 and the Army Day holiday, so many young people involved in social movements found out until late what was happening.
On July 12, 2023, at exactly 5:43 p.m., the Public Ministry, under
the pressure of the "Corrupt Pact" and through prosecutor Rafael
Curruchichi (who appears on the list of corrupt officials made by the
United States), announced the suspension of the Seed legal personality,
thanks to the authorization of Latvian judge Fredy Raúl Orellana,
violating the law that stipulates that a political party cannot be
suspended in elections, in addition to determining that the only entity
in charge of said process is the Supreme Electoral Tribunal.
The
former CIGIG named "The Pact of the Corrupt", a group made up of
politicians, businessmen, private and religious entities.
In the
same period of time, the Supreme Electoral Tribunal held a press
conference announcing Sandra Torres (UNE) and Bernardo Arévalo (Semilla)
as winners of the first round of elections.
During these events,
the hashtag #GolpeDeEstado became a trend on social networks. Arévalo
commented that a judge's order to suspend the legal personality of the
Semilla Movement constitutes "a technical coup d'état."
On July
13, the Public Prosecutor's Office illegally entered the headquarters of
the Registry of Citizens and extracted stationery related to the Semilla
Party.
The president of the TSE for the first time in this
situation mentioned a concern about the facts.
On July 19, the
U.S. State Department updated the Engel List, including public officials
linked to corruption cases and related to the coup. Among those
mentioned are Judge Orellana, Cinthia Monterros (prosecutor against
impunity), Edgar Navarro (former president of the administrator of the
wholesale energy market of Guatemala), Gendri Reyes (former minister of
the interior), Jimi Bremer (judge), among others.
In response to
this, the Public Prosecutor's Office issued a statement expressing its
rejection of the international pressure that Guatemala is facing,
especially from the United States, by including Guatemalans on lists
that, according to the MP, are illegal since they violate the
international right of presumption of innocence.
On July 20, an
illegal persecution was initiated against the Supreme Electoral Tribunal
by the Public Prosecutor's Office, due to the TSE's refusal to suspend
the Semilla party. The TSE argued that it did not have the authority to
suspend him, as it was an illegal act outside its competence. In
response, the MP issued an arrest warrant against Eleonora Castillo,
current deputy registrar of citizens, forgetting that she enjoys
immunity. In addition, the prosecutor Rafael Curruchiche requested an
ante-trial against the registrar Ramiro Muñoz for the same reason.
The Public Prosecutor's Office accused Semilla of false signatures on membership documents, in addition to accusing them of giving money in exchange for signatures and money laundering. Months before the elections, the Semilla party discovered that one of the people who supported them had forged a signature, and they themselves, being a party that fights against corruption, filed the corresponding complaint. The ministry did not follow up on the case until the day the TSE made the results official.
The population was outraged by these events, since their right to democratically elect their leader was being violated. Different national and international sectors showed concern about what was happening in the country. The CACIF, which is a business committee, issued its position on this case "It is imperative to respect the decision of the highest electoral authority and the will of Guatemalans expressed at the polls," although some journalists argued that within this committee there were disputes about whether they should issue a statement.
August 20, 2023 was marked as a momentous day in Guatemala, when the
second round of the presidential election was held. Bernardo Arévalo
emerged as the president-elect in a historic victory that broke turnout
records in the 21st century. More than 75% of the votes counted led
Guatemalans to gather at the iconic “El Obelisco” plaza, inaugurating a
new tradition of celebration around the winner of the election.
Arévalo’s election was seen as a break with more than 70 years of
political and business dominance in Guatemala. His platform based on
transparency, social justice and inclusion resonated with citizens eager
for profound change. The presence of more than 45 international
observers underlined the importance of the electoral process,
guaranteeing its legitimacy and strengthening trust both nationally and
internationally.
In the run-up to the second round of elections
in Guatemala, one of the issues that captured public attention was the
situation surrounding candidate Roberto Arzú, who was banned from
participating in the race. Through a video, Arzú revealed what the next
steps could be with which the "Corrupt Pact" would succeed in preventing
Bernardo Arévalo from taking office as president in January 2024. Arzú's
initial statements about this plan, as well as mentions made by other
critical journalists, generated a climate of uncertainty and speculation
in public opinion.
The acting president, Alejandro Giammattei,
added an additional element of concern when addressing the issue in an
interview. He suggested that if there was no recipient for the transfer
of the presidential sash, he would consider leaving it in the Congress
of the Republic. This statement increased the perception of instability
and reinforced the rumors in circulation, also attracting the attention
of the international community.
August 28 saw the continuation of
a series of actions that have been widely criticized by the
international community. On this day, the political persecution of Juan
Francisco Sandoval and Claudia Gonzales, prominent advocates of the
fight against corruption and impunity in the Central American country,
took place.
Juan Francisco Sandoval is recognized for his work as
the former head of the Special Prosecutor's Office Against Impunity
(FECI) in Guatemala. During his time at the FECI, Sandoval played a
crucial role in the investigation and prosecution of corruption cases at
the government and corporate levels. His efforts resulted in the
imprisonment of numerous individuals involved in high-profile cases,
sending a clear message about accountability in the country.
However, the political persecution against him took a drastic turn. The
Public Ministry (MP) carried out a raid on the residence of Sandoval's
parents, despite his advanced age and lack of connection to the
accusations against him. This act generated outrage both nationally and
internationally, being interpreted as an attempt at intimidation and
repression by the state.
Another prominent figure affected by
political persecution on this day was Claudia Gonzales, a lawyer
recognized for her commitment to human rights and her work in defending
individuals in vulnerable situations. Gonzales' capture was widely
criticized, as she was accused of abuse of authority despite never
having worked for the state. This detention, considered by many to be
illegal, fueled concerns about the state of fundamental rights in
Guatemala.
On August 24, 2023, the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights
(IACHR) issued an official confirmation of the existence of an alleged
plot to sabotage Arévalo's presidential inauguration. In response to
this situation, the IACHR granted precautionary measures to Bernardo
Arévalo de León and Vice President-elect Karin Herrera due to death
threats. In addition, the IACHR released information about a plan called
"Colosio," referring to the assassination of the Mexican PRI
presidential candidate in 1994. This plan would be driven by state
agents and criminal groups and would aim to assassinate the previously
mentioned individuals.
On August 25, 2023, the political
situation was aggravated by a further twist when Attorney General
Consuelo Porras filed an injunction with the Constitutional Court of
Guatemala. This injunction sought authorization to restrict the human
rights of those who criticized her, as well as prosecutor Rafael
Curruchiche and prosecutor Cinthia Monerroso. These actions were
interpreted by many as an attack on freedom of expression, affecting
both citizens and the media and generating even more concern about the
state of democracy and respect for fundamental rights in the country.
Guatemala is a country located in the subtropical region of the
northern hemisphere, in the northern section of Central America. It is
bordered to the north by Mexico, to the east by Belize and to the south
by Honduras and El Salvador, and is washed to the west by the Pacific
Ocean (254 km) and to the east by the Gulf of Honduras (148 km) of the
Caribbean Sea—part of the Atlantic—. The different ecological zones vary
from sea level to approximately 4000 meters above sea level, with
rainfall ranging from 400 to approximately 4000 mm per year, with a warm
tropical climate, more temperate in the highlands.
It is a
largely mountainous country, with the notable exception of its maritime
edges where low and sometimes swampy coastal plains extend. Two large
mountain ranges of high altitude run through the central part of the
country in a NO-SE direction, dividing it into three distinct
geographical areas:
the highlands of mountains and volcanoes
where most of the population lives, where two large mountainous reliefs
emerge with on the one hand, to the east, the Sierra Madre and, on the
other, part, to the west, the Sierra de los Cuchumatanes;
the Petèn
rainforest, in the northeast, is a completely flat limestone plateau
with extensive cartesian phenomena and swampy areas that extends to the
Yucatan Peninsula in Mexico, ranging from grazing areas to high jungles
(tropical moist forests) and is sparsely populated.
the coastal
plains bordering the two oceans, the Atlantic, to the east, and the
Pacific, to the west, which are characterized by a relatively warm
climate; on the narrow slope of the Pacific, about 150 km wide, very
humid and fertile in its central part, the highest population density is
located.
These areas vary in climate, elevation and landscape,
causing important contrasts between the tropical, warm and humid
lowlands, and the peaks and valleys of the highlands. The climate is
tropical, warm and humid in the Pacific and in the lowlands of Petén. It
is more temperate in the highlands, reaching freezing cold in the upper
part of the Sierra de Cuchumatanes, and warmer/drier in the easternmost
departments. The most important cities are located in the highlands — in
the central altiplano, Guatemala City (1609 m above sea level) and
Antigua Guatemala (1530 m); in the western highlands, Quetzaltenango
(2357 m) - and in the plains of the Pacific coast —Coatepeque (515 m),
Mazatenango (220 m) and Escuintla (300 m)—. However, the third city,
Puerto Barrios, is located on the shores of the Caribbean Sea.
The southern tip of the western highlands is marked by the Sierra Madre,
which extends from the Mexican border, to the south and east, and
continues at lower elevations towards El Salvador. The mountain range is
characterized by steep volcanic cones, including the Tajumulco volcano
(4220 m) the highest point of the country and Central America which is
located in the department of San Marcos. The number of volcanoes is
important and their presence in the north is caused by being the meeting
point of three tectonic plates: the North American, the Caribbean and
the Cocos plate. The 37 active volcanoes of the country 4: Pacaya (2552
m), Santiaguito, Fuego (3763 m) and Tacana (4030 m), are located in this
mountain range and abound in the highlands, so earthquakes are usually
frequent (the last major earthquake was on February 4, 1976 and killed
more than 23 000 people in the central highlands).
The northern
mountain range, the Sierra de los Cuchumatanes, begins near the Mexican
border and extends eastward through the Chuacús and Chamá mountain
ranges and southward to the Santa Cruz and Minas mountain ranges near
the Caribbean. The northern and southern mountains are separated by the
Motagua Valley, where the Motagua River and its tributaries drain from
the sierra to the Caribbean being navigable at its lower end, where it
forms the boundary with Honduras.
Hydrographically, there are two
slopes of the country: the Pacific (25% of the country), with short,
fast-flowing and impetuous rivers, such as the Suchiate (161 km) and the
Paz (134 km); and that of the Atlantic, the widest, divided into two
subverts: that of the Gulf of Honduras (Caribbean Sea, 35% of the
country), with extensive and deep rivers - proper for navigation and
fishing, such as the Motagua River (486 km), the Grande (87 km) and the
Dulce (43 km), natural drainage of Lake Izabal, and non-navigable
rivers, such as the Polochic (194 km) and the Sarstún (111 km)— and that
of the Gulf of Mexico (40% of the country), which drains through Mexican
territory through the Yucatan Peninsula — in which the La Pasión River
(354 km) and the Chixoy or Negro (529 km), both tributaries of the
Usumacinta River (850 km), the longest and most powerful river in
Central America, and the natural border between Guatemala and Mexico,
stand out. Lake Izabal, which is located near the Caribbean coast, is
the largest in the country (589.6 km2).
The heritage sea of
Guatemala is made up of two regions: the territorial sea, which is
measured from the coastline up to 12 nautical miles offshore; and the
exclusive economic zone, which reaches up to 200 mn from the coastline.
The country is often devastated by natural disasters: hurricanes,
earthquakes and volcanic eruptions. Being between the Caribbean and the
Pacific, it is the target of hurricanes, including Hurricane Mitch in
1998 and Hurricane Stan in October 2005, which caused the death of more
than 1500 people. The damage is not related to the wind, but is caused
by floods and landslides. The Motagua fault, which crosses Guatemalan
territory from east to west, was the one that caused one of the greatest
tragedies that the country has known, the 1976 earthquake, which
occurred in the early morning of February 4, at 3:01:43 local time. The
earthquake, with an intensity of 7.6° on the Richter scale, lasted 39
seconds and was followed by several aftershocks. The epicenter was
located 150 km northwest of Guatemala City, near Gualan, in the
department of Zacapa and the hypocenter, 5 km deep. It caused
approximately twenty-three thousand deaths, seventy-six thousand
injuries and left more than one million people homeless.
It is a markedly mountainous country (almost 60% of its territory),
much of it of volcanic origin, with the notable exception of its
maritime edges — of extensive low and sometimes swampy coastal plains,
with gentle beaches — and the low-lying plains of the north of the
country, the Petén region. Two large mountain ranges of high altitude
run through the central part of the country in direction, dividing it
into three distinct geographical areas:
the highlands of
mountains and volcanoes where most of the population lives, where two
large mountainous reliefs emerge with on the one hand, to the east, the
Sierra Madre and, on the other, part, to the west, the Sierra de los
Cuchumatanes ;
the Petèn rainforest, in the northeast, is a
completely flat limestone plateau with extensive cartesian phenomena and
swampy areas that extends to the Yucatan Peninsula in Mexico; it
comprises from grazing areas to high jungles (tropical moist forests)
and is sparsely populated.
the coastal plains bordering the two
oceans, the Atlantic, to the east, and the Pacific, to the west, which
are characterized by a relatively warm climate. On the narrow slope of
the Pacific, about 150 km wide, very humid and fertile in its central
part, the highest population density is located.
The southern end
of the western highlands is marked by the Sierra Madre del Sur, a
continuation of the Sierra Madre de Chiapas that extends about 280 km
parallel to the Pacific from the border with Mexico, to the south and
east, and continues at lower elevations towards El Salvador and Honduras
by the Cerro Oscuro. The mountain range is characterized by steep
volcanic cones, including the Tajumulco volcano (4220 m) the highest
point of the country and Central America which is located in the
department of San Marcos. Guatemala is one of the most volcanic
countries in the world and its presence in the north is caused by being
the meeting point of three tectonic plates: the North American, the
Caribbean and the Cocos plate. The 37 volcanoes of the country (4
active: Pacaya (2552 m), Santiaguito, Fuego (3763 m) and Tacana (4030
m)), are located in this mountain range and abound in the highlands, so
earthquakes are usually frequent (the last major earthquake was on
February 4, 1976 and killed more than 23,000 people in the central
highlands).
The northern mountain range, the Sierra de los
Cuchumatanes, begins near the Mexican border and extends eastward
through the Chuacús and Chamá mountain ranges and southward to the Santa
Cruz and Minas mountain ranges near the Caribbean. The northern and
southern mountains are separated by the Motagua Valley, where the
Motagua River and its tributaries drain from the sierra to the Caribbean
being navigable at its lower end, where it forms the boundary with
Honduras.
Guatemala is part of the Pacific Ring of Fire, which includes, in
addition to the Pacific coast, the Aleutian Islands, Japan and
Indonesia. The reason why there are many volcanoes in the region, as
will be explained in the section on Geology, is the subduction of the
Cocos plate under the Caribbean Plate off the Pacific coast. Two
mountain ranges run through the country coming from Mexico, to the
north, until reaching the border of Honduras and El Salvador, to the
south: the Sierra Madre de Chiapas and the Sierra de los Cuchumatanes.
Most of the volcanic structures are found in the Sierra Madre.
A
surprising number of 324 eruptive foci have been identified in
Guatemala. Most of them are small cineritic and lava cones in the
southeastern part of the country; the largest number is located in the
department of Jutiapa (181 foci), followed by Santa Rosa (42), Jalapa
(31), Chiquimula (27), Guatemala (13), Quezaltenango (11), Sololá (7),
Escuintla (4), San Marcos and Totonicapán (2) and Chimaltenango,
Sacatepéquez, El Progreso , and Zacapa (1). Of those structures
identified as being of volcanic origin, only thirty have the shape of a
volcanic cone (34 to 37) and are considered volcanoes, and eleven of
them are classified as "active" in the "Catalog of the Active Volcanoes
of the World": Tacaná, Tajumulco, Santa María, Cerro Quemado, Zuníl,
Atitlán, Tolimán, Acatenango, Fuego, Agua, Pacaya and Tecuamburru. And
of the latter and only three have registered eruptions in the last ten
years of: Santiaguito, Fuego and Pacaya.
The highest volcanoes
are located in the western and central part of the country, and to the
south they are lower and abundant, from the Tacana volcano on the
Guatemala-Mexico border (4092 m), to the Chingo volcano (1775 m) on the
Guatemala-El Salvador border. Eleven exceed 3000 m. The highest volcano
and the highest summit of the country is the Tajumulco volcano, 4220 m,
a stratovolcano superimposed on the altiplano composed of pyroxenic
manblendic andesite; it has two cusps, the smaller one, at 4100 m is
called Cerro Concepción. The one with the largest volume is the Agua
Volcano (3766 m), with a diameter of 15 km. This, together with the
Acatenango volcano and the Fuego volcano (3763 m), close the city of
Antigua from the south, which was abandoned in the eighteenth century as
the capital of the country because of frequent earthquakes. Also
noteworthy are the Santa María Volcano (3772 m) and the Atitlán volcano
(3537 m), located next to the lake of the same name
The most
active volcanoes are the Santiaguito, formed after an eruption of the
Santa María volcano, the Fuego volcano and the Pacaya (2552 m) located
next to Lake Amatitlán, near the capital, which is one of the most
active volcanoes in the world. All three have experienced activity in
the month of June 2020. Only the Tacana volcano has a fumarole area.
Mountain systems determine the large hydrographic regions of the
country:
the slope of the Pacific Ocean (with a coastal coastline
of 254 km), with rivers that are characterized by being short, fast and
impetuous; the Suchiate River (natural border with Mexico, at the height
of the department of San Marcos) and the Paz River (border with El
Salvador, at the height of the department of Jutiapa) are border rivers.
side of the Atlantic, which in turn is divided into two subversive:
that of the Caribbean Sea, all of it in the Gulf of Honduras (with a
coastal coastline of 148 km), with extensive and deep rivers, suitable
for navigation and fishing — such as the Motagua River or Rio Grande and
the Dulce River, the natural outflow of Lake Izabal — and non-navigable
rivers, such as the Polochic and the Sarstún (border with Belize).
the one of the Gulf of Mexico that drains through the Yucatan peninsula
through Mexican territory, in which the La Pasión River and the Chixoy
or Negro River stand out, where the Chixoy Hydroelectric Plant has been
built, which provides 30% of the electricity consumed by Guatemalans,
and where the construction of the Xalalá Hydroelectric Plant, now under
tender, has been planned. These rivers are tributaries of the Usumacinta
River, the longest and largest river in Central America, and the natural
border between Guatemala (Petén department) and Mexico (Chiapas).
Guatemala has numerous lakes and lagoons, many of volcanic origin,
such as the splendid Lake of Atitlán, and the Amatitlán, with springs of
sulfurous waters at high temperatures. Of fluvial origin, Lake Petén
Itzá stands out, which has several islands, and on one of them the
island of the city of Flores is located, and Lake Izabal, the largest in
the country, which drains into the Gulf of Honduras through the Dulce
River.
The variability of the country in different altitudinal
levels leads to the variability of climates, physiography and soils,
which are important factors in the diversity of habitats and ecosystems
and therefore in the type and variation of vegetation and fauna; this
explains the diversity of crops that can be produced and the different
biological forms that can be used.
Water resources are abundant
if we consider the availability of water per inhabitant, although
periods of scarcity occur at certain times of the year, and in certain
localities. Due to its geographical position, Guatemala is located in
the transit of humid winds that originate in the Caribbean Sea and the
Pacific Ocean; and due to its proximity to the sources of humidity,
precipitation in the country is abundant on the slopes of the mountains
exposed to the transit of such winds. Therefore, the country has,
globally, a significant amount of water that exceeds its needs: the
annual availability is estimated at 97,120 hm3, which is equivalent, for
the 2009 population of 13.2 million people, to an average of more than
20 m3/day per inhabitant.
There is a great diversity of climates in Guatemala. The climate in
the central plateau is quite temperate, with an average of 15 °C
throughout the year. The climate of the coastal regions is more
tropical; the Atlantic coast is more humid than the Pacific, with an
average annual temperature of 28.3 °C. The rainy season occurs between
May and November. Annual rainfall in the northern zone ranges from 1525
mm to 2540 mm; Guatemala City, in the southern mountains, receives about
1320 mm on average annually.
The areas vary in their climate,
elevation and landscape, so there are marked contrasts between the
lowlands with a tropical, warm and humid climate, and the high regions
with peaks and valleys, where temperatures are cooler.
The
climate is hot and humid on the Pacific coast and the lowland areas of
Petén (although in the latter it can be hot and dry), while in the
highlands and in the Cuchumatanes area the climate is cold mountain and
is arid and hot in the easternmost areas.
Guatemala is considered one of the 10 nations most vulnerable to the
effects of climate change according to the United States Agency for
International Development. In 2010, Guatemala ranked second in the world
on the Global Climate Risk Index, which indicates the level of exposure
and vulnerability to extreme events.
Both commercial agricultural
production and subsistence farming have declined, and subsistence
farmers are therefore finding it harder to find work as day laborers
when their own crops fail to bear fruit. Around 300,000 subsistence
farmers reported crop loss due to drought in 2018.
Approximately
half of Guatemala's workforce is in the agro-industrial sector. Low crop
yields due to climate change have been identified as a factor in the
migration of some Guatemalans to the United States.
One of the climatic events with the greatest impact in Guatemala is
the El Niño phenomenon, with important implications for the climate,
which has been reflected in the variation in rainfall patterns. Under
severe events, a significant decrease in accumulated rainfall has been
recorded at the beginning of the rainy season.
Unusual snowfalls
have also been recorded on the highest peaks of the country. Guatemala,
being located in the tropical zone of the planet, does not record this
phenomenon, but in the last decade it has recorded more frequent and
intense snowfalls on some peaks of the country. The last major snowfall
in Guatemala fell on the Tajumulco volcano on December 19, 2009, with
around 20 cm of snow accumulating on the summit of the volcano.
The phenomenon has been associated with a greater incidence of cold
fronts, an increase in the number of hurricanes in the Pacific while
they decrease in the Atlantic, Caribbean and Gulf of Mexico, as has been
observed in recent years. These atmospheric conditions cause significant
flooding in river basins, mainly those on the Pacific side, which is
aggravated by the high vulnerability of many populated areas established
in high-risk areas, such as river banks and slopes prone to landslides.
Regarding the conditions brought by climate change, it is considered
that the impacts will be very strong in all aspects of national life,
unless there are substantial improvements in socioeconomic conditions.
Guatemala is a highly vulnerable country. The country's social
conditions (high rate of poverty, inequality and social exclusion) make
a large part of the population easily suffer from situations of
political, economic and natural tension, including climatic phenomena.
Predominant climate: Tropical climate.
Climate in the plains:
Excessively hot during the summer.
Climate of the plateaus: They
enjoy more moderate climatic conditions.
In the capital city, maximum
temperatures reach up to 27 °C and minimum temperatures drop to 5 °C.
The fertile soil is the most important resource in Guatemala, which
is basically a forest country. Some of the minerals that the country
has, although not all of them are sufficiently exploited, are iron,
petroleum, nickel, lead, zinc and chromite; deposits of uranium and
mercury have been discovered. Gold has been exploited in the highlands
of the department of San Marcos since 2006. The Petén region provides
wood and medicinal tree species, such as rubber tree, chicozapote
(Manilkara zapota), ebony (Diospyros ebenum), mahogany, palorosa and
others; the wood and its products are used both for local consumption
and for export, and oil is also exploited to a lesser extent.
Natural resources:
Open mining
Timber
Commercial fishing
Manilkara zapota
Hydropower
Land use:
Cropland: 12%
Permanent crops: 5%
Permanent grasslands: 24%
Forests: 54%
Others: 5%
Irrigated land: 1250 km²
In Guatemala, according to the IUCN, in 2018, 349 protected areas had
been established, covering some 22,039 km², 31% of the territory, and
some 1,065 km² of marine areas, 0.9% of the 118,336 km² that belong to
the country. Of these areas, 20 are national parks, 4 are cultural
monuments, 5 are multiple-use areas, 6 are natural refuges, 2 are
municipal forest reserves, 1 is a natural monument, 2 are protected
reserves in wetlands, 30 are permanent protected areas, 185 are private
nature reserves, 1 is a municipal recreational park, 1 is a regional
recreational area and regional natural park, 1 is a forest reserve, 6
are protected biotopes, 1 is a biological reserve, and 69 are regional
municipal parks. In addition, there are 3 Unesco biosphere reserves
(Maya, Sierra de las Minas and Trifinio Fraternidad), 1 world heritage
site (Tikal national park) and 7 wetlands of international importance
that were included in the Ramsar List. (But according to the National
Wetlands Inventory, there are 252 wetland sites, including lakes,
lagoons, rivers, swamps, etc.).
CONAP, the National Council of
Protected Areas, is the institution in charge of managing the country's
protected areas since 1989. The Law of Protected Areas, LAP, gives it
jurisdiction over the Guatemalan System of Protected Areas, SIGAP, made
up of the set of protected areas and the entities that manage them. On
the link page you can find a list of the country's protected areas that
in 2019 included 339 protected areas in 6 categories: national parks;
biological reserves; protected biotopes; cultural and natural monuments;
wildlife refuges, water and forest reserves or multiple uses; municipal
and regional forest reserves and recreational parks; private nature
reserves, and biosphere reserves.
The first national park
established in the country was in 1955, the Tikal National Park, in the
ancient Mayan city of Tikal, surrounded by jungle (it was also the first
mixed UNESCO World Heritage site in the world); the largest park is
Laguna del Tigre, with 289,912 ha, and the smallest is Cuevas del
Silvino, with 8 ha.
In some areas of northern Guatemala, African
oil palm plantations are being implemented as an industrial crop to the
detriment of protected species such as the rosul or cocobolo. The
plantations extend through Sayaxché, in Petén, and between Raxruhá and
Chisec, in Alta Verapaz.
Despite being a small country in size, Guatemala is exceptional in
terms of biological diversity compared to other countries and regions:
according to Parkswatch and the IUCN, it is considered the fifth
biodiversity hotspot in the world.235236 With seven biomes, Guatemala
ranks first in Central America in terms of ecoregional diversity (14
ecoregions) and second in the total number of described species
surpassed only by Costa Rica. In terms of endemic species Guatemala
ranks first in relation to Central America since more than 13% of the
species of mammals, reptiles, amphibians, birds and plants are endemic.
This feature is particularly noticeable for the flora, since more than
15% of the species that exist in the country are considered endemic.
The country has 14 ecological regions ranging from mangrove forest
(4 species), both in coastal, dry forests and shrublands in the eastern
highlands, subtropical and tropical rainforests, wetlands, cloud forests
in the Verapaz region, mixed forests and pine forests in the highlands.
More than a third of the Guatemalan territory (36.3% or about 39,380
km2) is covered with forests. About half of the forests (49.7% or
approximately 19,570 km2) are classified as primary forest, which is
considered the most biodiverse forest type. Guatemala has the largest
number of tree species in the region, as the territory includes 17
conifers (pines, cypresses, including the endemic Abies guatemalensis),
the most in any tropical region in the world.
Guatemala is home
to more than 9000 species of plants and vertebrate animals. Guatemala
has some 1,246 known species of amphibians, birds, mammals and reptiles,
according to figures from the World Conservation Monitoring Center. Of
these, 6.7% are endemic, which means that they do not exist in any other
country, and 8.1% are threatened species. It has 192 species of native
mammals, 486 species of birds (370 species breed in the country and the
additional presence of 116 more species, almost 20% of the avifauna of
migratory species). According to Villar, the native amphibian species
are grouped into nine families and 27 genera, the most numerous being
the anurus family (toads and frogs) with 83 species. The country has the
highest diversity of lungless salamanders (family Plethodonitiadae) in
the world, with 41 species, of which 19 are endemic. It is also home to
at least 8681 species of vascular plants, of which 13.5% are endemic.
The American continent has been considered as the place of origin of
a number of important cultivated plants, many of them originating from
the region shared between Mexico and Guatemala. The country is
considered one of the centers of origin by Nikolai I. Vavilov, who by
analyzing the origin and source of genetic variation of cultivated
plants, considered Guatemala as one of the richest centers of genetic
diversity in the world.
Cultural diversity (exclusively human)
should also be considered as part of biodiversity. Like genetic or
species diversity, some attributes of cultures. Cultural diversity is
manifested by the plurality of language, religious beliefs, land
management practices, art, music, social structure, crop selection,
diet. These native groups have important knowledge regarding the uses
and properties of species; diversity of genetic resources and management
techniques.
And with 25 sociolinguistic groups, Guatemala's
biodiversity goes beyond flora and fauna; its landscapes and its
cultural roots and traditions are a great attraction for tourism.
Guatemala is located on a geologically very active land portion, as
evidenced by its current volcanic activity. What is now South America
was joined to Africa approximately 160 million years ago. At the end of
the Jurassic period, approximately 130 million years ago, the
displacement of a part of the ancient continent towards the East was
shown, thus beginning the separation of what is now South America. Also,
small islands were emerging, the so-called proto-Antilles, which
eventually moved to the northeast, forming the Antilles. 100 million
years ago, Africa was completely separated from South America.
At
the end of the Cretaceous period, approximately 80 million years ago,
some terrestrial areas of northern Central America began to emerge,
mainly due to volcanic activity and the collision of tectonic plates,
constituting the core of Central America, which includes the highlands
of Chiapas, the central and mountainous part of southern Guatemala,
Honduras, El Salvador and northern Nicaragua. According to Dengo (1969),
the relief of northern Central America was increased by emanations of
volcanic material from the fissures between the tectonic plates. Slowly,
in terms of millions of years, Central America was emerging. About 60
million years ago, North America, including northern Central America,
was separated from South America by a marine area, which has been
referred to by some geologists as the Central American canal.
In
terms of geological structure and history, northern Central America is
part of the North American subcontinent. Later, the arc that forms the
south of Nicaragua and Costa Rica was emerging, also due to volcanic
activity. The current south of Central America (south of Nicaragua,
Costa Rica and Panama) originated from an underwater promontory in which
a series of volcanic islands very similar to the smaller islands were
formed, as a result of the thrust of the Caribbean crust towards the
Pacific. The Central American archipelago continued to emerge to form
the rest of Central America, which totally happened about 2 million
years ago, when Central and South America finally united when a small
area that was submerged "emerged", and today it is Panama. The
appearance of the Mesoamerican archipelago and then the formation of the
Central American mass allowed the migration of plants and animals from
north to south and from south to north. This explains why Central
America has a very diverse flora and fauna, which comes from both the
south and the north.
In general, the Central American relief was
increased over the course of several million years by emanations of
volcanic material from the fissures between the tectonic plates. This
explains the volcanic origin of most of the soils of the central
platform of Central America and Guatemala, and the little development of
the soils of the flat parts of the western Atlantic, such as the Petén,
Belize and Yucatan regions; that is, the soils of the central platform
have several tens of millions of years of formation, in which flora and
time have acted. The soils of the department of Petén, many of them
karst, have a few million years of development and this explains why
they are shallow; the rocks of the southern part of Petén are
predominantly marine limestones from the Miocene, from about 10 million
years ago.
Most of the Caribbean and Central America rests on the
Caribbean Plate, located between the North American, South American and
Cocos tectonic plates. The territory of Guatemala is located on three of
these plates or parts of them:
the Maya block at the southern
edge of the North American plate, a continental plate;
the Chortis
block of the diffuse northern edge of the Caribbean Plate, also
continental;
and the northern part of the Cocos plate, an oceanic
plate.
The Cocos plate collides with the North American plate,
moving under it, the phenomenon called subduction, forming the deep
Mesoamerican trench that has given rise to the chain of volcanoes of the
western Pacific coast. On the other hand, the Caribbean plate, which
occupies most of the country and is relatively static, collides from the
north with the North American plate, but in this case the phenomenon is
friction, resulting in a transitory or deforming fault —which has
originated two important faults: the Chixoy-Polochic fault, oriented
E-W, which moves about 2 cm per year, associated with which there are
other very fractured folds and secondary faults; and the Motagua fault,
to the east of the previous one, which follows the course of the Motagua
River from the Caribbean Sea to Chichicastenango— that cross Guatemala
forming a corridor from west to east to the north of the volcanic chain
forming mountain ranges in the area of the Sierra de las Minas. The base
of the Central American core is metamorphic and igneous, probably from
the Precambrian era, which forms the substrate of the mountains of
southern Mexico and central Guatemala. To the north it is covered with
carbonate and detrital rocks of the Upper Paleozoic. To the south, it is
covered by sedimentary rocks of the Mesozoic and detrital rocks of the
Triassic, Jurassic and Cretaceous. Towards the coast the basaltic flows
of the volcanic chain appear. In places like Todos Santos Cuchumatán you
can see on both sides of the valley the vivid contrast between the
carbonate rock to the east and the volcanic rock to the west.240
Guatemala is divided into four geomorphological regions: the Pacific
coastal plain or subduction zone, the parallel volcanic chain, the
mountain system of central Guatemala or the Motagua-Polochic fault zone
and the Petén sedimentary basin, in the north of the country.
January 1 New Year Celebration for the arrival of the new year.
February 11th National Day of the White Nun National flower Day declared
in 1934 by General Jorge Ubico.
February 14th Valentine's Day In
Guatemala, people tend to be surprised with gifts such as roses,
chocolates, letters or flowers.
February 20 Marimba and Tecún Uman
Day Marimba Day Decree 66-78 declaring the marimba as a national
instrument / Tecún Uman Day, Decree-1334, as a national hero and symbol
of defense of Guatemalan nationality.
February 21 National Indigenous
Languages Day is a date that promotes, reinvigorates and exalts the role
of indigenous languages in Guatemala.
March 8th Women's Day and La
Ceiba Day International women's Day and National tree Day of Guatemala,
La Ceiba.
march - April Holy Week in Guatemala The week of the first
full moon after the 21st of March, as celebrated by the Catholic Church.
May 1st Labor day International Labor Day.
May 10 Mother's Day
Recognition to all mothers and holiday for working mothers.336
May
30 National Day of the Popol Vuh was declared a National Book on May 30,
1972 to preserve the cultural and social historical value of the work.
The Ministerial Agreement 826-2012, which declares it as Intangible
Cultural Heritage of the Nation. 337
June 17 Father's Day
Recognition to all fathers, there is no holiday just a matter of family
interest.
June 25 Teacher's Day There is no holiday, it is in honor
of the teacher María Chinchilla in 1944, in repression of protest
demonstration when General Jorge Ubico Castañeda ruled.
June 30 Army
Day Instituted in remembrance of the triumph of the Liberal Revolution
liberated by Miguel García Granados and Justo Rufino Barrios on June 30,
1871.338
August 9 International Day of the Indigenous Peoples is a
day to promote dialogue between Indigenous Peoples, authorities,
international cooperation, non-governmental organizations and all actors
working for the common good of these peoples.339
August 15th Day of
the Assumption of the Virgin IF Guatemala City Fair (New Guatemala of
the Assumption).
August 17th Flag Day During the government of
General Miguel García Granados and since 1961 the Flag Day is celebrated
every August 17th.340
September 5 Quetzal Day Day of the national
bird of Guatemala, national symbol as established in Decree No. 33 of
November 18, 1871.
September 15 Independence Day Celebration of the
independence of the Republic of Guatemala from the Kingdom of Spain, on
September 15, 1821.
October 1st Children's Day is a holiday dedicated
to all boys and girls.
October 12th Hispanic Heritage Day is a date
to remember and highlight the ethnic diversity and culture of our
country Guatemala, a multi-ethnic, multicultural and multilingual
society, where the Mayan, Xinca, Garifuna and Ladino peoples live
together.
October 20 Revolution Day Overthrow of General Federico
Ponce Vaides on October 20, 1944 / End of the 14-year government of
General Jorge Ubico Castañeda.
November 1st All Saints Day All Saints
Day.
November 2nd All Souls Day All Souls Day.
November 26
National Day of the Garifuna people Celebration with the purpose of
protecting and promoting the development of the language, culture,
customs, resources and forms of said community in Guatemala.
December
7 Devil's Burning Day Celebration of the sixteenth century as a preamble
to the festivities of the birth of Christ, representing the triumph of
good over evil.
December 8th is the Day of the Immaculate Conception
of Mary, sworn Patroness of Guatemala and tutelary patroness of
Guatemala City.
December 24 Christmas Eve Christmas Eve, it is rested
from 12 noon.
December 25th Christmas Celebration of the birth of
Jesus of Nazareth.
December 31 New Year's Eve New Year's Eve, it is
rested from 12 noon.
In Guatemala, due to its religious tradition, each municipality
celebrates the Fiesta Titular or Fiesta Patronal. This takes place
during the week of veneration of the Saint or Patron Saint of each
municipality and peaks on the particular day with a holiday for that
day, with special celebrations taking place. For Guatemala City, for
example, it is on August 15 in honor of the Virgin of the Assumption.
Holy Week in Guatemala is a festivity of great artistic value, in
addition to religious fervor. The largest processions take place in
Antigua Guatemala and Guatemala City. In these, in addition to the
beauty of the floats, the inhabitants organize to make carpets, which
are the greatest attraction of this celebration due to their artistic
details that are characteristic of Guatemala and in turn, attract
tourists who observe the detailed elaboration of these. The carpets are
made of sawdust, fruits, flowers and different materials, which are an
expression of faith and color. In Huehuetenango and other towns in the
country, the live representation of the Passion of Christ is striking.
In relation to the Intangible Cultural Heritage, there are several
protected manifestations, such as the Huelga de Dolores of the
University of San Carlos of Guatemala (ministerial agreement 275-2010),
the Convite del 8 de diciembre of the municipality of Chichicastenango
(agreement 347-2010) and the Brotherhood of San Marcos Evangelista
(agreement 532-2010).
Music in the life of the Mayans and the indigenous ethnic groups that inhabited Mesoamerica at the beginning of the 16th century is documented in archaeological remains such as polychrome vases and other ceramic artifacts.
From the presence of the Spanish in 1524, European liturgical music
was introduced as part of the Catholic religion. Handwritten books of
Gregorian liturgical chant were brought for the music of the canonical
hours that structure time. The main composers of the Renaissance period
in Guatemala are Hernando Franco, Pedro Bermúdez and Gaspar Fernández.
The 17th century introduced the baroque with the practice of carols
in vernacular languages and the instrumental accompaniment of violins
and basso continuo, the latter played by vihuela, harp, harpsichord,
organ and bass instruments such as the violon and bassoon.
In the
18th century, Guatemalan baroque music reached a notable flowering with
the music of Manuel José de Quirós and Rafael Antonio Castellanos, whose
disciples and chapel officers Pedro Nolasco Estrada Aristondo and
Vicente Sáenz carried that heritage into the 19th century. The first
composer to approach large instrumental forms, not only in Guatemala but
throughout America, was José Eulalio Samayoa, author of sacred music,
instrumental pieces such as toccatas and divertissements, as well as
various symphonies. Among the composers who followed that school were
Benedicto Sáenz Jr., José Escolástico Andrino and Indalecio Castro.
At the end of the 19th century, the system of military bands was
strengthened with protagonists such as Emilio Dressner, Germán
Alcántara, Fabián Rodríguez and Rafael Álvarez Ovalle. Piano music
developed with virtuosos such as Luis Felipe Arias and Herculano
Alvarado, trained in Italy, who in turn trained Alfredo Wyld and Rafael
Vásquez, among many other pianists and composers. The marimba was
expanded thanks to the invention of Julián Paniagua Martínez and
Sebastián Hurtado in Quetzaltenango, becoming the chromatic instrument
capable of playing without limitations the light music of the time,
until then limited to the piano. The exploration of indigenous music was
undertaken by Jesús Castillo and his brother Ricardo Castillo.
In
the 20th century, the following composers stood out:
Wotzbelí
Aguilar: composer. He was the son of Trinidad Solórzano and the lawyer
Porfirio Aguilar.
Rafael Álvarez Ovalle (1858-1946): composer,
flutist, guitarist, pianist and violinist. Author of the music for the
National Anthem of Guatemala.
Domingo Bethancourt Mazariegos
(1906-1980): marimbist and composer.
José Castañeda: orchestra
conductor who trained in Paris. When he returned to Guatemala he founded
the Ars Nova Orchestra, made up of professionals and amateurs. At the
request of President Jorge Ubico, this orchestra was converted into the
official group of the State, and had to take the name of the Progressive
Orchestra (1936). His cooperation with Miguel Ángel Asturias (Nobel
Prize for Literature 1967) resulted in stage works such as "Emulo
Lipolidón" and "Imágenes de Nacimiento".
Jesús Castillo: musician and
composer. He collected music from indigenous people in various regions
of Guatemala. Among his original works based on native music, the opera
Quiché Vinak (1917-1925) stands out, which premiered in 1924 at the
Teatro Abril in Guatemala City.
Rafael Juárez Castellanos
(1913-2000): composer and band director from Guatemala.
Dieter
Lehnhoff: composer, orchestra director, and musicologist. He wrote the
history of Guatemalan musicians and is a member of the Academy of
Geography and History of Guatemala and the Guatemalan Academy of
Language.
Paco Pérez (Francisco Pérez Muñoz; 1917-1951): singer,
composer, and guitarist; he is the author of Luna de Xelajú, considered
by many to be the second National Anthem of Guatemala.
Jorge
Sarmientos (1931-2012): musician, composer, and orchestra director,
cataloged as the most outstanding in the history of the country.
Mariano Valverde (1884-1956): marimba musician and composer. He was
director of the Marimba Maderas de mi Tierra, considered the best group
of its kind in the world.
The advent of radio and television promoted the sentimental Latin
American romantic song, with various representatives such as Elizabeth
from Guatemala, Gustavo Adolfo Palma, Juan de Dios Quezada and Tanya
Zea, winner of second place at the OTI festival in 1974. There is also
activity by pop musicians such as:
Ricardo Arjona (1964-):
singer-songwriter and musician.
Shery (1985-): singer and composer of
Latin pop music.
Others: young singers have emerged in the Guatemalan
environment, such as the winner of the second edition of Latin American
Idol Carlos Peña, Fabiola Rodas and Gaby Moreno, who has triumphed in
Los Angeles as a blues and jazz singer.
The rock movement was
started in 1969 by groups like Plástico Pesado, Apple Pie, Caballo Loco
and others, from which descend popular bands like Alux Nahual and later
the so-called "movement of the nineties" that included, among others,
Bohemia Suburbana, La Tona, Ricardo Andrade, Viernes Verde, Radio Viejo,
Extinción, Razones de Cambio, Influenza, Planeta Panamericana, Legión,
and more recent bands like Viento en Contra, Malacates Trébol Shop, El
tambor de la tribu, Gangster, El Clubo, Kayland, among others. In jazz,
the group Terracota stood out, which developed a musical style oriented
towards the inclusion of folkloric elements of Mayan origin, as well as
Bob Porter's group, Fantasma Sandoval and great bands like Fernando
Pèrez and his Latin Jazz Band, Jazz Train Express.
The main classical dance group in Guatemala, the National Ballet of Guatemala, was established in July 1948. Between 1950 and 1980, when it was formed by great figures who gave it a great boost, it was closed during the Cold War years because it was thought that its directors, of Russian nationality, could be agents of international communism. It was reopened in 1955 under the direction of Fabiola Perdomo. From 1962 to 1974, the maestro Antonio Crespo was in charge of the Ballet. During this period, a generation of quality dancers emerged. Among them, Christa Mertins, Brenda Arévalo, Ana Elsy Aragón, Richard Devaux, Sonia Juárez, Miguel Cuevas and Gladys García. The National School of Dance and Choreography is the main source of the Guatemalan Ballet. From the School came Mayra Rodríguez, who began dancing at a very young age, being discovered by Antonio Crespo and reaping several rewards in the Ballet. The Ballet Guatemala was recognized as Cultural Heritage of the country in March 1992.
Guatemala has many painters who have stood out since colonial times,
with sacred art through Modernism, and currently Primitivism and
Abstract Art stand out. Some outstanding painters are:
Carlos
Valenti
Carlos Mérida
Cesar Izquierdo
Elmar Rojas
Erwin
Guillermo
Zipacná de León
Roberto González Goyri
Ramón Ávila
Francisco Cabrera
Arturo Martínez
Dagoberto Vásquez
Manolo
Gallardo
Marco Augusto Quiroa
Efraín Recinos
Ramón Banús
Arnoldo Ramírez Amaya
Colonial Guatemalan sculpture that emerged in the city of Antigua Guatemala became one of the most famous of the Viceroyalty from the 17th century onwards, standing out for the richness of polychromy and upholstery and the preciousness of its execution. Notable sculptors were Quirio Cataño, author of the Black Christ of Esquipulas, Mateo de Zúñiga, Alonso de la Paz or Martín Abarca.
Among the inventors, Dr. Federico Lehnhoff (1871-1932) stands out, who developed instant coffee in 1909. Patented internationally, the invention was very successful, winning its first gold medal at the Universal Exhibition in Ghent, Brussels, in 1913. The First World War put an end to the manufacture of the product promoted by the company Société du Café Soluble "Belna" in Paris. Later, Dr. Federico Lehnhoff developed the sulfa drug Sulfarsenol, which served as the basis for numerous antibiotics. Julian Paniagua Martinez and Sebastian Hurtado invented and developed the chromatic marimba in Quetzaltenango in 1894. Another inventor was Dr. Ricardo Bressani Castignoli (1926-), who developed nutritional products, including Incaparina. Quetzalteco Miguel Angel Castroconde stands out for being the builder of the first and only airplane made in Central America. He started the project with his son that bears the same name, it is a small aircraft that had its first flight in May 2003. The name of the airplane is "Quetzaltenango 1" in honor of his hometown.
Guatemala has six national newspapers; five national news programs on
open television and five national news programs on cable television.
Among the best-known radio news programs are Noticentro SN of Radio
Sonora, Patrullaje Informativo of Emisoras Unidas and El Independiente
of Radio Nuevo Mundo, the latter being the oldest private radio
newspaper in the country. The radio spectrum is dominated by six
corporations: Emisoras Unidas de Guatemala, Central de Radios, Grupo
Radial El Tajín, Grupo Nuevo Mundo, Radio Grupo Alius and Radio
Corporación Nacional, which concentrate, in usufruct, the majority of
the radio frequencies granted by the State.
As for the written
press, Prensa Libre and Nuestro Diario —originally part of the same
corporation but later separated— dominate the market, especially the
latter; the other newspapers, Al Día, Siglo 21 and ElPeriódico,
disappeared while Diario La Hora has become a digital medium. While they
circulated they had a limited circulation. El Diario de Centro América
is the Official Journal.
On the other hand, the open television
news programs are Noti7, Telediario, Telecentro Trece and TN23Noticias
and the cable news program is Hechos Guatemala, A las 8:45 de Canal
Antigua, VEA CANAL, El Noticiero de Guatevision. According to article 35
of the Political Constitution of the Republic, the emission of thought
is free in Guatemala.
However, the ownership structure of the
media tends to reproduce the social inequality of the country, since
they are strongly concentrated: a dozen families dominate the electronic
media, controlling all the television stations and almost all the radio
stations, two business groups formed by new families control all the
newspapers in the nation and 99% of the circulation. The most
influential media are, in order of relevance: television, radio and the
written press. In the case of television, Guatemala is an exceptional
case in which a person of Mexican origin is the owner of the four
existing private VHF channels; Remigio Ángel González's Radio y
Televisión de Guatemala, part of the Albavisión group, has no
competition with VHF, since the channels of Congress (channel 9) and the
Academy of Mayan Languages (channel 5) have an assigned frequency but
do not transmit. González's case is the result of the fact that the
concessions he uses are the result of political decisions; he is also
the owner of one of the main radio chains in the country, which allows
him not only to influence the construction of political preferences, but
also for all politicians to reach agreements with him to promote their
candidacies.
The Emisoras Unidas and Radio Corporación Nacional
groups have strong ties to politics: the Emisoras Unidas group owns the
cable channel Canal Antigua, the free circulation newspaper Publinews
and the weekly magazine Contrapoder. One of its owners, Érick Archila,
was —between January 2012 and May 2015— Minister of Energy and Mines,
but had to resign after the CICIG investigations began for the La Línea
Case.