Where is it located: Central America
Borders: Mexico, Belize, Honduras, El Salvador, and the Pacific Ocean
Capital City: Guatemala City
Other major cities: Antigua, Escuintla, Panajachel, Chichicastenango, Tikal, Quetzaltenango, Tikal, Flores, Puerto Quetzal, Puerto Barrios
Time Zone: In general along US Central Time (varies as days of Daylight Saving Time are different by a few weeks)
Country Code: 502

Without a doubt, there is too much to say about Guatemala as a country to fit in one article. We’ll talk about history, politics, economy, etc. When you feel there is something to add, please do so in the comments section!

For those in the United States, there rarely is a history lesson that touches on the history of Guatemala except to mention the Spanish Conquistadors invasion of Central America in the 1500’s. I first heard of Guatemala when I was 14. Our youth director was from Guatemala City and our youth group took a trip to work with his church in a remote town called Palencia. Since that first experience in Guatemala, part of me has never left.

The name Guatemala is derived from one of many different sources. No one is exactly sure which one is correct. A search of www.questconnect.org produced this result on the name.

The origin of the name Guatemala is Indian, but its derivation and meaning are undetermined. Some hold that the name Guatemala means land of the trees in the Maya-Toltec language. Another thought is that the Nahuatl expression Quauhtitlan, which means "between the trees," gave the name to what we now know as Guatemala. That was the name the Tlaxcaltec soldiers who accompanied Pedro de Alvarado during the Spanish Conquest gave to this territory, perhaps translating into their language the word "Quiche," which means "many trees." One other idea is that Guatemala’s name is a Spanish corruption of the Nahoa (Mexican) word coactlmoctl-lan, meaning "land of the snake-eating bird," a phrase that refers to the country’s eagle.

The first settlers in this region were the Mayan people. While many have considered the Mayans to have been one great nation, historians claim that in fact, they were a network of separate groups. One of the largest groups was located in what is now northern Guatemala in the settlement of Tikal. The impressive remains of this Mayan civilization give a small insight into a time when as many as 100,000+ live in this area.

In the 1500’s, Europeans began to move in to Central America claiming the land for Spain. Though some historians will argue that Europe at this time was not as developed as a society, none would argue that the Mayans stood no chance against the powerful military. Within a few years, the Mayan people were subjected to slavery in their homeland. Though disease and war had decimated this society, the culture has lived on. A majority of the population of Guatemala is of Mayan descent. There is a cultural divide between those of Mayan ancestry and those of Spanish ancestry. While many have intermarried, racism between the two groups has only worsened the problem of poverty that plagues much of Guatemala.

Again from www.questconnect.org we find a good history of recent events in Guatemala history (As compared to 2000 B.C. to 900 A.D. for the Mayan Empire)

From 1898 to 1920, dictator Manuel Estrada Cabrera ran the country, and from 1931 to 1944, Gen. Jorge Ubico Castaneda served as strongman.
After Ubico's overthrow in 1944 by the "October Revolutionaries," a group of left-leaning students and professionals, liberal-democratic coalitions led by Juan José Arévalo (1945–1951) and Jacobo Arbenz Guzmán (1951–1954) instituted social and political reforms that strengthened the peasantry and urban workers at the expense of the military and big landowners like the U.S.-owned United Fruit Company. With covert U.S. backing, Col. Carlos Castillo Armas led a coup in 1954, and Arbenz took refuge in Mexico. A series of repressive regimes followed, and by 1960 the country was plunged into a civil war between military governments, right-wing vigilante groups, and leftist rebels that would last 36 years, the longest civil war in Latin American history. Death squads murdered an estimated 50,000 leftists and political opponents during the 1970s. In 1977, the U.S. cut off military aid to the country because of its egregious human rights abuses. The indigenous Maya Indians were singled out for special brutality by the right-wing death squads. By the end of the war, 200,000 citizens were dead.
A succession of military juntas dominated during the civil war, until a new constitution was passed and civilian Marco Vinicio Cerezo Arévalo was elected and took office in 1986. He was followed by Jorge Serrano Elías in 1991. In 1993, Serrano moved to dissolve Congress and the Supreme Court and suspend constitutional rights, but the military deposed Serrano and allowed the inauguration of Ramiro de Leon Carpio, the former attorney general for human rights. A peace agreement was finally signed in Dec. 1996 by President Álvaro Arzú Irigoyen.
In 1999, a Guatemalan truth commission blamed the army for 93% of the atrocities and the rebels (the Guatemalan National Revolutionary Unit) for 3%. The former guerrillas apologized for their crimes, and President Clinton apologized for U.S. support of the right-wing military governments. The army has not acknowledged its guilt. Alfonso Portillo Cabrera, closely associated with the former dictatorship of Efrain Rios Montt (1982–1983), became president in Jan. 2000. In Aug. 2000, Portillo apologized for the former government's human rights abuses and pledged to prosecute those responsible and compensate victims.
To stimulate the economy, Guatemala, along with El Salvador and Honduras, signed a free trade agreement with Mexico in June 2000. In Aug. 2001, plans for tax increases prompted widespread, and often violent, protests.
In July 2003, the country's highest court ruled that former coup leader and military dictator Efrain Rios Montt, responsible for a massacre of tens of thousands of civilians during the civil war, was eligible to run for president in November. The ruling conflicted with the constitution, which bans anyone who seized power in a coup from running for the presidency. But in November, Rios Montt was soundly defeated by two candidates, conservative Oscar Berger and center-leftist Alvaro Colom. In the run-off election in December, Berger was elected president.

Looking ahead, we will talk about the current state of politics in Guatemala.