Guatemala is a nation that has several centuries of history . A country that currently has traditions, customs and culture whose origin dates back in time several hundred years. A territory that has lived through different eras and very interesting historical periods that you should know. At Curio Sfera -Historia.com , we explain the history of Guatemala and its origin .
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- 1Origin of Guatemala
- 2Colonization of Guatemala
- 3Independence of Guatemala
- 4Guatemalan dictatorship (1844-1944)
- 5Reform period in Guatemala
- 6Military dictatorships of Guatemala (1954-1966)
- 7Guerrilla and repression
- 8Recent History of Guatemala – Democracy
- 9History of the Guatemalan flag
- 10Meaning of the flag of Guatemala
Origin of Guatemala
To know the history and origin of Guatemala, you must first know what it is like and its geographical location.
Guatemala is a small nation whose borders are bordered by Mexico to the north and west, El Salvador to the southeast, the Pacific Ocean to the south, Honduras and the Atlantic Ocean to the east, and Belize to the northeast.
Center of the Mayan world , it collects the essences of its complex and ancient civilizations and mixes them with the Hispanic heritage to offer the visitor a unique combination of nature and culture, the perfect combination of which nowhere in America is felt with such intensity.
It is like a summary stopped at some point in historical time . Despite the existence of large-scale contemporary constructions, such as the Miguel Ángel Asturias cultural complex, “modernity” in the capital seems absent from the soul of the Guatemalan people .
The cities and towns retain their colonial structure, which the new settlements also recover, perhaps due to the functionality of their checkerboard floors.
Peasants carry out their commercial transactions in the same places as their Mayan ancestors, where identical products are sold, and certain towns are still governed by the Mayan lunar calendar of 260 days.
- Continent: America.
- Surface: 108,889 km².
- Capital: Guatemala City.
- Population: 17,383,458 inhabitants.
- Currency: quetzal.
- Official language: Spanish.
Colonization of Guatemala
Most of present-day Guatemala was inhabited by the Mayans, who developed an important civilization, based on the cultivation of corn. At the time of the Spanish conquest, the Mayan people were going through a period of decline.
Guatemala was conquered in 1523-1524 by Pedro de Alvarado , one of the captains of Hernán Cortés. The conquest was bloody, and Alvarado distributed lands and Indians among his troops, thus creating a latifundist aristocracy.
Constituted in captaincy general, its jurisdiction covered Central America, except Panama, and extended to Chiapas. The Spanish colonial rule did not eliminate the existing institutions, but integrated them into its bosom.
The Church monopolized culture, economic promotion and. in particular, the civil power, mainly due to the absenteeism of the encomenderos, enriched with the income of their encomiendas and the massive export to Europe, since the seventeenth century, of indigo and cocoa.
Independence of Guatemala
In a peaceful way and at the initiative of the Cabildo, the independence of Guatemala was proclaimed on September 15, 1821 .
But the social structures of the Spanish colonial era remained unhealthy; the last governor sent by Spain, Sabino Gaínza, was in charge of the Government.
In 1822, the annexation of Guatemala to the Mexican empire of Agustín de lturbide was approved.
A year later a National Constituent Assembly rejected the union with Mexico and proclaimed the Federation of the United Provinces of Central America , formed by Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador, Nicaragua and Costa Rica.
This federation was dissolved in 1839. As of that date, the former province of Guatemala became an independent state .
Guatemalan dictatorship (1844-1944)
Rafael Carrera established a fierce dictatorship between 1844 and 1865 .
He fought several times against neighboring countries and returned to the Church the privileges that it lost during the confederal period.
His main successor was Rufino Barrios , who ruled as a reformist dictator from 1873 to 1885 . He tried to reestablish the Central American union to face the imperialist threat from the US, confiscated the assets of the Church and began the construction of the railway network.
At the end of the century, Manuel Estrada Cabrera instituted a dictatorship, which lasted until 1920.
During his tenure, the penetration of US capital in Guatemala began; The United Fruit Company obtained large tracts of land from the Government of Estrada, destined for the cultivation of tropical products. Likewise, the railroads and other important economic sectors became dependent on US companies.
A period of eleven years followed in which coups d’état and dictatorial regimes followed, and in which Guatemalan dependence on the US was accentuated. A new dictatorship, that of General Ubico , dominated Guatemala from 1931 to 1944.
Reform period in Guatemala
In December 1944 , after half a century of unconstitutional regimes and governments controlled by the latifundista oligarchy, Juan José Arévalo was elected president .
It carried out some reforms that did not substantially modify the country’s socio-economic structures.
He was succeeded in 1951 by Colonel Jacobo Arbenz Guzmán, who in 1944 had contributed to the restoration of constitutional normality.
In 1954 he began a broad agrarian reform, including the expropriation of 16,500 hectares from the United Fruit consortium.
Guatemalan military dictatorships (1954-1966)
On June 15, 1954, there was an armed invasion of the exiles by the border of Honduras, financed by the American CIA under the command of Colonel Castillo Armas , who was inaugurated as the new president .
His dictatorial government was characterized by a climate of constant repression and the adoption of measures favorable to the Church, the large landowners and US economic interests.
All political parties and union groups were outlawed . Castillo Armas was assassinated in 1957, and in 1958 General Ydígoras Fuentes, a representative of traditional conservatism, became president. Guatemala broke its relations with Great Britain after denouncing the 1859 treaty that ceded the territory of Bel ice to it (1963).
Shortly before the December 1963 elections, and fearing that the left parties would triumph, the army staged a coup, which brought General Peralta to power. The Constitution was repealed and the opposition harshly repressed.
Guerrilla and repression
Guerrilla groups began to operate in the mountainous areas of northeast Guatemala, and in a few years they achieved great breadth and scope.
By agreement between the army and the parties, elections were held in March 1966, in which Julio Méndez Montenegro, of the reformist Revolutionary Party, was the winner.
In 1970, Colonel Carlos Arana was elected president.
After the 1974 elections, the Institutional Democratic Party and the National Liberation Movement consolidated their dominance in Congress, and Kjell Eugenio Laugerud, a government candidate, assumed the presidency of the Republic.
On February 4, 1976, a violent earthquake devastated the country and caused 22,000 deaths. In the 1978 elections, General Romeo Lucas García triumphed, and the tension was aggravated by the intervention of terrorist groups from the extreme right and extreme left.
The indiscriminate repression by the authorities against all the elements suspected of collaborating with the guerrillas, and especially against the indigenous communities, caused the exodus of thousands of peasants who took refuge in Mexico.
The police attacked the Spanish embassy, occupied by peasants protesting the military repression, and killed 39 of them, causing the temporary breakdown of relations between the two countries (January 1980). The British decision to grant independence to Belize (1981), motivated a new break in diplomatic relations with Great Britain.
In the 1982 elections, General Aníbal Guevara was elected, but a military coup gave power to General Efraín Ríos Montt (March 1982). that he was overthrown in August 1983 by a new coup led by General Óscar Humberto Mejía. In the 1985 elections, the candidate of the Christian Democrats, Vinicio Cerezo, won.
Recent History of Guatemala – Democracy
After the Esquipulas agreement in August 1987 , between the countries of the Central American area, to pacify the area, the Government reached a precarious reconciliation agreement with the guerrillas in June 1990.
In September 1991, Guatemala recognized the independence of Belize and established diplomatic relations.
Jorge Serrano Elias , president since 1990, presented a peace plan to the Assembly of the United Nations (UN) in January 1993, and a contingent of 2,500 refugees in Mexico returned to the country, led by the Guatemalan Rigoberta Menchú , Nobel de la Paz in 1992.
But in April the talks broke down when the army opposed the demobilization of the so-called Civil Self-Defense Patrols .
On May 25, 1993, Serrano, accused of illicit enrichment, chose to dissolve the Chamber and the Supreme Court , and suspend constitutional guarantees. The coup from power immediately ran into opposition from all political and social sectors, and on June 1 Serrano was forced to flee to El Salvador.
The Parliament then appointed Ramiro de León Carpio president , who obtained the approval of a constitutional reform to clean up the country’s political life.
In the 1994 congressional elections, the Guatemalan Republican Front (FRG) prevailed, and in the presidential elections of January 1996 Alvaro Arzú won. of the National Advanced Party (PAN).
The new conservative government immediately began negotiations with the guerrillas of the Guatemalan National Revolutionary Unit (UNRG); On December 4, 1996, both parties signed a cessation of hostilities agreement in Oslo and on the 29th of the same month a solemn peace agreement in Guatemala, before the official UN mediators, which ended 36 years of a civil war that caused more than 200,000 victims, the majority among the civilian population.
For the first time, since the conquest of the country in the 16th century, the peace agreement recognized the cultural rights of the Amerindian population, ordered the disarmament of combatants and a 30% reduction in the army’s strength.
The Commission for Historical Clarification (CEH). sponsored by the UN, accused the army of having planned the extermination of the indigenous people as part of its fight against the insurgency in 1981-83.
Auxiliary Bishop Juan Gerardi was assassinated in the capital after publishing a report on the consequences of the civil war and the violation of human rights by the military (1998).
Hurricane Mitch that hit the country in 1998 caused more than 200 deaths, some 100,000 victims and significant material damage that led the Government to announce a reconstruction program.
The UNRG became a political party and announced the presentation of a candidate for the 1999 presidential election. In these the right-wing won
Guatemalan Republican Front (FRG), and Alfonso Portillo was sworn in as president. That same year the Guatemalan economic crisis worsened with the drought that decimated the corn harvest, and the Government announced as a priority the fight against poverty that affects the majority of the population.
History of the flag of Guatemala
If you want to know the origin of the Guatemalan flag , the first thing you should know is its meaning.
In the central coat of arms appears The quetzal, a species of bird protected from the tropical forests of Guatemala, presides over the Guatemalan national flag with long feathers on its tail .
This beautiful bird, a great lover of freedom, prefers to let itself die to live in captivity. It is the emblem of this Central American country, the most populous in the region.
The currency of this country is also named after this bird. As the rifles and sabers present in the national flag demonstrate, the Guatemalan people are willing to defend their freedom by any means. The olive crown is a symbol of victory .
The date of September 15, 1821 , inscribed on the parchment, under the bird’s legs, indicates the rupture of Guatemala with Spain , two years before the United Provinces of Central America were founded (an entity in which they would also include El Salvador, Honduras, Nicaragua and Costa Rica).
Meaning of the flag of Guatemala
Regarding what the colors of the flag of Guatemala mean , the colors come from the flag of this ancient association. The current flag was made official in 1997:
- The two blue stripesrefer to the geographic position of Guatemala, between the Caribbean Sea to the east and the Pacific Ocean to the west. They are also a call to perseverance and justice.
- The white colorof the flag is synonymous with purity and uprightness. However, this people, a descendant of the Mayan civilization, has suffered numerous coups, guerrillas, and vile assassinations.
