Guatemala

National name: República de Guatemala

President: Alvaro Colom (2008)

Area: 42,042 sq. mi. (108,890 sq. km)

Population : 13.4 million (UN, 2007)

Capital & largest city (1994 est.) :
Guatemala City, 1,150,452
Other large cities (1994 est.): Mixco, 413,002; Villa Nueva, 154,508

Monetary unit: Quetzal

Languages : Spanish, Indian languages

Ethnicity / race :
Mestizo—mixed Amerindian-Spanish ancestry (in local Spanish called Ladino) 56%, Amerindian or predominantly Amerindian 44%

Religion : Roman Catholic, Protestant, Mayan

Literacy rate: 55% (1990)

Economic summary: GDP/PPP (1999 est.): $47.9 billion; per capita $3,900. Real growth rate: 3.5%. Inflation: 6.8%. Unemployment: 7.5%. Arable land: 12%. Agriculture: sugarcane, corn, bananas, coffee, beans, cardamom; cattle, sheep, pigs, chickens. Labor force: 3.32 million (1997 est.); agriculture, 50%; industry, 15%; services, 35%. Industries: sugar, textiles and clothing, furniture, chemicals, petroleum, metals, rubber, tourism. Natural resources: petroleum, nickel, rare woods, fish, chicle, hydropower. Exports: $2.4 billion (f.o.b., 1999): coffee, sugar, bananas, fruits and vegetables, meat, apparel, petroleum, electricity. Imports: $4.5 billion (c.i.f., 1999): fuels, machinery and transport equipment, construction materials, grain, fertilizers, electricity. Major trading partners: U.S., El Salvador, Honduras, Germany, Costa Rica, Mexico, Venezuela, Japan.

Communications: International dialling code: + 502
Telephones: main lines in use: 342,000 (1996); mobile cellular: 29,999 (1995). Radio broadcast stations: AM 101, FM 32, shortwave 15 (1998). Radios: 835,000 (1997). Television broadcast stations: 6 (plus 17 repeaters) (1997). Televisions: 640,000 (1997). Internet Service Providers (ISPs): 7 (1999).

Transportation: Railways: total: 884 km (102 km

Geography
The northernmost of the Central American nations, Guatemala is the size of Tennessee. Its neighbors are Mexico on the north and west, and Belize, Honduras, and El Salvador on the east. The country consists of three main regions—the cool highlands with the heaviest population, the tropical area along the Pacific and Caribbean coasts, and the tropical jungle in the northern lowlands (known as the Petén). The principal mountain range rises to the highest elevation in Central America and contains many volcanic peaks. Volcanic eruptions are frequent.

Government : Republic.

History
Once the site of the impressive ancient Mayan civilization, Guatemala was conquered by Spanish conquistador Pedro de Alvarado in 1524 and set itself up as a republic in 1839 after the United Provinces of Central America collapsed. From 1898 to 1920, the dictator Manuel Estrada Cabrera ran the country and welcomed U.S. investment, and from 1931 to 1944, Gen. Jorge Ubico Castaneda served as strongman.

After Ubico's overthrow in 1944, liberal-democratic coalitions led by Juan José Arévalo (1945–51) and Jacobo Arbenz Guzmán (1951–54) instituted sweeping social and political reforms that strengthened the peasantry and urban workers at the expense of the military and big landowners like the United Fruit Company. With covert U.S. backing, a revolt was led by Col. Carlos Castillo Armas, and Arbenz took refuge in Mexico.

A 36-year civil war followed between a succession of right-wing governments led by the military and leftist rebels. The administration of Gen. Romeo Lucas Garcia was charged by Amnesty International with responsibility for at least 5,000 political murders in a reign of brutality and corruption that brought a cutoff of U.S. military aid in 1978.

More military leaders followed until civilian Marco Vinicio Cerezo Arévalo 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 de Leon Carpio, the former attorney general of human rights. A peace agreement was signed in Dec. 1996 ending the longest civil war in Latin American history. By the time the war had run its course, an estimated 150,000 died and 50,000 were missing. In June 1997, the new president Álvaro Arzú Irigoyen and the guerrilla movement leader Ricardo Ramirez were awarded the UNESCO Houphouet-Boigny Peace Prize.

In an effort toward national reconciliation, a Guatemalan truth commission issued a report on Feb. 25, 1999, detailing the numerous human rights abuses committed during the war. The report charged that the army was responsible for 93% of the atrocities and that the rebels (the Guatemalan National Revolutionary Unit) were responsible for 3%. As a consequence, the former guerrillas apologized for their crimes, and President Clinton apologized for U.S. support of the right-wing military governments. The army, however, has not acknowledged its guilt.

In June 1999, Cuba's state-owned airline began direct flights to Guatemala. Guatemala had reestablished diplomatic relations with Cuba in Jan. 1998, 37 years after the country's conservative government broke off ties with Castro's government.

A new president, Alfonso Portillo Cabrera, took office in Jan. 2000. Although he had campaigned with former president Efrain Rios Montt, under whose government some of the worst human rights atrocities occurred, Portillo apologized for the government's abuses in Aug. 2000. He pledged to prosecute those responsible and compensate victims, to the relief of human rights activists frustrated by Guatemala's continued unwillingness to confront the issue.

To stimulate the economy, El Salvador, along with Guatemala and Honduras, signed a free trade agreement with Mexico in June 2000.