Guatemala

From the heartland of Classic Maya civilisation through Spanish conquest and a long, painful path to peace.

Guatemala is the heartland of Maya civilisation, home to the great Classic city of Tikal and to the K'iche' Maya whose sacred Popol Vuh survives as a masterwork of Mesoamerican literature. The Spanish conquest under Pedro de Alvarado in 1524 opened three centuries of colonial rule from Santiago de los Caballeros, today's Antigua Guatemala, until independence from Spain on 15 September 1821. A coffee economy and a succession of Liberal dictatorships gave way to the democratic October Revolution of 1944, ended by a CIA-backed coup in 1954; there followed a thirty-six-year civil war in which, by the United Nations-backed truth commission's estimate, some 200,000 people were killed or disappeared, the great majority of them Maya. Peace accords in 1996 closed the conflict, and Guatemala remains a young democracy contending with the legacy of war, inequality, and corruption.