94 Fun Facts About Guatemala

Chicle, tapped from sapodilla trees in Guatemala's northern jungle, was long the natural base of what?

Chewing gum relied on chicle until synthetics largely replaced it by the mid-20th century; the village of Uaxactún grew up beside a jungle airstrip as a centre for gathering the sap.

What is the national currency of Guatemala?

It was introduced in 1925 under President José María Orellana, whose portrait is on the one-quetzal note; the ancient Maya used the bird's tail feathers as currency.

The Castillo de San Felipe de Lara, a Spanish fort where Guatemala's largest lake drains seaward, was built to stop whom?

Pirates, many of them English, sailed up the river to raid the Spanish warehouses on the lake, and the fort meant to stop them was itself sacked and rebuilt more than once.

What is the national flower of Guatemala?

The White Nun Orchid (Lycaste skinneri var. alba) became the national flower by a 1934 decree of President Jorge Ubico, after a Miami Beach flower-show president suggested it.

What is the highest point in Guatemala, also the highest peak anywhere between Mexico and Colombia?

Volcán Tajumulco, in San Marcos near the Mexican border, rises to about 4,200 metres, yet unlike its lower neighbours it has no confirmed eruption: the old reports of activity are doubted.

Which of these countries shares Guatemala's independence day, 15 September?

Nicaragua was a province of the Captaincy General of Guatemala, whose act of independence was signed in Guatemala City on 15 September 1821, so the five countries that grew out of it all keep the date.

Which country borders Guatemala to the southeast?

El Salvador shares a border of about 200 km with Guatemala; in 1834 the federal republic to which both then belonged moved its capital out of Guatemala City and into El Salvador.

Which of these agricultural products is among Guatemala's top exports?

Bananas remain among Guatemala's biggest exports; a century ago one US company held so much banana land, plus the railways and the Caribbean port, that Latin American journalists called it 'el pulpo', the octopus.

Outside Guatemala itself, which country is home to the most Guatemalans?

The United States had about 1.8 million residents of Guatemalan origin in 2021, over four times the number in 2000, and the money they send home is Guatemala's biggest inflow of foreign income.

Roughly how many Mayan languages are officially recognised in Guatemala?

About 20: the Academy of Mayan Languages sets spelling for 22 of them, and a 2003 law recognises them as national languages, though Spanish remains the country's only official one.

After proclaiming independence in 1821, the Captaincy General of Guatemala briefly joined which state?

The First Mexican Empire of Agustín de Iturbide absorbed the provinces in 1822, one of them only after a Mexican army crushed its resistance; when Iturbide abdicated in 1823 they broke away as a federation.

Which fried-chicken chain was founded in Guatemala in 1971 and has since spread to North America and Europe?

Pollo Campero grew out of the Gutiérrez family's poultry business in 1971; it now has hundreds of restaurants in several countries, and its first US franchises opened in 2002.

Which body of water borders Guatemala to the south?

The Pacific Ocean meets a narrow plain built of debris washed down from the volcanoes, which is why the south coast holds some of Guatemala's richest farmland; the Caribbean shore lies far to the northeast.

Temple I at Tikal, the tomb of King Jasaw Chan K'awiil, is named for which animal carved on its lintel?

A jaguar: the lintel shows a king seated on a jaguar throne, which gave the Temple of the Great Jaguar its name; the 47-metre pyramid was raised over his tomb in the 8th century.

What is the deep lake in western Guatemala ringed by escarpments and three volcanoes?

Lake Atitlán, more than 300 metres deep, is the deepest lake in Central America; the volcanoes Atitlán, Tolimán and San Pedro stand over it, and Aldous Huxley called it Lake Como with immense volcanoes added.

What is the national instrument of Guatemala?

The marimba is Guatemala's national instrument; in 1894 Sebastián Hurtado of Quetzaltenango built a chromatic version, adding a second row of wooden bars that works like a piano's black keys.

In the colonial era, the Captaincy General of Guatemala was a subdivision of which viceroyalty?

The Captaincy General of Guatemala, stretching from Chiapas to Costa Rica, answered nominally to the Viceroyalty of New Spain in Mexico City, though its own Audiencia ran day-to-day government.

Which Nobel Peace Prize laureate from Guatemala was an indigenous rights activist?

Rigoberta Menchú Tum won the 1992 Nobel Peace Prize for her work for indigenous rights during Guatemala's civil war, and later ran for president in 2007 and 2011.

What does the white stripe on Guatemala's flag symbolize?

Purity and peace is the usual reading of the white band; in 1871 Guatemala turned the old federation's blue-white-blue stripes upright so that its flag would stand apart from its neighbours' horizontal ones.

Which famous Guatemalan author won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1967?

Miguel Ángel Asturias was stripped of his citizenship and driven into exile in 1954; it was restored in 1966, and a year later he won the Nobel while serving as Guatemala's ambassador in Paris.

The Maya site of El Mirador, famed for massive pyramids, lies in which region of Guatemala?

Petén Basin jungle hides El Mirador, a Preclassic city that flourished from about 300 BC and was largely abandoned around AD 150, centuries before Tikal reached its height.

Guatemala has long claimed part or all of the territory of which neighbour?

Belize has lived with the claim since it was a British colony; voters in both countries agreed, in referendums in 2018 and 2019, to let the International Court of Justice settle it.

Guatemala's vibrant traditional textiles are often woven on what type of loom?

The backstrap loom uses sticks and a strap around the weaver's waist to hold tension; it was the only loom of pre-Columbian Mesoamerica, the treadle loom arriving with the Spanish.

In the Popol Vuh, the K'iche' Maya creation story, the gods finally make lasting humans out of what?

Maize: the gods' people of mud crumbled and their people of wood were swept away in a flood, so the first true humans were shaped from white and yellow corn.

Which near-constantly active volcano looms southwest of Antigua Guatemala?

Volcán Fuego, called Chi Q'aq' ('where the fire is') in Kaqchikel, erupts almost continuously and straddles the departments of Chimaltenango, Escuintla and Sacatepéquez southwest of Antigua.

The scroll on Guatemala's coat of arms carries the date of independence and which single word?

Libertad heads the scroll, above 15 September 1821; the crossed rifles behind it stand for the will to defend the country, the swords for honour and the laurel wreath for victory.

What political event happened in Guatemala in 1944, often called the 'October Revolution'?

The October Revolution was the overthrow of a dictator: on 20 October 1944 officers Jacobo Árbenz and Francisco Arana toppled Federico Ponce Vaides, successor to Jorge Ubico, opening ten years of democratic reform.

Which of these major rivers forms part of Guatemala's border with Mexico?

The Usumacinta River marks part of the frontier with Chiapas; before roads reached this jungle it was the only way through, and the Maya cities of Yaxchilán and Piedras Negras stand on its banks.

What are the lay brotherhoods that keep up saints' cults in indigenous Guatemalan towns called?

Cofradías began in Europe as lay confraternities gathered around a patron saint; in indigenous towns their officers take turns paying for the saint's fiesta, a burden that also brings prestige.

Guatemala is the world's biggest exporter of which spice?

Cardamom reached Guatemala before World War I with a German planter; the country was out-producing India by 1980, and it ships nearly the whole crop abroad because Guatemalans barely use it.

Which Christian group has grown to rival the Catholic Church in Guatemala, at over four in ten people?

Evangelicals were a small minority when a Liberal president let Protestant missions back in during 1882; by the 2020s surveys put them level with Catholics or slightly ahead.

Which traditional Guatemalan crop is also turned into ethanol fuel for export?

Sugar cane molasses is distilled into alcohol, and the fuel grade is shipped abroad to be blended into petrol; in the early 2010s cane plantations spread over land where small farmers had grown their food.

What are the intricate sawdust street decorations made for Holy Week processions in Guatemala called?

Alfombras of dyed sawdust, flowers and sand take hours to lay and last only until the procession walks over them; the ones made in Antigua are the most famous.

How did the Maya regard the five 'nameless' Wayeb' days that closed each year?

Unlucky in the extreme: the Maya met the Wayeb' days with fasting and sacrifices, fearing that for those five days nothing held back the gods who meant them harm.

What is the thick Guatemalan meat stew, thickened with gourd seeds and considered a national dish, called?

Pepián thickens its sauce with ground gourd seeds, a Maya staple, in a stew shaped by colonial kitchens; that blend is why Guatemala declared it national cultural heritage in 2007, with three other dishes.

Which conquistador conquered Guatemala and became its first governor and captain general?

Pedro de Alvarado, Cortés's lieutenant, invaded in 1524; after a falling horse crushed him in 1541, his widow Beatriz de la Cueva was named governor and died two days later when a flood off a volcano wrecked the capital.

Which lake, the largest in Guatemala, lies in the east and drains into the Caribbean Sea?

Lake Izabal lies barely a metre above sea level, so ships once sailed up from the Caribbean to its shore, where a Spanish port handled goods for the whole colony; manatees still live in it.

The name 'Guatemala' is usually traced to a Nahuatl word meaning what?

Place of many trees is the usual reading of the Nahuatl Cuauhtēmallān, but the origin is uncertain: another proposal is a word for a mountain that spews water.

Which towering tree, sacred to the Maya, is a national emblem of both Guatemala and Puerto Rico?

Ceiba trees stood, for the Maya, at the centre of the world, joining earth and sky, and Maya woodcutters still often leave them standing when they clear forest for timber.

Chichicastenango, famous for its market and Maya culture, is in which Guatemalan department?

El Quiché is home to Chichicastenango, where the parish priest Francisco Ximénez copied and translated the Popol Vuh in the early 1700s; the older text he worked from has since been lost.

Most of Guatemala's major cities lie in which topographical region?

The highlands hold most big cities: Guatemala City sits at about 1,500 metres and Quetzaltenango above 2,300, drawn there by the country's most productive volcanic soils and a climate milder than the coasts.

What is the woven tunic worn by indigenous Guatemalan women called?

Huipil styles work as a badge: each community weaves and decorates the tunic in its own way, so the colours and patterns show which village and people the wearer belongs to.

Which highland crop became Guatemala's key cash export in the 19th century?

Coffee took over from cochineal, the insect dye that had dominated exports until synthetic dyes killed demand in the mid-1800s; after 1871 a Liberal government pushed the new crop hard.

Guatemala's premium rum is called 'Centenario' because it marked the 1976 centenary of what?

The founding of a town: Zacapa, in eastern Guatemala, turned 100 in 1976, and the rum made to mark it is aged high in the mountains, where the cool air slows its maturing.

Which Guatemalan folk saint receives offerings of tobacco and liquor?

Maximón, also called San Simón, is honoured differently from town to town; in one lakeside town his effigy lodges with a different household each year, and visitors bring it money, tobacco and moonshine.

Which Star Wars actor was born in Guatemala City?

Oscar Isaac, the pilot Poe Dameron of the sequel trilogy, was born Óscar Isaac Hernández Estrada in Guatemala City in 1979; his family left when he was five months old and he grew up mostly in Miami.

Which Guatemala City native invented reCAPTCHA and co-founded Duolingo?

Luis von Ahn, born in Guatemala City in 1978, sold reCAPTCHA to Google in 2009; its puzzles digitised words from old books that optical character recognition could not read, and he co-founded Duolingo in 2011.

Tikal's temples stood in for which location in the original 1977 Star Wars film?

Tikal's Great Plaza temples appear as the Rebel Alliance base on the moon Yavin 4 in Star Wars (1977); the crew shot the establishing views from atop Temple IV.

Which US reality show set its 11th season, subtitled 'The Maya Empire', at Yaxhá?

Survivor filmed its 2005 season among the Yaxhá ruins near Tikal and opened it by sending both tribes on an 11-mile overnight trek through the jungle, which left several players dehydrated for days.

Which singer-songwriter from Jocotenango once played basketball for Guatemala?

Ricardo Arjona, born in Jocotenango in 1964, played on Guatemala's national basketball team and worked as a schoolteacher before the album Historias (1994) made him a Latin pop star across the Americas.

Guatemala's first Olympic medal, a silver in 2012, came in which event?

The 20 km race walk brought Erick Barrondo silver at London 2012, eleven seconds behind China's Chen Ding; he had taken up walking only as a way to recover from an injury.

Adriana Ruano won Guatemala's first Olympic gold in 2024 in which sport?

Shooting was Adriana Ruano's second sport: she trained as a gymnast until six damaged vertebrae ended that career, then won the women's trap at Paris 2024 with an Olympic record.

Who names the governors of Guatemala's 22 departments?

The president appoints each one: Guatemalans elect their mayors and their members of Congress, but the governors of the 22 departments are named from the capital.

Guatemala's brightly painted camionetas, rebuilt from retired US school fleets, are known to travellers as what?

Chicken buses is the visitors' name, not the local one; the rebuilt North American school bus hauls market goods and the odd live animal as well as passengers.

Where are Guatemalan worry dolls traditionally placed after being told one's troubles?

Children tell a worry to each doll and tuck it under the pillow so it carries the worry away overnight; the tiny figures are made of wire, wool and textile scraps.

What code name did the CIA give its 1954 operation to topple Jacobo Árbenz?

Operation PBSuccess, run by the CIA from late 1953, forced Árbenz to resign on 27 June 1954; Carlos Castillo Armas took over within days and was shot by a palace guard in 1957.

Fiambre, a chilled salad with dozens of ingredients, is eaten on which day?

Fiambre belongs to All Saints' Day, 1 November, when families share it at home or beside relatives' graves; in one telling it grew out of the favourite dishes once carried to the cemetery for the dead.

Which town's basilica holds the Black Christ, Central America's greatest pilgrimage shrine?

Esquipulas draws pilgrims from across the region to a dark wooden crucifix carved by Quirio Cataño in 1594; the devotion spread so far that the shrine at Chimayó in New Mexico honours the same image.

In the deadly June 2018 eruption in Escuintla, most victims were killed by what?

Pyroclastic flows racing down the volcano's flanks on 3 June 2018 buried San Miguel Los Lotes and El Rodeo; the official death toll was about 190, though residents put it far higher.

What do the towns of Sumpango and Santiago Sacatepéquez famously fly each year to honour the dead?

Giant kites, months in the making, go up over both towns every 1 November; Sumpango holds its contest on the football field beside the cemetery and scores each kite on its design and its time aloft.

Ash from which volcano's May 2010 eruption rained on Guatemala City's airport?

Pacaya's eruption on 27 May 2010 showered ash over Guatemala City and shut La Aurora airport for days; a television reporter, Aníbal Archila, was killed by falling rock near the volcano.

What destroyed a three-storey building in Guatemala City after Tropical Storm Agatha in 2010?

A sinkhole about 20 metres wide opened beneath it; geologists suspected leaking sewer pipes had been hollowing out the loose volcanic pumice the city stands on, as in a similar collapse in 2007.

Which Alta Verapaz site has turquoise pools on a limestone bridge above a river?

Semuc Champey's pools stay calm because the Cahabón River dives into a cave beneath the 300-metre limestone bridge and reappears downstream; the pools on top are fed by mountain springs.

In the Popol Vuh, the Hero Twins defeat the lords of which underworld?

Xibalba is the K'iche' underworld whose lords the twins Hunahpu and Xbalanque outwit; their father's severed head, hung in a calabash tree, had spat into the hand of the maiden Xquic to conceive them.

Spanish troops stormed the island capital Nojpetén in 1697 from what?

A galley: Martín de Ursúa's men built the oar-powered warship on the lakeshore and attacked from it, more than 160 years after the first conquistadors reached Guatemala.

Which site's sandstone stelae are the tallest the ancient Maya ever raised?

Quiriguá raised its giant stelae after its king K'ak' Tiliw Chan Yopaat captured his overlord, the king of Copán, in 738 and had him sacrificed; the tallest, Stela E, is a single block more than 10 metres long.

El Mirador's giant pyramid La Danta is named for which animal, Central America's largest land mammal?

Tapir is 'danta' in local Spanish; the pyramid stands about 72 metres tall, and its estimated 2.8 million cubic metres of fill outbulk the Great Pyramid of Giza.

Which city, now in Mexico, was Tikal's great Classic-period rival?

Calakmul, in Mexico's Campeche state, led the 'Snake' alliance; its ally Caracol defeated Tikal in AD 562, opening a 130-year hiatus until Jasaw Chan K'awiil I crushed Calakmul in 695.

Which Kaqchikel capital was declared the first Spanish capital of Guatemala in 1524?

Iximché became Santiago de los Caballeros de Guatemala in July 1524; the Kaqchikel deserted it within months over Spanish tribute demands, and Spanish deserters burned it in 1526.

Which Maya lord, named national hero in 1960, is said to have fallen in battle in 1524?

Tecún Umán, the K'iche' commander, was declared Guatemala's national hero in 1960; in the best-known telling he killed the Spanish captain's horse, taking horse and rider for a single creature, before he was cut down.

Which US fruit company paid to restore the Maya ruins of Zaculeu in the 1940s?

United Fruit, then Guatemala's largest landowner, excavated and rebuilt the old Mam capital near Huehuetenango, even re-coating its temples in white plaster as they were first finished.

Which range in Huehuetenango is Central America's highest non-volcanic chain?

The Sierra de los Cuchumatanes tops out above 3,800 metres; sheep graze its high limestone plateau, and by eating the seedlings they have stripped trees and soil from much of it.

How do travellers reach Livingston, the Garifuna town on the Caribbean coast?

By boat is the only way in: Livingston has no road link to the rest of Guatemala, so visitors cross the bay from Puerto Barrios or come down the Río Dulce.

The spicy red Q'eqchi' soup kak'ik is made from which bird?

Kak'ik is made with turkey because the dish is older than the conquest: Mesoamericans had kept turkeys for well over a thousand years before chickens arrived, and the Q'eqchi' name just means red and spicy.

Pedro de Betancur, Guatemala's first saint, grew up in which island group?

Canary Islands: born on Tenerife in 1626, he reached Guatemala so poor that he joined the Franciscans' bread line, yet went on to found the Bethlehemite hospital brothers.

Bishop Juan Gerardi was beaten to death in 1998, two days after presenting what?

A human-rights report, 'Guatemala: Nunca Más', recorded the civil war's victims; the bishop who presented it was attacked in his garage, and in 2001 a civilian court convicted three army officers of the killing.

Which country's embassy in Guatemala City burned during a 1980 police raid, killing 37?

Police stormed Spain's embassy on 31 January 1980 and fire killed 37, among them former vice-president Eduardo Cáceres Lehnhoff and the Spanish consul; a guerrilla front later took the date as its name.

Which president signed the accords that ended the 36-year civil war in December 1996?

Álvaro Arzú took office in January 1996 and met the rebel command in Mexico six weeks later, reviving talks that had dragged on since 1990; the final accord was signed on 29 December.

Which former dictator was convicted of genocide in 2013, a verdict later annulled?

Efraín Ríos Montt was sentenced to 80 years in May 2013 for genocide against the Ixil Maya; the Constitutional Court threw the verdict out within days, and he died in 2018 with his retrial unfinished.

Bernardo Arévalo, sworn in as Guatemala's president in 2024, followed which relative into the office?

Father and son: Juan José Arévalo was president from 1945 to 1951, and Bernardo was born in Montevideo in 1958 while the family lived in exile, decades before he took the same oath.

Which novel by Guatemala's Nobel-winning author was inspired by dictator Manuel Estrada Cabrera?

El Señor Presidente never names its dictator or even its country; its author finished the book in 1933, but censorship at home kept it unpublished until 1946, when it came out in Mexico.

Who declared Guatemala an independent republic in 1847 and became its first president?

Rafael Carrera declared the republic by decree on 21 March 1847; forced out the next year, he was back in power by 1851, was named president for life in 1854 and ruled until he died in 1865.

Which president, sworn in during 2016, had found fame as a TV comedian?

Jimmy Morales, star of the TV comedy Moralejas with his brother Sammy, ran on the slogan 'Neither corrupt, nor a thief' just after a corruption scandal had forced the sitting president to resign.

CICIG, the commission that helped oust a president in 2015, was set up with which body?

CICIG was created by a 2006 agreement between Guatemala and the United Nations; its investigations with prosecutors brought down a sitting president in 2015, and the government ended its mandate in 2019.

In 2010 the US apologised for 1940s experiments infecting Guatemalans with what?

US researchers under John Cutler deliberately infected Guatemalan prisoners, soldiers and patients with syphilis and gonorrhoea in 1946-48; Wellesley historian Susan Reverby uncovered Cutler's papers, and President Obama apologised in 2010.

Which army special-forces unit carried out the 1982 Dos Erres massacre?

The Kaibiles, named for the Mam leader Kayb'il B'alam who evaded the conquistadors, killed more than 200 villagers at Dos Erres in December 1982; recruits are reputed to raise a puppy and then be made to kill it.

Who anonymously won Guatemala's 1896 contest for anthem lyrics?

One of its judges: Cuban poet José Joaquín Palma sat on the jury that chose the unsigned lyrics, and he owned up to writing them only around 1910, shortly before he died.

The national stadium was renamed for Mateo Flores after he won which race in 1952?

Doroteo Guamuch Flores, who raced as Mateo Flores, won the 1952 Boston Marathon; the Estadio Olímpico in Guatemala City was renamed for him, and it later took his full name, Doroteo Guamuch Flores.

Carlos 'El Pescadito' Ruiz won the 2002 MLS Cup with a golden goal for which club?

LA Galaxy won their first MLS Cup on his golden goal in the second overtime; his 39 World Cup qualifying goals, for a country that had never reached the finals, stood as the record until Cristiano Ronaldo passed them in October 2025.

When Oklahoma priest Stanley Rother was murdered in 1981, his Tz'utujil parishioners asked to keep what?

His heart stayed behind, enshrined in the church he had served, while his body was flown home to Oklahoma; in 2017 he became the first US-born priest and martyr to be beatified.

Augusto Monterroso's seven-word story finds what creature still there when someone wakes?

A dinosaur: 'Cuando despertó, el dinosaurio todavía estaba allí' appeared in 1959 and is often counted among the world's shortest stories; its Honduran-born author took Guatemalan nationality and wrote in exile in Mexico.

The British deported the Garifuna's ancestors to Roatán in 1797 from which island?

Saint Vincent's 'Black Caribs' were first held on the islet of Baliceaux, where about half died of hunger and disease; the British then shipped those still alive, a little over 2,000 people, to Roatán.

The Maya Biosphere Reserve protects the largest tropical forest north of what?

The Amazon alone is bigger; the reserve, created in 1990, covers a fifth of Guatemala, and while villagers log parts of it under 25-year concessions, some of the worst clearing has been inside its strictly protected parks.

Which volcano do hikers climb overnight to watch its neighbour erupt from their campsite?

Acatenango, 3,976 metres, forms a twin massif with its erupting neighbour, together called La Horqueta; outfitters have built cabins high on its slopes so hikers can watch the explosions through the night.