Just for the record, people:
Yes, Mayans still exist (Yeah Spain).
The empire ended, but the people are fully alive and well (Yay!)
Just..throwing that out there, okay, alright?
♫♫♫Jingling♫♫♫
♫ It's time to learn Geography...♫
♫ NOW! ♫
Hey everyone, I'm your host, Barby.
We are BACK in the Latin world(yay),
and this time, we jump into the land shrouded with ancient wonder and really good tamales.
Moving on.
♫♫♫(POLITICAL GEOGRAPHY)♫♫♫
Fun little side note:
the word "Guatemala" comes from the Mayan Nahuatl [?] word meaning "Place of Many Trees",
although some might say it also comes from the word
"Guhatezmalh", which means "Mountain Vomiting Water"...(LOL)
First of all,
Guatemala is located in Central America, bordered by 4 other countries, and
both the Pacific Ocean to the Southwest, and the Caribbean Sea to the East.
The country is divided into 22 departments,
with the capital, Guatemala City, located in the Guatemala department,
making it a "triple division title".
It's like "Hey guys, I live in Guatemala, Guatemala, Guatemala."
The majority of the country's population live inland,
along the volcanic Sierra Madre Mountain Belt,
extending all the way to the Caribbean, along Puerto Barrios.
Technically, the 3 largest cities are
Guatemala City,
Mixco,
and Villa Nueva.
However, those 3 are kind of part of the same metropolitan area along Guatemala City,
so the largest cities OUTSIDE of that domain
would be Quetzaltenango,
and Huehuetenango.
Brazil: UH OH, DID YOU JUST SAY-
NO, IT'S PRONOUNCED HUE-HUE-
TOOO LATE!!
*rave party over hue hue*
However, the only 2 international airports are
actually Guatemala City's La Aurora International
and Flores's Mundo Maya International.
By the way, speaking of Quetzaltenango,
(man, doesn't that word sound nice? "Quetzaltenango.")
a long time ago, the city also known as Xela
used to be part of the Los Altos state
that ALMOST became a country,
back when the Central American Federation broke up.
(Remember the El Salvador episode?)
Essentially, Mexico and Guatemala just split it up amongst themselves.
To this day, Guatemala still has a kind of lingering,
but not really taken too seriously dispute with Belize,
in which they believe that, you know,
Belize should be theirs, or at least everything south of the Sibun River.
Even Guatemalan passports show a map with a delineated line along the border with Belize,
showing that they still have a kind of slight "persisting disagreement."
The busiest roadway would be the CA-1 highway that traverses the country
and melts unto the CA-8 highway that gives them access to Mexico and El Salvador.
This road is also part of the Pan-American Highway.
If you follow it all the way north, you can eventually reach Alaska, and if you take it south,
-nah, just watch the Costa Rica episode. I'm already reaching previous episode reference overload.
Now, you might be thinking, if Flores isn't one of the top three largest cities, why does it have an international airport?
Well, the reason is because... tourism.
Flores is all the way up north in the Peten Department,
and home to all the ancient Mayan sites.
Guatemala (as we will soon find out) is the Mayan capital of Central America.
People come from all over just to get a glimpse of the ancient sites,
the most famous one being Tikal, and other notable sites like
Ixkun,
El Mirador,
Nakbe,
San Bartolo,
and Yaxha.
These sites are like economical goldmines for the country.
Otherwise, other notable sites might include
places like the colorful cemeteries of Chichicastenango,
Chichi for short,
(Sidenote: There's a lot of "tenango's" in Guatemala, heads up, it just means place of.)
There's also Antigua, which used to be the capital
before the earthquake in the 1700's damaged much of the city,
located between 3 volcanoes within view of
the beautiful, iconic Volcan Aqua,
and the beautiful Iglesia de San Andrés Xecul.
To be honest, though, the landscape in itself
blows away any man-made structure.
Now let's discuss that.
♫♫♫(PHYSICAL GEOGRAPHY)♫♫♫
Alright, so now we've already covered Belize,
Costa Rica,
and El Salvador so by now you kinda probably get the jist of how Central America works.
Tropical rainforests with cool animals
Like where the national animal, the Quetzal, can be found.
And beaches with various fruit trees and an occasional volcano.
DONE
Well, OK, there's a little more than that for Guatemala.
First of all:
When it comes to their land makeup, the Pacific coast lowlands in the south
rise to the volcanic Sierra Madre mountain chain that transects the country.
Then the land descends into the forested northern lowlands, including the narrow Carribean coast.
Guatemala has over 20 volcanos, three of which are active
Fuego, Pacaya and Santiaguito.
Although it's disputed that others might have the potential to activate again...
You never know with dormant volcanos
They're kinda like that one bipolar friend that post-liminarily flips out at you
Hey man is it cool if I borrow your pen?
Sure thing, bud.
[loud agitated grunt] Jeez, do you ever have your own pens!?
Speaking of which, the "extinct" Tajumulco volcano
is the highest peak in Guatemala at over 4200 meters tall.
The Motagua river being the longest on in the country flowing eastward into the Gulf of Honduras
The lake with the largest surface area would be lake Izabal, however,
Lake Atitlán is the deepest lake in all of Central America
Going all the way down 340 meters.
In contrast, Izabal is only 18 meters.
Furthermore, some of Guatemala's towns are built on low-density volcanic pumice stone
Which if not reinforced erodes quickly and add on top of that weak pipelines and slight seismic activity
and BAM, you have a sinkhole extravaganza.
Coffee, bananas and sugar make up the largest exports with textiles not far behind.
(Altough a sweatshop controversy has always been a hot topic among retailers like Liz Claiborne, OshKosh and Tracy Evans...)
Hey, you like chocolate? Thank Guatemala! The Mayans in ancient times pretty much invented it.
Hey, the Olmecs made it way before the Mayans did.
Ehh, you guys have like popcorn, rubber, tequila and color TV just let Guatemala have this one.
Hmph...
Otherwise, top Guatemalan dishes include things like:
Pepián, Jocón, Mixtas, Hilachas, and of course the national dish Tamales that comes in hundreds of different forms.
Some of the most popular ones being Colorados, Negros, Chuchitos, and Paches.
Guatemala is also one of the top jade producing countries in the world as numerous deposits can be found along the Motagua[???] river.
Other notable natural spots might include places like:
Las Fuentes Georginas hot springs,
The Smuc Champey turquoise pools and caves,
The famous diving caves at Laguna Lachuá,
Crater Azul,
Laguna Magdelena and Laguna Brava,
And the captivating Salto Chilasco waterfall.
Getting into those places might require a guide, though.
And who better to take you along than the actual people that live here.
♫♫♫
[DEMOGRAPHICS]
Now as the most populous country in Central America with strong indigenous roots
Guatemala has quite a reputation on its hands.
First of all!
Guatemala has around 16 million peple and has the fastest growing population in the Western Hemisphere.
About 40% of the country identifies as Amerindian, coming from various Mayan tribes like the
K'iche, Kaqchikel, Mam and Q'eqchi'.
Another 40% identifies as Mestizo, or mixed with Amerindian.
About 18% claim to be white and the remainder is made up of mostly Asians and Arabs.
They also use the Quetzal as their currency, they use the American type A outlet, and they drive on the right side of the road.
After Bolivia, Guatemala has the largest percentage per population of full indigenous Amerindian people out of all the countries in the Americas.
Mayan culture exudes through Guatemala, whether it's through the colorful clothing, costumes, masks, festivals and musical performances.
Today there are 21 recognized and protected Mayan languages and people groups found in Guatemala
And it can be interesting walking from a Spanish town into a Mayan village.
Suddenly you hear a bunch of "Sh", "Tl", "Ch", "T" and "K" sounds.
Speaking of which, Spanish in Guatemala is heavily influenced by Mayan languages and vernacular as well.
For example, in some parts of Guatemala, instead of saying "Niño", they say "Ishto".
Instead of saying "Cabeza", some might say "Sheca".
And keep in mind, not every Mayan language is the same. For example, if you arrive in the Yucatec Maya region,
you'll realize they're actually speaking a tonal language.
For example, eek' means star. But éek means dirty.
By the way, I probably butchered that last one. If you're a native Yucatec Mayan speaker and you watch Geography Now
and if you understand the English... nah, forget it, who am I saying, there's nobody like that who watches this show.
Now ancient Mayan culture is fascinating to say the least.
They have their own writing and numerical system made of logograms, sometimes referred to as "Mayan hieroglyphs".
For the time they lived in they also had a very advanced mathemetical system
With the concept of zero already existing
They also had an interesting concept of time being circular rather than linear, so they would tally up days on two separate calendar cycles
That would repeat every 52 years. And then on top of that, they would add a gargantuan cycle calendar
that lasted 5126 years, which was percieved (by archaeologists, at least) to be the end cycle of the Earth.
And that's how this happened.
[clip from the movie 2012]
Now, many of you Guatemalan Geograpeeps mentioned in your emails that it's sad,
but today, there is still some disenfranchisement and discrimination against the Mayan population in Guatemala.
In addition, literacy rates are typically lower
and poverty rates are higher amongst them as well.
Even though strides have been made to cooperate on both sides,
undertones of social tension still lingers.
In addition, you also have a few black Garifunas like the ones mentioned in the Belize episode
That speak they're own dialect and predominantly on the Caribbean coast
Guatemalans are predominantly Catholic
However, each area kinda has its own flavor of Catholicism
with a Mayan flare
For example, some locals in the western highlands offer chickens for sacrifice
reminiscent of the Mayan roots
When it comes to Catholic-based festivals though
Guatemalans party hard
And they take Easter and Holy Week VERY Seriously (Right dude right?)
Especially In the town of Antigua,
Where you can find the famous
'Alfombras' or carpets
slowly and meticulously hand-crafted by coloured sawdust and flowers
The longest one in Guinness World Record holder was created in Guatemala City
that extended for over two kilometers.
Oh, and All saint's day has this equally colorful kite celebration,
where they lift these things up in the air.
Nonetheless, Guatemalan history is riddled with controversy and drama as well
In a nutshell, this guy and his brother were the first Europeans to stop by in 1524,
went to numerous battles, and eventually subjugated the area under Spanish rule.
Fast forward, they declare independence from Spain in 1821, then again from the Mexican Empire two years later,
And then this whole thing was a country for six whole years
And then it broke up in 1839
Then there were some confusing years...
A few regimes, a revolution, a 36-year old civil war, and finally peace accords in 1996, which brings us to the Guatemala we have today.
Finally, I asked you Guatemalan geograpeeps to give me a list of some of the most famous Guatemalans through history
And here are some of the names YOU guys mentioned.
Ricardo Arjona,
Gaby Moreno and Pedro Cuevas,
Oscar Isaac,
Miguel Angela Asturias,
Rigoberta Menchú,
Aldo Castañeda,
Rodolfo Robles,
Carlos Mérida,
Efraín Recinos.
Mateo Flores,
Domingo Betancourt,
Manuel Colom Argueta,
Erick Barrondo,
Juan José Arévalo,
and Jacobo Árbenz.
Cool, look those people up. In the meantime,
[FRIENDZONE]
Even though there were 3 major regimes and a revolution with a civil war,
Guatemala was still never short of having friends.
Guatemala is one of only 22 countries that gives full recognition to Taiwan as a state(Why Roast China?)
Taiwan has been reaching out to Guatemala for decades.
Taiwan funds things like highways, construction, and buildings(YAY)
Also tons of South Koreans have been immigrating for some reason, so, there's that.
They have a weird love-hate relationship with Mexico,
Mexico sees Guatemala as kind of like their weird southern jungle cousins
And Guatemala sees them as kind of like their snobby uppity cousins that look down on them
Nonetheless, in the end they will always have eachother's backs.
Just don't confuse them for eachother!
The US does the biggest business, they alone make up a third of all imports and makes 40% of their Guatemalan exports
Plus tons of Guatemalans live abroad in the US and have dual citizenship.
When it comes to their best friends however every Guatemalan I talked to more or less concluded on two countries:
El Salvador, and Honduras.
Now Guatemala generally gets along with most of the other Central American states
Except they kinda have a little suspicious eye at Costa Rica for not joining the Parlacen...
However Salvadorans and Hondurans are kinda like the scrappy loud little brothers that they love to hang out with.
I mean, sure, some drug trafficking, cartel work might be lingering in the shadows but HEY,
They're constantly enjoying life and sharing stories while playing poker and enjoying shots of Quetzalteca.
In conclusion, Guatemala is an incredibly colorful country strong in Mayan roots
...Just make sure you're standing on solid ground before the sinkholes swallow you up.
I'm kidding!
*looks around nervously*
Stay tuned! Guinea... is coming up next.
♫ Geography Now outro music (Enjoy the long names, Barby is awesome) ♫