Guatemala

Guatemala’s backbone is a line of volcanoes, and Fuego and Pacaya erupt often enough that their glow at night is familiar to the towns below. Tajumulco tops all of Central America, and Lake Atitlán fills an old caldera beneath three volcanic cones. North of the mountains lies Petén, a limestone lowland of rainforest and swamp; the Pacific side is a hot plain of sugar cane, and the short Caribbean shore meets the Río Dulce.

Maya cities rose in Petén over two millennia ago; El Mirador and later Tikal raised temple pyramids above the canopy before the lowland centres emptied in the ninth and tenth centuries. Pedro de Alvarado began the Spanish conquest in 1524, and a generation later the highland K’iche’ wrote down their sacred book, the Popol Vuh. Spanish rule ended in 1821. A CIA-backed coup removed President Jacobo Árbenz in 1954, and the civil war fought from 1960 ended with peace accords in 1996.

In the highlands most people are Maya, speaking K’iche’, Q’eqchi’, Mam, Kaqchikel and many other Mayan languages. Every town weaves its own pattern of huipil blouse, and in Holy Week the streets of Antigua are carpeted with dyed sawdust and flowers for the processions. The marimba is the national instrument. The novelist Miguel Ángel Asturias became a Nobel laureate in 1967. Coffee from Huehuetenango, bananas, sugar and cardamom from Alta Verapaz are the great export crops, and remittances from the United States support many households.