Huehuetenango

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Huehuetenango is a city in the highlands of western Guatemala. It is the capital of the department of Huehuetenango. The population was about 88,600 people at the end of 2003.^[1] The city is located at 15°32′N, 91°47′W, 269 km from Guatemala City, and is the last provincial capital on the Panamerican highway before reaching the Mexican border at La Mesilla.

Huehuetenango was founded by Gonzalo de Alvarado in 1524 after the Spanish conquest of the Maya capital of Zaculeu, the Pre-Columbian capital of the Mam Maya people. The name 'Huehuetenango' means approximately place of the ancients (or ancestors) in Nahuatl. Many people of Mam decent still live in and around Huehuetenago, and the ruins of Zaculeu is a tourist attraction a short distance from town. These ruins are markedly distinct from other Mayan archeological sites; the original unearthed stones, comprising only a small portion of the original structures, were covered with concrete some time in the 20th century presumably to preserve them. There is also a small museum at Zacaleu which includes statues and small artifacts found on the site.

Former president Efraín Ríos Montt was born in Huehuetenango. Huehuetenango's primary export is coffee.

A former G-2 agent says that the base he worked at in Huehuetenango maintained its own crematorium and "processed" abductees by chopping off limbs, singeing flesh and administering electric shocks. At least three of the recent G-2 chiefs have been paid by the CIA, according to U.S. and Guatemalan intelligence sources.[1]