Cuilco

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Cuilco is a municipality in the Guatemalan department of Huehuetenango.

Cuilco is a municipality in the Southwestern portion of Huehuetenango serving approximate 50,000 people as of 2007. It is very spread out, with travel times exceeding 8 hours from one side to the other. Export crops include corn, coffee and canela. Canela is a molasses-like substance made from processing sugar cane.

Cuilco serves over 100 aldeas, which are smaller communities served by the municipality. Cuilco, as a municipality, contains the municipal government housed inside the municipal building near the center plaza of town. As of 2007, the municipal building ("muni") employed approximately 15 people, providing many services to the surrounding aldeas and to Cuilco itself. Jennifer Stephens is a Peace Corps volunteer serving in the Cuilco municipal building.

Tourism to Cuilco is farily limited given its location more than 3 hours from Huehuetenango. However, the recent completion of a highway replaced the dirt road connecting Cuilco to the Pan-American Highway and reducing travel times considerably. However, that said, the highway ends at Cuilco so travellers wishing to continue on to other parts of Guatemala or to Mexico (via an illegal border crossing) still must navigate rough dirt roads.