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Alta Verapaz

Alta Verapaz is one of 22 departments in Guatemala. The capital and chief city of the department is Cobán. Alta Verapaz is among the poorest and most neglected departments in the country, and along with El Quiché and Huehuetenango suffered the worst ravages of the years of armed conflict.

Demographics and Ethnicity

The population of Alta Verapaz was 958,417 in 2004, an increase of 22.5% from 1999. By comparison, the population of the country as a whole grew by 13.8% in that same period. The population of Alta Verapaz is almost 90% Mayan. The predominant Mayan language in Alta Verapaz is Q’eqchi’, but with a majority of Poqomchí’ speakers in the southernmost municipalities (San Christóbal Verapaz, Santa Cruz Verapaz, Tactic, Tamahú and Tucurú).

Administration

Alta Verapaz comprises 15 municipalities, each centered on a town that gives its name to the municipality. (Numbers reference map at right.)

1. San Cristóbal Verapaz, 2. Santa Cruz Verapaz, 3.Tactic, 4. Tamahú, 5. Tucurú, 6. San Juan Chamelco, 7. Cobán, 8. San Pedro Carchá, 9. Chisec, 10. Fray Bartolomé de las Casas, 11. Chahal, 12. Cahabón, 13. Lanquín, 14. Senahú, 15. Panzós

Health Resources

There are 3 public hospitals in Alta Verapaz. The hospitals are in Coban (170 beds), Fray (30 beds) and Panzós (30 beds). There is approximately one health center per municipality.

Health and Social Indicators

The three departments Alta Verapaz, El Quiche and Huehuetenango are, relative to the country as a whole, characterized by larger indigenous populations, and poorer economic and public health indicators.

Brief History of Alta Verapaz

Colonial Times

For millenia prior to Spanish conquest, Alta Verapaz was part of the Mayan civilization. In the 1520s the Spanish conquered the central and southern highlands of Guatemala, but when they moved north, they met fierce resistance from the Q’eqchi’. The Dominicans, most notably Friar Bartolomé de las Casas, intervened between the parties, and convinced the Q’eqchi' king Juan Matalbatz to convert to Christianity, thus avoiding further bloodshed. For several centuries thereafter Alta Verapaz was isolated and largely ignored by the national elites, so the Q'eqchi’ preserved much of their original language and culture. As late as 1870, the vast majority of the population lived in free villages, that were governed by councils of village elders.

Coffee Economy

In the final decades of the nineteenth century, the national government encouraged foreigners—mainly Germans—to develop the highlands of Alta Verapaz for coffee production. Within a few years the foreigners, coming in with access to capital and expertise, had taken over the bulk of the land, and most of the Q’eqchi’s lived on fincas (plantations) as resident mozos colonos (serfs).

Many coffee fincas were enormous—for example, the one owned by Erwin Dieseldorff in the early part of the twentieth century covered over one hundred thousand acres in the municipalities of Cobán and San Pedro Carchá.  Germans controlled coffee production and export.  The export traffic flowed east via road and railway to Panzós then by steamer across Lake Izabal, down the Rio Dulce, and on to the Caribbean.  The German enclave was largely independent of the authorities in Guatemala City. The huge fincas were effectively sovereign territory, with their own militias and jails.

Coffee production required a great deal of labor. Part of the attraction of Alta Verapaz for the coffee growers had been the ready supply of cheap, submissive, indigenous labor.  But, for obvious reasons, the local indigenous population was not keen on the idea, and the planters were always strapped for labor. 

Local officials turned to coercion in the form of mandamientos (forced labor recruitments) to draft manpower, ad various strategies were tried to bind the campesinos to the fincas.  Wage advances bound the worker to perform an rather unpredictable amount of future work; subsistance plots were granted in return for the obligation to provide work at harvest.  Typically the campesino was thereby caught in an vicious cycle of debt servitude that became very like slavery.

The planters and their allies in government took steps to discourage the campesinos from absconding.  For example, by the vagrancy laws passed in the 1930’s, a campesino was required to carry a libreta (notebook) that documented his obligations and compliance with mandatory labor requirements.  If he was found reneging on obligations, or having failed to provide his annual 100 to 150 days to the fincas, he was fined, jailed, or, more typically, transported to a nearby finca, with the cost of his new fines now added to his debt load.  Disputes, desertions, violence and killings were common.  Over time there was some migration of Q’eqchi’s seeking freedom from the finca system, down from the highlands into Petén and the valley of the Polochic River in eastern Alta Verapaz, but in time, even those regions too were incorporated into the finca system.

Change and Reform 1944-1954

By the 1940s, with the passing of the first generation of planters, the model of European ownership had begun to change.  Ladinos (non-indigenous Guatemalans) gradually replaced the Europeans and Americans.  Most notably, during WWII, the Guatemalan government expelled German citizens and seized their property.. However the new generation of locally-reared planters were just as ruthless as their foreign predescessors.

The October Revolution of 1944 brought progressive government under President Arévalo.  The worst excesses were in theory relieved by the Labor Code of 1947, which among other things abrogated the vagrancy laws.  In fact, the Labor Code had less effect in Alta Verapaz than in areas more connected to the capital, and progress in overcoming the power of the planters was slow.  Vagrants continued to be arrested in San Pedro Carchá and elsewhere in Alta Verapaz, notwithstanding the change in the law.

Then, in 1950, the election of the more left-leaning President Arbenz, increased the momentum of reform.  The Agrarian Reform, passed in June of 1952, sought to expropriate uncultivated land attached to the large fincas and distribute it, along with nationalized German plantations, to the landless.  This bill represented a serious threat to the planters. In Alta Verapaz, because of its relative isolation from the capital, the application of Agrarian Reform was uneven—in some cases it was an opportunity for a new cadre of exploiters to gain advantage.

After the coup of 1954, the progressive legislation of the previous ten years was quickly reversed, scores were settled violently, and the options for the peaceful advance of land rights for ordinary campesinos effectively vanished.  Increasing militancy, polarization, land occupations, expulsions and violence ensued.

The Years of Conflict:  1954-1996

It is difficult to identify precisely the beginning of the civil war in Guatemala , but seeds were certainly sown by the 1954 coup and counter revolution.  As opposition grew to take the form of clandestine parties and organized guerrilla activity, Alta Verapaz, and in paticular the Polochic Valley became strategic ground in the battle between the government and opposition groups, most notably the communist Partido Guatemalteco de Trabajo (PGT) which had considerable support in the region. There was a natural class alliance between the large planters and the military against the radical elements of the campesino community. But the campesino community was itself fractured along several axes—PGT families or villages vs. their anti-communist neighbors; established communities vs. migrants, etc.

Through all these years in the countryside of Alta Verapaz there was an absence of effective authority or judicial system; endless rounds of conflict, civil strife, and violence, which rose to a terrible peak during 1978-1982 then sputtered until the Peace Accords of 1996.

The following statistics for the years 1962-1996 are from the Commission for Historical Clarification:

Almost 10% of the human rights abuses and violence in Guatemala occurred in Alta Verapaz; only the departments of El Quiché (45.5%) and Huehuetenango (15.6%) had worse records. There were 61 known massacres in Alta Verapaz (vs. 344 in El Quiché, 88 in Huehuetenango, 70 in Chimaltenango). If 200,000 were killed in total in Guatemala, it is likely that on the order of 20,000 were killed in Alta Verapaz.

 

 

  

 

 

Health Center, Chisec, Alta Verapaz