Guatemala is a land of spectacular beauty, fleecy white clouds wending their way among mountains green with coffee plantations and vegetable farms, indigenous villages and hamlets tucked into narrow valleys beside gurgling brooks and streams, volcanoes soaring to 13,000 feet. To understand the topography of Guatemala, we must turn to geology, which, in Guatemala, means, mountains, volcanoes, and earthquakes. First the mountains.  

Current geomorphic theory holds that the crust of the earth floats on a core of magma. Billions of years ago, the crust broke up into great chunks, which geologists call "tectonic plates." These floating plates necessarily bump into one another, the edge of one often sliding under the edge of the other, thereby heaving up the latter to form a mountain range, a process known as "subduction." The mountains of Central America, the Sierra Madres, are the result of subduction. 

Guatemala is divided into twenty-one regions, called "departments," considerably larger than counties in our country and a good deal smaller than states. The largest department by far is Petén, the northern panhandle. The Petén is a lowland, tropical rain forest, rising only about 600 feet above sea level. It is sparsely populated and all of Guatemala’s larger cities are well to the south. The rest of the country is divided into larger and smaller departments more or less according to population density and tribal lines. While there are lowlands on the coasts, nearly all of Guatemala, except the Petén, is mountainous. 

Altitude and proximity to the coast affect the climate and, while some departments enjoy abundant rainfall, others are dry and nearly barren. In Alta Verapaz, just below Petén, the fertile mountain sides are heavily cultivated and highly productive. Farmers even cultivate slopes so steep you wonder how they can stand. Not only fruits and vegetables but also cattle and hogs are raised in Alta Verapaz.  

Geology in Guatemala means mountains, volcanoes, and earthquakes. Volcanoes! The pressure of magma trapped beneath tectonic plates, finding a weak spot from time to time, spews out billions of tons of lava through channels called a ‘vents.’ Volcanoes are the result. Guatemala, with thirty-six, has the highest concentration of volcanoes in the world. The tallest of these, Tajumulco [tah-who-MUL-coh], soars to nearly 14,000 feet. While Tajumulco is dormant, Volcán [vohl-KAHN] Fuego [FWAY-go] has erupted more than sixty times in the last 500 years, its fiery glow in the night sky ever a reminder of the fury in its belly. 

Perhaps the most interesting landform in Guatemala is the site of Lake Atitlán [ah-teet-LAHN] and its three associated volcanoes: Toliman [toll-ee-MAHN], San Pedro, and Atitlán. The lake itself, 5000 feet above sea level, is twelve miles long, six miles wide, and more than a thousand feet deep. Its icy-cold waters occupy a valley dammed up by the volcanoes. It is not uncommon to see indigenous women washing clothes on its shores.

Pedro de Alvarado, a lieutenant of Cortes, the conqueror of Mexico, established Spanish rule among the Maya in 1524. With the conquistadors came Dominican and Franciscan missionaries and Catholicism largely replaced the native religion, though syncretism has played a significant role in maintaining vestiges of the latter to the present day. 

In 1548, the Spanish Crown established the Kingdom of Guatemala, embracing present-day Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador, Nicaragua, and Costa Rica, which now make up a loose political entity called Central America. (Geographically, but not politically, Central America includes also Panama and Beliz.) As the capital of the new kingdom, the Spanish laid out a grid of cobblestone streets and called the place Guatemala, today’s Antigua.  

Guatemala (today’s Antigua) prospered. There, in the shadow of el Volcán, which dominates the surrounding countryside, the Spanish built numerous monumental structures, especially churches, in a modified Baroque style. Then in 1773–76 a series of earthquakes demolished nearly everything. The Spaniards abandoned the old capital and built a new one quite far away, which they also named Guatemala, and the old capital became Antigua Guatemala or Antigua for short. In 1821 the Kingdom of Guatemala gained independence and its constituent states became the independent countries of Guatemala, El Salvador, Nicaragua, Honduras, and Costa Rica. Guatemala, the city, is now the capital of Guatemala, the country.