El Salvador has 545 km of borders, including 342 km of borders with Honduras and 203 km with Guatemala.

The city's metro area has recently grown very rapidly and has absorbed most of the neighboring municipalities of Villa Nueva, San Miguel Petapa, Mixco, San Juan Sacatepequez, San José Pinula, Santa Catarina Pinula, Fraijanes, San Pedro Ayampuc, Amatitlán, Villa Canales, Palencia and Chinautla forming what is now known as the Guatemala City Metropolitan Area.

In an attempt to control rapid growth of the city, the municipal government ( Municipalidad de Guatemala ) headed by longtime Mayor Álvaro Arzú, has implemented a plan to control its growth based on transects along its important arterial roads and exhibitting Transit-oriented development ( TOD ) characteristics.

Guatemala City also has a sizeable Indigenous population and minority groups such as Germans and other Europeans, Jewish, Asians primarily Chinese and Korean, and many groups of other Latin American origins such as Peruvian, and Colombian amongst others.

Guatemala City's population has experienced drastic growth since the 1970s with the influx of indigenous migrants from the outlying departments as well as a large influx of foreign groups.

For this reason along with several others, Guatemala City has experienced some growth problems such as transportation saturation, availability of safe potable water in some areas at certain times as well as increased crime.

The city also has some of the most expensive private schools in Central America, The American School of Guatemala and The Mayan International School.

Guatemala City has been affected several times by earthquakes.

By 2500 BC, small settlements were developing in Guatemala ’ s Pacific lowlands in such places as Tilapa, La Blanca, Ocós, El Mesak, and Ujuxte, where the oldest pieces of ceramic pottery from Guatemala has been found.

Northern Guatemala has particularly high densities of Late Pre-classic sites, including Naachtun, Xulnal, El Mirador, Porvenir, Pacaya, La Muralla, Nakbé, El Tintal, Wakná ( formerly Güiro ), Uaxactún, and Tikal.

This has brought on difficulties for Guatemala as more people puts pressure in the nation's economic progress in a country where 70 % live in dire poverty, and political stability was weakened by an inability to have effective population growth programs.

The 1996 signing of peace accords, which ended 36 years of civil war, removed a major obstacle to foreign investment, and Guatemala since then has pursued important reforms and macroeconomic stabilization.

On 1 July 2006, the Central American Free Trade Agreement ( CAFTA ) entered into force between the US and Guatemala and has since spurred increased investment in the export sector.

* Guatemala has the fourth highest rate of chronic malnutrition in the world and the highest in the Western Hemisphere.

* Mexico has an embassy in Guatemala City and a consulate in Quetzaltenango and in Tecún Umán.

* Guatemala has an embassy in Mexico City and consulates-general in Oaxaca City, Tenosique, Tijuana, Tuxtla Gutiérrez and Veracruz City.

Guatemala also has consulates in Ciudad Hidalgo, Comitán and Tapachula.

Guatemala has an embassy in Moscow.

Russia has an embassy in Guatemala City.

In recent years the number of violent crimes reported by U. S. citizens has steadily increased, though the number of Americans traveling to Guatemala has also increased.

For example, the K ' iche ' language spoken in Guatemala has the inflectional prefixes k-and x-to mark incompletive and completive aspect ; Mandarin Chinese has the aspect markers-le 了 ,-zhe 着, zài-在, and-guò 过 to mark the perfective, durative stative, durative progressive, and experiential aspects, and also marks aspect with adverbs ; and English marks the continuous aspect with the verb to be coupled with present participle and the perfect with the verb to have coupled with past participle.

In September 2010 the Guatemalan Congress overwhelmingly gave its approval for a referendum to be held to give the people of Guatemala a say in whether or not that country ’ s claim to Belize should be taken to the International Court of Justice for final resolution.

After Belize achieved independence in 1981 the United Kingdom maintained a deterrent force ( British Forces Belize ) in the country to protect it from invasion by Guatemala ( see Guatemalan claim to Belizean territory ).

Initially a dispute between formerly Spanish Guatemala and the United Kingdom's colony of British Honduras, Guatemala continued its claim after Belizean independence in 1981 ; it recognized its neighbour's independence one decade later, in 1991.

British Honduras faced two obstacles to independence: British reluctance until the early 1960s to allow citizens to govern themselves, and Guatemala's complete intransigence over its long-standing claim to the entire territory ( Guatemala had repeatedly threatened to use force to take over British Honduras ).

Since then, Mexico has stated that it would revive the claim only if Guatemala were successful in obtaining all or part of the nation.

At the centre of Guatemala's oldest claim was the 1859 treaty between the United Kingdom and Guatemala.

Today's independent Belize government holds the viewpoint that treaties signed by the UK are not binding on them, that the International Court of Justice's precedent is that the 1859 treaty is binding on Guatemala unless Guatemala can firmly prove the 1859 treaty was forced upon them by the UK, that international law says any breaches in the 1859 treaty by the UK would not excuse Guatemala's breaches and the UK never made " material breaches ," that Guatemala never inherited Spain's claim because Guatemala never occupied that part of Spain's New World colonies, and the right of a people to self-determination.

Belize argued that Guatemala frustrated the country's legitimate aspirations to independence and that Guatemala was pushing an irrelevant claim and disguising its own colonial ambitions by trying to present the dispute as an effort to recover territory lost to a colonial power.

In Guatemala it is observed in Guatemala City and in the town of Santa Maria Nebaj, both of which claim her as their patron saint.

In addition, Guatemala has in the past claimed that all or part of the nation of Belize is a department of Guatemala ( as a part of the Province of Verapaz ), and this claim is sometimes reflected in maps of the region.

United Fruit owned in Guatemala, 42 % of the nation ’ s ( arable ) land .< sup id =" fn_3_back "> 3 </ sup > The United Fruit Company had reduced its tax burden in Guatemala by declaring a low value for its land, much lower than it would later claim it was worth.

Although amaranth was cultivated on a large scale in ancient Mexico, Guatemala, and Peru, nowadays it is only cultivated on a small scale there, along with India, China, Nepal, and other tropical countries ; thus, there is potential for further cultivation in those countries, as well as in the U. S. In a 1977 article in Science, amaranth was described as " the crop of the future.

In February 2007, a very large, deep circular hole with vertical walls opened in a poor neighborhood in northeast Guatemala city, killing three people.

Thus, it is impossible for the dissolution of carbonate rock to have formed the large vertical holes that swallowed up parts of Guatemala City in 2007 and 2010.

The large holes that swallowed up parts of Guatemala City in 2007 and 2010 are a spectacular example of " piping pseudokarst ", created by the collapse of large cavities that had developed in the weak, crumbly Quaternary volcanic deposits underlying the city.

In Guatemala, Holy Week is celebrated with large processions with images.

Coba must have maintained close contacts with the large city states of Guatemala and the south of Campeche like Tikal, Dzibanché or Calakmul.

The clerical and aristocratic forces staged a strong anti-liberal building block taking advantage of the fanaticism and discontent that permeated large sections of the population, especially in the state of Guatemala.

Stratford evidently had ties to a large commercial plantation in La Democracia, Huehuetenango, Guatemala.

The large majority of K ' iche ' people live in the highlands of Guatemala, notably in the departments of El Quiché, Totonicapán and Quetzaltenango.

The largest populations of contemporary Maya inhabit Guatemala, Belize, and the western portions of Honduras and El Salvador, as well as large segments of population within the Mexican states of Yucatán, Campeche, Quintana Roo, Tabasco, and Chiapas.

The Middle kingdoms of India had already the largest economy of the ancient and medieval world, the Napata / Meroitic kingdom extended over the current Sudan and Ethiopia, the Olmecs controlled central Mexico and Guatemala, and the pre-Incan Chavín people managed large areas of northern Peru.

However, even in countries where large populations of indigenous people remain or the indigenous peoples have mixed ( mestizo ) considerably with European settlers, such as Bolivia, Guatemala, Mexico, Peru and Ecuador, marginalisation still exists.

Whilst the government made some effort to improve campesino peasants ' civil rights, rural conditions in Guatemala could not be improved without large scale agrarian reform, proposed as mediated and fairly compensated land redistribution.

Strongly supported by the Church, Carrera became de facto ruler on much of Guatemala and led a large uprising of Indians in eastern and southern Guatemala.

The Gulf or Bay of Honduras is a large inlet of the Caribbean Sea, indenting the coasts of Belize, Guatemala, and Honduras.

Santa María Volcano is a large active volcano in the Western Highlands of Guatemala, close to the city of Quetzaltenango.

Volcán Atitlán is a large, conical, active stratovolcano adjacent to the caldera of Lake Atitlán in the Highlands of Guatemala.

Mayan art from Mexico, Guatemala and Belize is especially significant and contains a large number of very important works.

The volcano is within 5 to 10 kilometres of the city of Antigua Guatemala and several other large towns situated on its northern apron.

In Guatemala they help staff large urban and rural parishes and established a clinic.

San Francisco La Unión is a municipality in the Quetzaltenango department of Guatemala, known for its large market.