Guatemala
Guatemala is Central America's most populous nation, with one 2002 study having estimated 12 million inhabitants in a territory of 108,890 square kilometers (42,000 square miles). Nearly 2.5 million people live in the capital, Guatemala City, but Guatemala also has a large rural population spread throughout the western highlands and along the coastal plains. The vast mineral-rich province known as El Petén in the north of the country is very lightly populated. The northernmost country in Central America, Guatemala is very mountainous, and the climate ranges from hot in coastal areas, to temperate in mountain valleys, to chilly at higher elevations. Guatemala exhibits the most complex racial and ethnic mix of any country in Central America. Nearly 60 percent of the population is descended from indigenous Mayan peoples, and this sector of the population speaks some two dozen indigenous languages. Roman Catholicism is the predominant religion, but Protestant evangelicalism has made rapid advances, and among the Maya a syncretism of Catholicism and traditional Mayan religion is common.
Traditionally, Guatemala has had an agro-export economy in which coffee, sugar, cotton, and bananas have figured prominently. Agricultural products have accounted for about 75 percent of exports. In the last two decades of the twentieth century Guatemala became a petroleum exporter and positioned itself to compete in textile manufacturing through the establishment of maquila industries, assembling finished goods from parts manufactured in other countries in order to take advantage of low-cost labor.
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