Religion in Guatemala

Guatemala does not have an official religion, since the Political Constitution of 1985 declares that the country is a secular state. The country also does not have an official census on religious affiliation, although statistics indicate that the Christian religion predominates in the territory, reaching between eighty-seven and eighty-eight percent. However, Guatemala also has a presence from other types of creeds or even laymen; together with agnostics (0.93%), atheists (0.84%) and non-religious (10%), they would all oscillate 11% irreligious. Other beliefs such as ethnic religions (0.84%), spiritualists (0.21%) and others would reach up to two percent Guatemalans. According to research by ARDA (2022), 90.4% of Guatemalans belong to the Christian Religion, 88.9% of the population is Theist or believes in a personal God, 72.2% defined themselves as a religious person, 88.7% believe in life after death, at the same time, 95% consider that religion is important and only 0.2% consider God as unimportant in their lives.

Christian parishioners in Guatemala are divided into two large groups: Catholics and Evangelicals or Protestants. The percentage between these two groups varies depending on the source of the surveys; According to data from the XXI Guatemalan Census of 2002, the most professed Christianity was Catholic; On the other hand, recent official data from the Catholic Church and the Ayuda para la Iglesia Necesita association show that predominant Christianity is brought together by grouping the different Protestant denominations, with the Pentecostal and Pentecostal churches being the denomination with the largest number of members. In the 2010s, surveys positioned Catholic Christians and Evangelical Christians in similar percentages (4 out of 10), with Catholics being slightly higher than Evangelicals. Entering the 2020s, according to a Latinobarómetro survey between October and December 2020, where 1,000 people were evaluated, the predominant religion and belief is Evangelicals with 42.8% followed by Catholicism with 41.2%.

Map on the Religious Disruption of Guatemala 2020EvangelicalsCatholicsMisma Presencia

Religion by Department of Guatemala (2020)

Timeline of religion in Guatemala

Introduction

Guatemala was not always a secular country.

Before the arrival of the Spanish conquistadors, the Mayan cultures in the region were polytheistic and had deep-rooted religious customs. Then, during the time of the Spanish Colony, the economic and political power of the orders of the regular Clergy of the Catholic Church, then the official religion of the Spanish Empire, was considerable to the point that the Archbishop of Guatemala was one of the three main authorities of the Kingdom. of Guatemala together with the president of the Royal Court, representative of the Spanish Crown and the City Council, representatives of the Guatemalan Creoles. These three powers were constantly fighting because the Creoles considered that the representatives of the crown were usurping a power that by right corresponded to them, as direct descendants of the conquerors. In the capitals of the kingdom of Guatemala there were twenty-four churches of the different orders, without counting the parishes and hermitages in the surroundings.

The power of the Catholic Church began to wane when the King of Spain enacted the Bourbon reforms in 1765 to lessen the power of the religious in the Empire, and then expelled the Jesuits from all territories of the Empire in 1767. After the independence of the Kingdom of Guatemala, two parties were formed in the region:

1. Conservative: made up of the criollos of the province of Guatemala, who were the most powerful during the colony for dealing commercially with Spain, and the orders of the regular clergy who were still in Guatemala and who were large landowners.
2. Liberal: made up of the Creoles of the rest of the provinces in the kingdom, who were seen derogatively by the Guatemalan Creoles for dedicating to the labors of entrustment and agriculture.

The struggles that were waged between liberals and conservatives extended until 1840, after the liberals had imposed themselves on the entire Central American Federation and had attacked the economic interests of the regular orders by expropriating their farms, mills, mills and monasteries. In Guatemala, the conservatives found a champion in General Rafael Carrera, who expelled the liberal leader Francisco Morazán from Guatemala, restored his possessions to regular orders, founded the Republic of Guatemala in 1847, and implemented a regime that lasted until 1871. During this At some time, the power of the regular orders in Guatemala was considerable, and the Jesuits even returned to Guatemala. The Central American union that the liberals wanted had to wait until Carrera's death to continue with his integration attempts, since the Guatemalan general could never be defeated.

When the Liberals came to power again in 1871 under Generals Miguel García Granados and Justo Rufino Barrios, they again attacked their conservative rivals the regular clergy orders, this time expelling the orders, turning the monasteries into public buildings, expropriating their estates and companies to distribute them among the liberal leaders and granting freedom of worship. Despite this, and the continuous friction between the Guatemalan archbishops and the country's government, the Catholic religion continued to be the majority in Guatemala because the parishes and churches passed into the hands of the secular clergy who maintained religiosity in Guatemalans.

This situation continued until 1954, when then-Archbishop Mariano Rossell y Arellano allied himself with the National Liberation Movement in his mercenary struggle to overthrow the socialist government of Jacobo Arbenz Guzmán. Rosell y Arellano, following the McCarthyism guidelines that prevailed in the United States at that time, accused the government of being communist and atheist and even ordered the construction of a replica of the Black Christ of Esquipulas, which was taken on a pilgrimage throughout Guatemala to pray for the end of communism in the country. After the overthrow of Arbenz, the Catholic Church obtained considerable benefits in the Constitution that was approved in 1956, especially the legal capacity to own property.

With these benefits, there was a boom in Catholicism in the country, with constructions by lavish private Catholics such as the Liceo Guatemala of the Marists and the Liceo Javier of the Jesuits. The Rafael Landívar University of the Jesuits was also created in 1961. But by then, the Catholic influence in the Guatemalan population had diminished considerably, and the rise of the Protestant churches began. These have been constantly on the rise, despite pilgrimage visits from Pope John Paul II, who visited Guatemala three times.

There is a fluctuation of data specifically between the Christian majority and the non-religious, since the surveys do not always specify whether or not the respondents consider themselves Christians because they are baptized and then do not practice any religion. Something similar happens in the comparisons of surveys between the percentage of Catholic Christians and that of those who practice the so-called ethnic religions (mainly Mayan religions); The respondents do not always specify why they consider themselves to be in one group and not in others, nor is the intention with which they carry out their practices that may be pagan in appearance but have a Christian background, or vice versa.

Maya religions

The religious practice of the Guatemalan indigenous people of Mayan origin was polytheistic and was practiced by all the inhabitants of the region. In the xxi century, the Mayan religions are practiced by a minority percentage of the population, which are concentrated especially in several indigenous communities of the West and the Verapaces of Guatemala.

Mayan deities

Mayan deities found in the codices

The Maya, and their descendants, had numerous deities; Here is a non-exhaustive list of them:

Deity	Image	Description
Ah Kumix Uinicob		They are lower gods (or lower angels) related to water that, during the drought period, are located in the four cardinal points.
Ah Mucen Cab		It is the Mayan deity in which the honey collectors were protected to obtain good harvests. The Mayan word for honey was the same as for the world, so Ah Mucen Cab was somehow linked to the creation of the world.
Ah Puch		Also known as Ah Cimih, Kizin - The Amazed-, Yum-Kimil or Hun Ahau, is the god and king of the underworld. Described as a skeleton or corpse with a jaguar face (or owl) adorned with bells; it corresponds to the fourth place, by the order of its representation, to the god of death. It has a skull for its head, shows the naked ribs and projections of the spine; if its body is covered with flesh, it is swollen and covered with black circles that suggest decomposition. As head of demons, Hunhau reigned over the lowest of the nine subterranean worlds of the Mayas, and modern Mayas believe that under the figure of Yum Cimil – the Lord of Death – he roams around the rooms of the sick on the stalking of his prey.
Ahau-Kin		It is represented with the Roman nose, brown and square eyes and with a hair peel on the forehead. It also has and the Kin sign or Mayan day on one of its cheeks and its teeth are cut in the form of T. It was considered god of number 4 and day Sun.
Balam		The Balames are Mayan spirits responsible for protecting the towns, the millipas and the men. There are four of them for each site, each of which is located on one of the cardinal points to carry out its protection functions. They usually show up at night, they're long beard elders and their face is horrible. They wear broad-wing palm hats, wear skin sandals and wear floating robes. Their character is dual, that is, they do good, but they do not hesitate to punish those who have forgotten to give them the corresponding offerings.
Chaac		Important deity of the Maya Pantheon, associated with water and especially to the rain.
Coyopa		God of thunder and thundering noises. He's Cakulha's brother - by the lightning - and they both work for Yaluk - the eldest of lightning.
Ek Chuah
Hunab Ku		His name “signifies God the creator of all” He was the Creator God and his is relatively recent. Its oldest reference comes from the time of the colony. It was according to these references the main Mayan god, creator of the world and humanity from corn. In connection with this, Domingo Martínez Paredes in his book Hunab Ku: Synthesis of Mayan Philosophical Thought, he says: “Indeed, the ethical and aesthetic concepts of the Mayan people, from material works to those of the intellect, we came to know—thanks to linguistic and philological analysis—the reality of the expression hunab kuas a "dador of movement and measure", as the elements of which it is composed reveal it as follows: Hun"only", "only"; nab"measure" and "movement" and ku or kub"dador." »
Hun Nal Ye		God of fertility and corn. See also Hun-Hunahpu.
Ixchel		Goddess of love, gestation, textile works, moon and medicine. He is the wife of the solar god and in the codex he identifies with the goddess "I". He was sometimes represented with a rabbit. One of his advocations was considered evil, and he was represented in the codexes, as an old woman, emptying the waves of cholera over the world. In hieroglyphical texts his name is "Chak Chel" (a large rainbow).
Ixtab		Goddess of suicide and wife of Kisin.
Itzamná		Also called ZamnáLord of heaven, night and day and son of Hunab Ku. Possibly manifested as well Ahau or Kinich Kakmó, the sun god. It is represented in the codex as an old man of teethless jaws, sunk carrillos, eagle nose and sometimes bearded. It is attributed the invention of writing, of the calendar and therefore its origin dates back to the principles of Mayan history.
Kinich Ahau		Lord of the eye of the sun. He was the god of the Sun and patron of music and poetry; he was the son of Hunab Ku and was married to Ixchel, the Moon. He is considered one of the advocations of Itzamná or Zamná.
Kinich Kakmó
Kukulkán		Mayan name of Quetzalcóatl—an important character in the Posclastic Period of Mayas.
Mulzencab		God in which honey pickers are sheltered to obtain good harvests (from Mayan: Ah Mucen Cab‘He who keeps the honey’).
Rilaj Maam		Nawal de los mayoa-tz'utujiles de Santiago Atitlán, town located on the shore of Lake Atitlán, in the department of Sololá del altiplano guatemalteco. This character is venerated as a "protective guard" of the tz'utujil people given their status as colonized people.
Xiquiripat		Deity of demonic character; it is one of the twelve that dwells in the earthly underworld of Xibalbá. This deity was for the Mayas the cause of bloodshed among men.
Yaluk		Main god of lightning and lightning. Several assistants, including Cakulha and Coyopa, are responsible for their task.
Yum Kaax		God of wild vegetation and guardian of their animals.
Zamná		Also called in its deified facet Itzamná (from Maya: Itzamná‘house of dew’‘itzdew; ahof the person concerned; naah, house’), was in the beginning a great Maya priest arrived with the chanes of Bacalar (after called itzaes) to found and establish himself in Chichen Itza, about 525 AD.

Deities of the Popol Vuh

The Popol Vuh, written by Fray Francisco Ximénez in 1701, remained in the Dominican archives until 1840, when it was found by the French father Charles Étienne Brasseur de Bourbourg, who translated it into French and identified it as a sacred book of the k'iche's. However, expert analysis during the xx century determined that the book was actually a preaching tool used by Father Ximénez to introduce Christian doctrine to Guatemalan indigenous people. The deities featured in the book are:

Deity	Image	Description
Balam Quitzé		He was the protective god of fields and crops. He was worshipped before beginning the sowing and his face reminds the jaguar kings. His name means "jaguar with the sweet smile" or "jaguar who laughs," and for the Mayas he was the first man to be created from corn, after the great flood sent by the Hurricane god. The gods created the Caha-Paluma woman specifically to marry him.
Cabrakán		God of the mountains and earthquakes. Brother of Zipacna and son of Vucub Caquix and Chimalmat. His mastery of earthquakes is because after falling in love with a goddess, he tried to attract it at all costs and pointed a flower on the seabed. As he went for it, the other gods chained him to the center of the Earth. Furious, he started to roll around causing earthquakes everywhere.
Hun-Camé		Demonic deity of the underworld Xibalbá. Together with Vucub-Camé is one of the two supreme judges of the council, whose function was to assign their powers to the lords of Xibalbá. The young twin gods Hunahpu and Ixbalanqué killed Hun-Camé and his co-gent in the underworld Vucub-Camé, as revenge for the decapitation of his father, Hun-Hunahpu.
Hun-Hunahpu		God of fertility and ball game. With his wife Xbaquiyalo had two children, Hun Batz and Hun Chouen, known as the monkey twins. Every day Hun-Hunahpu played the ball game with his brother, Vucub Hunahpu (Seven Hunahpu), against Hun Batz and Hun Chouen. While the ball game is on the ground, it is also a road that leads to the underground and gloomy world of the Xibalbá. The noise from the game bothered the Lords of Xibalbá, Hun Came and Vucub Came -One Death and Seven Death - who invited them to descend to the underworld to play the ball game. Hun-Hunahpu and his brother Vucub Hunahpu came down, where they were tortured and sacrificed. In the place where the brothers were buried there grew a tree of jícaras, a tree of squash, which gave skulls for fruits, among which was the head of Hun-Hunahpu, to which a tribute was made in the sixth chapter by the son god named Hun-Batz. Ixquic, daughter of one of the lords of Xibalbá, attained a fruit of the tree, being the head of Hun-Hunahpu, which spat in the hand of Ixquic, thus becoming concerned with the twin gods, Hunahpu and Ixbalanqué.
Hunapu		One of the twin heroes of Popol Vuh, who together with his twin brother Ixbalanqué, are the sons of the god Hun-Hunahpu and the young virgin Ixquic. He ventured along with his brother to confront the Lords of Xibalbá who defeated their father and uncle in revenge.
Hurricane
Ixbalan		One of the twin heroes of Popol Vuh who, along with his twin brother Hunapu, are the sons of the god Hun-Hunahpu and the young virgin Ixquic. He ventured along with his brother to confront the Lords of Xibalbá who defeated their father and uncle in revenge.
Ixmukané		According to the Popol Vuh of the Quichés, Ixmukané was who formed the Men of Maize, mixing various kinds of this grain. She is also the mother of Hun-Hunahpu and grandmother of the Twin Gods: Hunahpu and Ixbalanqué, children of Hun-Hunahpu and the Goddess Virgin Ixquic.
Ixquic		daughter of Cuchumaquic, one of the Lords of Xibalbá, the Maya Underworld. The young maiden heard the story of Hun-Hunahpu, a god who had been transformed into a tree of Jícara. She visited the Tree clandestinely and became pregnant when the Tree slashed a hand with saliva. She went out into the outside world and lived with Ixmukané and gave birth to the twin gods Hunahpu and Ixbalanqué. Ixquic is the Goddess Mother Virgin, with which she begins the Third Cycle of Popol Vuh, cycle of female culture, female predominance and matrilineal descent.
The Twin Gods
Vucub-Camé		Demonic deity of the earthly underworld of Xibalbá. He is the father of Zipacna and Cabrakan. Together with Hun-Camé is one of the supreme judges of the council, whose function is to assign their powers to the lords of Xibalbá. The young twins Hunahpu and Ixbalanqué killed him as revenge for the decapitation of their father, Hun-Hunahpu.
Vucub Caquix		See Vucub-Camé.
Zipacná		Son of Vucub-Camé and Chimalmat. He and his brother, Cabrakan, the Earthquake, were often considered demons. It was said that Zipacna, like her relatives, was very arrogant and violent; he was characterized as a large cayman and often boasted to be the creator of the mountains. One day Zipacna was tanning on the beach next to her beloved goddess of the Xochilpilli flowers when it was bothered by Four hundred boys who tried to build a hut. They had cut a large tree to use as the central trunk, but they were unable to lift it. Zipacna, being enormously strong, offered to carry the trunk for them. The Four hundred Boys decided that it was not right for a man to have such strength, and that Zipacna should be killed. They tried to trick him, but Zipacna managed to eliminate them all. Hunahpu and Ixbalanque, the two divine twins, decided to demand revenge on Zipacna for the death of the four hundred boys, in a continuation of their quest to overthrow the arrogant gods.

Mayan religions today

Currently it is increasing as a consequence of the cultural protections established under the Peace Accords, there are now indigenous religious groups that have their own Mayan priests, mainly in the west of the country. Lately the government has instituted a policy of providing altars at every Mayan ruin found in the country, so that traditional ceremonies can be performed by these religious groups.^{[citation required]}

Catholic Church

Catholicism was brought to the Americas by Spanish conquistadors in the 16th century, who unlike the other colonialist nations in Europe insisted on converting the natives of their colonies to the state religion. At that time, the Catholic Church had absolute power over the subjects of the Spanish crown and the ecclesiastical authorities were as important as the kings of Spain. The main religious orders of the Regular Clergy arrived in the Kingdom of Central America, which had considerable influence. political and economic power, owning considerable tracts of land, parcels, sugar mills and buildings in the capital of the Kingdom, mainly in Santiago de los Caballeros de Guatemala and later in Nueva Guatemala de la Asunción.

Regular commands

Doctrines of Indians

Order of Preachers shield.

The Spanish crown focused on the catechization of the indigenous people; the congregations founded by the royal missionaries in the New World were called "indian doctrines" or simply "doctrines". Originally, the friars had only a temporary mission: to teach the Catholic faith to the indigenous people, to later make way for secular parishes. such as those established in Spain; to this end, the friars should have taught the gospels and the Spanish language to the natives. Once the indigenous people were catechized and spoke Spanish, they could begin to live in parishes and contribute to the tithe, as the peninsulares did.

But this plan was never carried out, mainly because the crown lost control of the regular orders as soon as the members embarked for America. On the other hand, protected by their apostolic privileges to help the conversion of The natives, the missionaries, only attended to the authority of their priors and provincials, and not to that of the Spanish authorities or those of the bishops. The provincials of the orders, in turn, only rendered accounts to the leaders of their order and not to the crown; once they had established a doctrine, they protected their interests in it, even against the interests of the king and in this way the doctrines became Indian towns that remained established for the rest of the colony.

The doctrines were founded at the discretion of the friars, since they had complete freedom to establish communities to catechize the indigenous people, in the hope that these would pass over time to the jurisdiction of a secular parish that would be paid the tithe; in reality, what happened was that the doctrines grew without control and never passed to the control of parishes. The collective administration by the group of friars was the most important characteristic of the doctrines, since it guaranteed the continuation of the community system in case one of the leaders dies.

Arriving in Guatemala in 1564, Bishop Bernardino Villalpando realized that the diocese did not have the necessary support from secular fathers to extend its authority. The friars belonging to the powerful regular orders had formed their doctrines, but they responded to the Spanish Crown through their own prelates and provincials, and refused to recognize the authority of the bishops. But at that time the decrees of the Council of Trent were proclaimed, which were ratified by King Felipe II: through these decrees, the Catholic bishops were granted responsibility over all the religious who lived within the confines of their respective diocese, regardless of whether the religious were regular or secular.

The decrees of the council granted him new canonical rights to subject regular orders to his mandate; Had he been successful in his undertaking, he would have been the true leader of the Catholic Church in Guatemala, and director of the secular clergy. The regular orders categorically opposed his intentions, resisting any attempt by episcopal authority, taking refuge in the exceptions and privileges that had been temporarily granted to them for the "conversion" of the natives. The bishop tried to impose his authority because monastic privileges were intolerable to him: they preached with catechisms that had not been approved by the bishop and all the monastic friars resisted being inspected by the hierarch of the diocese.

With the support of the Spanish Crown and the decrees of the Council of Trent, Villalpando did not have enough power to impose his authority over the regular orders. The orders managed to keep the bishop's authority at bay because they controlled all the towns in the region and the bishop did not have enough secular priests to replace the friars. And when Villalpando threatened to withdraw the authority to administer the sacraments, the orders threatened him in turn, telling him that they were going to leave the city and then got the captain general to convict him on charges of abuse of authority.

Villalpando was the only bishop of Guatemala in a hundred years who dared to stand up to the power of the regular orders.

At the middle of the 18th century the Dictionary of Authorities defined a doctrine as a group of Indian towns, reserved for a particular regular order, which has been granted in perpetuity, as a reward for having civilized the inhabitants and converting them to the Catholic religion. By then, then, the regular orders had definitively remained with their doctrines, since no one delivered them to them: they simply did not return them as there was the original plan.

Dominicans

Order of Preachers shield.

Ruins of the Convent of Santo Domingo in Antigua Guatemala in 2013, converted into a private hotel.

Santiago de Guatemala

Amatitlán

Verapaz

Sacapulas

Convents of the Order of Preachers during the colonial period in Guatemala and approximate area of the doctrines that belonged to them.

The regular orders of Dominican priests were established in 1529, while the Franciscans did so in 1530 and the Mercedarians in 1536.

In November 1536, friar Bartolomé de las Casas, O.P. settled in Santiago de Guatemala. Months later Bishop Juan Garcés, who was a friend of his, invited him to move to Tlascala. Later, he moved back to Guatemala. On May 2, 1537, he obtained from the licensed governor Don Alfonso de Maldonado a written commitment ratified on July 6, 1539 by the Viceroy of Mexico Don Antonio de Mendoza, that the natives of Tuzulutlán, when they were conquered, would not be entrusted but that they would be vassals of the Crown. Las Casas, along with other friars such as Pedro de Angulo and Rodrigo de Ladrada, sought out four Christian Indians and taught them Christian songs where basic issues of the Gospel were explained. Later he led a procession that brought small gifts to the Indians (scissors, bells, combs, mirrors, glass bead necklaces...) and impressed the cacique, who decided to convert to Christianity and be a preacher to his vassals. The cacique was baptized with the name of Juan. The natives consented to the construction of a church but another cacique named Cobán burned the church. Juan, with 60 men, accompanied by Las Casas and Pedro de Angulo, went to talk to the Indians of Cobán and convinced them of their good intentions.

Las Casas, Fray Luis de Cáncer, Fray Rodrigo de Ladrada and Fray Pedro de Angulo, O.P. They took part in the reduction and pacification project, but it was Luis de Cáncer who was received by the chief of Sacapulas, managing to carry out the first baptisms of the inhabitants. The cacique "Don Juan" took the initiative to marry one of his daughters to a principal of the town of Cobán under the Catholic religion.

Las Casas and Angulo founded the town of Rabinal, and Cobán was the head of Catholic doctrine. After two years of effort, the reduction system began to have relative success, as the indigenous people moved to more accessible lands and towns were founded in the Spanish way. The name of "Land of War" was replaced by that of "Vera Paz" (true peace), a name that became official in 1547.

The rest of the Order of Preachers moved to the Panchoy valley in 1542; Four years later, the convent of Santo Domingo became a priory and the seat of the province of San Vicente de Chiapas and Guatemala. According to the Guatemalan ecclesiastical historian Domingo Juarros, around 1540 Bishop Francisco Marroquín handed over the parishes of the valley of Guatemala to the Dominicans and the Franciscans; the first were: Jocotenango, Chimaltenango, San Martín Jilotepeque, Sumpango, Candelaria de los tres de Sacatepéquez, Amatitlán, Petapa, Mixco and Pinula. The prior of the convent of the Order of Preachers was in charge of other nearby neighborhoods and towns to the city of Santiago de los Caballeros in Guatemala, for which he appointed vicars: the one in the Candelaria neighborhood, the one in the Santa Cruz neighborhood —which included Milpas Altas— and the one in the San Pedro de las Huertas neighborhood. As reported by Juarros in 1818, in the city of Santiago de los Caballeros, the regular orders administered only indigenous doctrines, especially in the Dominican curates of Candelaria and Jocotenango, since the ladinos attended the secular parish of San Sebastián.

On April 28, 1564, Bernardino Villalpando was named bishop of Guatemala. Villalpando began the application of the decrees of the Council of Trent but this generated several problems for him, being condemned by the captain general of Guatemala Francisco Briceño. With all the problems he had, Vilalpando left the city of Santiago de los Caballeros in Guatemala.

In the middle of the 16th century the Dominicans established their control in the doctrine they established in Xocolo on the shore of Lake Izabal. In 1574 it was the most important way station for European expeditions in the interior. Xocolo became infamous among Dominican missionaries for the witchcraft practices of its inhabitants. It remained an important European way station until the late 1630s, although it was abandoned in 1631.

At the end of the 16th century the Franciscan friars began to use drama-dances to catechize the indigenous people. The Dance of the Conquest, for example, is a staging based on the Moors and Christians dance used by the religious to make the indigenous people think that the Conquest of Guatemala had been possible thanks to spiritual forces that, superior to them, accompanied and they protected the Spaniards. There is a manuscript of the dance of the Conquest, written in verse and in Spanish. The text describes the conquest of the indigenous K'iche's by the Spanish. The plot begins with the arrival of the Spanish ambassadors before the K'iche' king. Concerned about the invasion of his lands, the king asks for the support of the governor of Xelajú, Tecún Umán. Finally, the training between the two armies takes place which culminates in hand-to-hand combat between the two chiefs, Pedro de Alvarado and Tecún Umán. In this battle the Quiché hero is killed. His successor declares the end of the war and accepts the conversion to Christianity.

By 1620, the convent was in miserable conditions: a church of reeds covered with mud and a roof made of hay, and a fence of logs pierced with cells that looked more like huts. But by 1635, the situation had improved considerably and the priory already had an income from several Indian towns that belonged to it, a water mill, a wheat farm, another farm with horses and mules, a sugar mill and a farm. silver mine that he obtained in 1633 and whose annual income amounted to at least thirty thousand ducats. With such Englishmen, the Dominicans were able to afford several jewels for their church, including a silver lamp that was in front of the main altar and an image of the Virgen del Rosario also made of silver. Thus, the Dominican convent had become a one of the large landowners in Guatemala.

In 1638, the Dominicans separated their great doctrines -which represented considerable income- into groups centered on their six convents:

Frescos in the dome and roof of the Benedictine Abbey of Melk, Austria. The appearance of the churches of Antigua Guatemala was similar to that of this Austrian chapel before they were destroyed by the earthquake of 1773.

The convent of San Jerónimo was founded between 1540 and 1550 in the 16th century. The first sugar plantation in Central America was founded in San Jerónimo in 1601 by Rafael Luján, becoming the most important patrimony of the Spanish Kingdom in Central America for its production of sugar, cochineal, grapes, wine and marijuana liquor. Originally the area of the convent was used for cattle when they received it as a donation in 1579 but the Dominicans used it to grow sugar cane. In a short time the hacienda produced 3,125 arrobas of sugar in 1769 and between 2,800 and 4,400 arrobas in the early years of the xix century The hacienda offered a net profit from 5,555 pesos in 1776 and more than 6,500 in 1805, due to fluctuations in the sugar market. The Dominicans invested considerably in furniture, since they had a mill, ovens and boilers, and the water distribution works, which were valued at more than 8,000 pesos. In 1769, the hacienda housed more than five thousand head of cattle, in an extension -without its cattle ranches- of 168 caballerias, but in total the useful land of the hacienda is calculated at 900 caballerias, 70 irrigation at 200 pesos and 830 to 100 pesos. Fray Francisco Callejos, who was in charge of the hacienda, which had been built in a Roman style that included an aqueduct to bring water to the vineyards. It is located in the town of San Jerónimo, and may be easier to see along the road to the San Lorenzo farm. The Dominican friars established a doctrine in the region, which had an excellent water supply. The solidly built convent of the friars had an adjoining church, and an extensive system of tunnels and irrigation aqueducts. Both the location and the climate were ideal for planting vineyards; The dry and thin grass and cracked clay, so characteristic of the soil of the Salamá Valley, disappeared thanks to the ingenious irrigation system built by the friars, who perfected the production of wine in their doctrine.

In December 1693, Fray Francisco Ximénez, O.P. He was elevated to the position of doctrine priest and was in charge of the office for ten years. In 1701, however, he was transferred to Santo Tomás Chichicastenango (Chuilá) where it is believed that he learned the indigenous narrative and made his transcription/translation of the book k'iche'. Popol Vuh; later Father Ximénez became the Cura of Rabinal from 1704 to 1714 and he was also the vicar and general preacher of the same district from 1705 onwards.

By the 18th century the Dominicans already had a small hacienda called La Chácara and a wheat mill on the outskirts of the City of Santiago de Guatemala, in addition to five sugar mills: San Jerónimo in Verapaz, El Rosario, Nuestra Señora de la Encarnación, San José de Matías Palencia and Cerro Redondo. The Dominican temple was considered one of the best that the city of Santiago de Compostela had. the Knights, and the most sumptuous of it before the Cathedral and the temple of the Company of Jesus were built. They also had the site called Bodegas on the banks of Río Dulce, eight leagues from the Castle of San Felipe de Lara and thirty-eight from the port of Santo Tomás de Castilla. The Book of the Councils, where the income from the Dominican revenues was recorded, evidences the great economic power that the Dominicans had in Guatemala.

City merchants paid for many of the images that were in the Santo Domingo temple, but in 1754, by virtue of a Royal Decree part of the Bourbon Reforms, all the curates of the regular orders were transferred to the secular clergy.

Franciscans

Arms shield of the Order of Franciscans.

San Francisco Church in Antigua Guatemala after its reconstruction in 1967.

Panajachel

Santiago de Guatemala

S. Atitlan

Siquinalá

Patul

Quetzaltenango

Jocopilas

Convents of the Province of the Most Holy Name of Jesus of the Franciscans during the colonial period in Guatemala and approximate area of the doctrines that belonged to them.

When Franciscan friars arrived in Guatemala from Spain in 1530, they were assigned 120 villas to catechize. They were the first to move to the Panchoy valley, where Antigua Guatemala, the capital of the Kingdom of Guatemala, settled in 1541. In that city they built a chapel on the site where the church of the School of Christ was later built. This chapel was destroyed in 1575 by an earthquake and for the next ten years collections were made to build the new complex, two blocks from the old one.

The Franciscan complex became an important cultural and religious center for the entire Kingdom of Guatemala: theologians, jurists, philosophers, physicists, and mathematicians studied at its college in San Buenaventura, which was located where the ruins of the monastery currently stand. Cristóbal de Villalpando, Tomás de Merlo and Alonso de Paz also studied at the school.

Both the chapel and the convent were expanded during the 17th century. In 1684 the structure was reinforced and managed to withstand the 1691 earthquake. The new church was built by Diego de Porres and inaugurated in 1702. The San Miguel earthquakes of 1717 severely damaged the structure, as did the 1751 earthquake.

The convents and doctrines in the diocese of Guatemala were scattered throughout the modern departments of Sacatepéquez, Chimaltenango, Sololá, Quetzaltenango, Totonicapán, Suchitepéquez and Escuintla. In the Memorial of the doctrines and religious of the "Province of the Most Holy Name of Jesus", as the area in charge of the Franciscans was then called, in 1603, it is observed that there were fourteen convents in the diocese of Guatemala, with a total of twenty religious in the Convento Grande de San Francisco de Santiago de los Caballeros and thirty-eight distributed in the guardianships and doctrines of Guatemala who exercised pastoral offices in the Indian doctrines they administered. The convents were inhabited by small groups of religious: two convents with five Franciscans, five with four, seven with three, eight with two and one with one; only the one in the city of Santiago de Guatemala had a relatively large number. The Franciscans attended one hundred and four indigenous towns in Guatemala, with a total of around thirty-five thousand people; Regarding their problems, the friars report the lack of ministers that the Province suffers and the urgency that they come from Spain, since the religious are old and the land is very difficult. On the other hand, the good knowledge of the indigenous languages on the part of the doctrineros and their auxiliaries is noted. by then there were already twenty-one convents, with seventy religious in Santiago de los Caballeros and ninety-two in the doctrines.

In the heads of the parishes, the conventual mass was sung or prayed daily with the assistance of the officers of the brotherhoods and their wives, who held lighted candles in their hands during almost the entire mass. Daily, both in the headwaters and in the visiting towns, doctrine was imparted to girls from the age of six at two in the afternoon and, at sunset, to boys of the same age so that for two hours received Christian instruction. The teaching consisted of reciting all the doctrine and prayers and doing exercises with the questions of the catechism and was in charge of the doctriner and two elderly Indians, called fiscales, in case the doctriner could not attend. Adults were attended on Sundays and holidays, after the mass; The doors of the church were closed, and all the prayers of the Christian doctrine were said in the local language, with all the people, men and women.

The application of the sacraments was as follows:

• Marriage: only those who knew and were examined of all doctrine were conferred.
• The Anointing and the Viatic: the sick were given when the prosecutors were warned; the Eucharist was given to them with great solemnity, including a procession with the first authorities of the people, and at the house of the sick an altar was raised.
• Baptism: exclusively imparted by the priests.

Lent was a time when indigenous people were prepared for the obligatory annual confession and communion, preaching to them in their mother tongue. Every Sunday of Lent they were preached in their mother tongue, preparing them for confession. Every Friday of Lent, in the towns where there was a Calvary temple, the stations were made with songs and carrying light crosses and, in each of them, the mystery was read or sung in the mother tongue, culminating in a sermon on Calvary and the return to the church with songs and prayers.

Now, in practice, the headwaters of the doctrines where the religious lived was where the doctrine was best taught, but the visiting towns, especially the most remote and difficult to communicate, had indoctrination directed mainly by prosecutors, and they left a lot to be desired.

Around 1773, when the city of Santiago de los Caballeros in Guatemala was affected by the earthquakes in Santa Marta, the Franciscan architectural complex covered almost three hectares and housed one hundred religious. At that time in the complex was the house of studies with chairs of philosophy, theology and canons, craft and painting workshops, residence for the missions, the second printing press that was established in Guatemala, the infirmary and a pharmacy open to the public.

Mercedarians

Arms shield of the Order of Merced.

Tejutla

Jacaltenango

Chiantla

Amatique

Santiago de Guatemala

San Juan Ostuncalco

Convents of the Mercedaries during the colonial period in Guatemala and approximate area of the doctrines that belonged to them.

La Merced Church in Antigua Guatemala in 2010. The temple was completed shortly before the Earthquakes of Santa Marta to which it resisted and is open to the worship to date, although it is no longer in charge of the mercenaries.

Fray Marcos Dardón arrived in Central America with the Spanish conquistadors and actively participated in the future province of La Merced de Guatemala, created shortly after his death. The bishop of the diocese, Francisco Marroquín, brought it with him to Guatemala around 1537. The Mercedarians settled in the Almolonga Valley and five years later, after the landslide of the Agua Volcano, they moved to the Panchoy Valley.

Bishop Francisco Marroquín affirmed that the Mercedarians were the first to settle and persevere in the kingdom of Guatemala; in fact, their field of apostolate extended throughout the lands that in the xxi make up the Guatemalan departments of Quetzaltenango, San Marcos and Huehuetenango and the Mexican state of Chiapas, where they had a large number of doctrines, which multiplied more during the last years of the century 16th century until the beginning of the 18th century. In fact, the convent of the Mercedarians in Chiapas He was the first to have the order on the American continent, because although they had come together with the first conquered, they did so individually, not as a congregation and because of them they did not have a presence in large cities such as Mexico City or Lima. Marroquín was to beg Mexico City until they get it Four Mercedarian religious will be sent to Chiapas and Guatemala; the friars Pedro Barrientos and Pedro Benítez de Lugo stayed in Chiapas to found the monastery of that town. At that time, fray Marcos was in the province of Chiapas, carrying out the position of protector of the Indians. And some time later, in 1546, he went to Guatemala, where he successively held the positions of commander of the city convent and provincial vicar.

Around 1550, at the request of lawyer Alonso López Cerrato, president of the Royal Audience of Guatemala, fray Marcos promoted the foundation of the houses of Gracia de Dios, Tencoa and Valladolid de Comayagua; the three in the Honduran region, so that their religious were in charge of the natural doctrine. The first two were founded by Fray Nicolás del Valle, who in 1565 presented a memorial to the Council of the Indies, requesting help for the three convents, where the Mercedarians, who "preach the holy gospel, have not enjoyed royal protection".

With other nuclei of convents, in 1561 the province of Nuestra Señora de la Merced de Guatemala was founded, which included, in addition to Guatemala and Honduras, the regions of San Salvador, Nicaragua, Costa Rica and, for some years, Until it was established as an independent province, the region of México included, they had a presence in Amatique in Izabal —which was then known as the mayoralty of Amatique in the province of Golfo Dulce— where they had a convent, taking advantage of the proximity from the town known as the "Villa de Españoles de Nueva Sevilla", which was on the southern bank of the Polochic River. Preachers, the Mercedarians were exposed to pirate attacks and without the help of the Spanish authorities, so they decided to abandon the site and hand it over to the Bishop of Trujillo, Cristóbal d and Pedraza, in 1549.

In 1565 the Mercedarian province of the Presentation of Guatemala was created; Originally they had obtained curates in the Sacatepéquez Valley and Chilmatenango from Bishop Francisco Marroquín, but exchanged them with the Dominicans for the area of the Sierra de los Cuchumatanes. During the first part of the century xvii were in charge of evangelizing some towns around the city of Santiago, which over time became part of the city; These towns were Espíritu Santo, Santiago, San Jerónimo and San Anton —which functioned as the head of his commendation and vicarage and where the convent that the Mercedarians had was located and attended by the commander, priest and curate of the order.

According to the report of Bishop Juan de las Cabezas in 1613 and the minutes of the pastoral visit of Archbishop Pedro Cortés y Larraz in 1770, the Mercedarians were in charge of nine doctrines, and their many annexes, which were: Santa Ana of Malacatán, Concepción de Huehuetenango, San Pedro de Solomá, Our Lady of Purification of Jacaltenango, Our Lady of Candelaria of Chiantla, San Andrés de Cuilco, Santiago de Tejutla, San Pedro de Sacatepéquez and San Juan de Ostuncalco.

The Mercedarians owned the "La Vega" mill and the "Nuestra Señora del Buen Suceso de Pechar" sugar mill; they also built the "San Gerónimo" school, but it was confiscated in 1763 for not having a royal license and it was used as the Royal Customs.

In 1696, Rivas managed to convert more than two hundred indigenous people and reduce them to a town he called San Ramón Alap. With this the reduction and conversion of the Lacandones came to an end; Rivas had left the chair of Theology that had been entrusted to him at the Royal and Pontifical University of San Carlos de Borromeo. With the Indians called Petenactes, converted by him, he founded the town of San Miguel. The president of the Audiencia, in 1714, told the King of Spain that Father Blas Guillén "had raised, catechized and educated the Lacandon Indians for eighteen years".

Later, after the Conquest of Petén in 1697, these missions were left somewhat helpless. Father Rivas went to mission on the shores of Lake Itza, in Petén, from where he had to withdraw because the clergymen had arrived there. According to a report from the Audiencia of Guatemala in 1675, the Mercedarians had twenty-six convents in their province and sixteen Indian doctrines of them.

The Mercedarian temple of Antigua Guatemala was dedicated in 1767, barely six years before the Santa Marta Earthquakes, which it resisted thanks to the new construction techniques used. On the façade of the church, in its upper part there is a sculpture of San Pedro Nolasco, founder of the Mercedarian Order. Below appears Our Lady of Mercy and the Mercedarian shield. The stucco and brick sculptures of the Mercedarian saints San Ramón Nonato and San Pedro Armengol are on the left side of the façade. San Pedro Pascual and Santa María de Cervelló, the first Mercedarian nun are on the right side.

Jesuits

Shield of the Society of Jesus.

Ruins of the Church of the Society of Jesus in Antigua Guatemala after its restoration by the Spanish Agency for International Development Cooperation in 1997.

Ruins of the Jesuit convent in Fraijanes.

The Society of Jesus established itself in Santiago de los Caballeros, Guatemala in 1582 and founded the Colegio de San Lucas. This Jesuit block, donated in part by the chronicler Bernal Díaz del Castillo, included three cloisters and a temple, and up to twelve Jesuits lived in it. It functioned as the Colegio de San Lucas de la Compañía de Jesús since 1608. The Colegio acquired great fame and was unrivaled in terms of teaching first letters and grammar; it was attended by the most florid of Santiago society, such as Francisco Antonio Fuentes y Guzmán, the chronicler Francisco Vázquez and Pedro de Betancourt.

On July 18, 1626, the temple was inaugurated, and around 1690 another school was founded: the "San Francisco de Borja" where the poet and Rafael Landívar later studied. The Jesuits owned a well-known sugar mill as «Ingenio de la Compañía, located very close to Lake Amatitlán and they were also owners of haciendas in Canales, Huminapa and Santiago de las Iguanas and that of Dolores de Cedillo; Both the mill and the haciendas had an oratory in which various images of saints were worshipped. Its temple underwent continuous renovations due to the constant earthquakes that hit the city during the 16th and xvii. The Jesuits were expelled from all possessions of the Spanish Empire in 1767 and did not return to Guatemala until 1850.

Minor commands

Hospitalers of Saint John of God

San Pedro Church and Hospital in Antigua Guatemala. He was dedicated to the treatment of ecclesiastical diseases.

The religious of San Juan de Dios founded their convent in 1636 and from then on they were in charge of the hospitals in the Kingdom of Guatemala. The hospitals were:

• San Alejo: for indigenous
• San Pedro: for ecclesiastics
• Santiago: for Spanish and mulatos
• San Lazaro
• Saint John of God: in 1667 the hospital of St. Alejo was delivered to the Brothers of St.John of God by the Dominicans who had administered it until then and in 1685, St. Alejo and James joined together, forming the hospital of St.John of God.

Bethlemites

Arriving in Guatemala in the middle of the 17th century, brother Pedro de San José Betancur began ecclesiastical studies at the Colegio de San Lucas de la Compañía de Jesús and at the end of his basic training he ended up professing as a Franciscan tertiary in the Convent of San Francisco in Antigua Guatemala, Guatemala. Brother Pedro founded shelters for the poor, indigenous and homeless. Other tertiaries imitated him, and he founded the Order of the Brothers of Our Lady of Bethlehem in 1656, in order to serve the poor. Likewise, he is considered the great evangelizer of the West Indies, in the same way that Saint Francis Xavier is of the East Indies. The Saint cared for the poor, sick, orphans and dying, and was a precursor of Human Rights, and the introduction of Belenismo in the new American lands. On the other hand, Pedro de San José Betancur was the first literacy teacher in America and the Order of the Betlemites, in turn, was the first religious order born in the American continent.

Christ Crucified by Propaganda Fide (The Collection)

Seal of the Congregation of Propaganda Fide.

In 1685 the missionaries Jorge de la Torre and Antonio Margil, of the Recollect friars, arrived in the city of Santiago de los Caballeros from Querétaro in the Viceroyalty of New Spain. When some more friars of the order arrived in the following years, they asked the City Council for permission to build a monastery; but in 1695, the City Council let them know that there were not enough friars to justify the construction and that there were already enough monasteries in the city. Faced with this refusal, the friars turned to the Royal Court, which did authorize the construction in 1700 of the "Colegio de Cristo Crucificado de los Misioneros apostólicas", by royal decree. In 1701 construction of the buildings began when they were given Two parcels were granted in the northwestern part of the city, and six years later the first stone of the church was laid. In 1708 the convent, the library and the infirmary were completed. The church was inaugurated on May 23, 1717, but a few months later the city of Santiago de los Caballeros suffered the ravages of the San Miguel earthquakes in 1717, which damaged the structure of the church and the convent. After the corresponding repairs, the complex was in a position to house the friars, reaching up to 35 in 1740. In 1751 there were other earthquakes that damaged the structure; and finally in 1773, the Santa Marta Earthquakes finished ruining it.

Order of the Immaculate Conception

Shield of the Order of the Immaculate Conception

Professor of the Order of the Immaculate Conception in Mexico. A similar outfit was used by the professive nuns of that order in Santiago de los Caballeros de Guatemala in the centuries xvii and xviii.

Their history was not as continuous as those of other religious orders. The land donated by Bishop Francisco Marroquín around 1563, had as its main purpose the headquarters of a building with conventual airs. Fourteen years passed before the group of religious authorities, together with Mexico, promoted the arrival of several sisters of the Order of the Immaculate Conception to the Kingdom of Guatemala in order to start the convent. The work of the four nuns began to bear fruit a year later, when the first Guatemalan nun entered.

For thirty years it would be the only female monastery in the region. According to the traveling monk and English chronicler Thomas Gage who visited Santiago many years later, the convent church had a valuable art collection. According to chronicles of the time, the number of members multiplied, reaching more than one hundred recluses with a recognized conduct full of devotion; According to the Goathemala Gazette, it had one hundred and three nuns, one hundred and forty pupils, seven hundred maids and twelve devout women.

In the 17th century there were two types of nuns: barefoot and urbanist; Juana de Maldonado was an urban planner: The novices when professing dressed in a dress similar to that of the brides, since they married Christ. The attire of the Conceptionist nuns who professed their vows was more luxurious than that of the other religious orders in the city and consisted of a crown of flowers and jewels, a pleated scapular (which was prohibited in later years due to its luxury and ostentation), an image of the Child Jesus and an ornate palm.

The hierarchy of the convent was made up of an abbess, a vicar and four defining nuns; the Conceptionist abbess was in charge of periodically reporting the activities of the convent to the bishop, and requesting permits.

Poor Clares Capuchin

Ruins of the convent of the Capuchins Clarisas in Antigua Guatemala.

In 1725, Philip V approved the construction of the "Convent and Church of Nuestra Señora del Pilar de Zaragoza" after the arrival of the nuns of the Order of Capuchin Poor Clares to the city of Santiago de los Caballeros. The work was Started in 1731 and consecrated in 1736 under the supervision of Diego de Porres; in fact, it was the last convent founded in the city and the first that abandoned the habit of demanding dowry for new inmates, a circumstance that had prevented low-income young people from accepting religious life. The daily routine of the professed was governed by a strict regulation that included the maximum rules of poverty, penance and fasting; likewise, they had to subsist on alms provided by the faithful.

During the colonial regime, there were two types of nuns, barefoot and urbanists:

Secular clergy

The secular clergy, led by their bishop, also played an important role in the implementation of the church, but in a very different way than that used by regular orders. Completely outnumbered by the friars of the orders and without their evangelical vocation, the secular priests restricted their activities exclusively to the Spanish colonizers. Very few secular priests carried out pastoral activities among the indigenous people during the first years of the Spanish colony. By 1555, when the regular orders had already founded ninety indigenous congregations, secular parishes only existed in the capital of the kingdom, the Spanish town of San Salvador, and probably in Sonsonate, San Miguel, and Guazacapán. Another factor that considerably limited the secular clergy was that the Indians were exempt from the tithe tribute. Since tithing was the traditional income for seculars, the fact that the Indians did not pay it made missions unattractive to them. Moreover, when one of the regular orders had indoctrinated a certain town, said population was protected by law and reserved for that particular order.

Thus, the secular priests left the missions to the orders and focused on the Spaniards, who, unlike the Indians, had the obligation to pay tithes; because of them, the bishops of Guatemala had a great interest in establishing as many parishes among the Spanish as possible. In his desperation to counteract the regular orders, Bishop Bernardino Villalpando strove to recruit whoever it was to the secular clergy he commanded, and thus increase the power of his diocese; he even offered gifts and favors to women who were staying at the bishop's residence. He even sent members of the cathedral community to the parishes, so that they would be served, at the expense of the cathedral was not. Through this system, Villalpando was able to create a secular clergy practically out of nothing, but the orders denounced him for illegal practices and he was persecuted by the captain general.

After the failed attempts of Bishop Bernardino Villalpando, the bishops of Guatemala did not meddle with the regular orders. By 1600, the number of secular parishes had grown to thirty-one, encompassing more than one hundred villages and hamlets. The fact that some encomenderos viewed the friars with suspicion helped the secular clergy to extend their coverage to some towns; the parish priests were more tolerant of the abuses of the encomenderos than the friars of the orders. The problem with these parish priests was that at that time there was no formal procedure to ordain them and many times they were relatives or friends of the encomenderos who simply they served as tithe collectors and not as priests.

At the end of the 16th century, there were many rivalries between the Catholics in the colony, because on the one hand there were the quarrels between the regular orders and their catechized towns and on the other, the secular clergy corrupted by flawed appointments of parish priests who were only interested in the benefit that the tithe granted them.

Tridentine College or Seminary

The Tridentino College or Seminary was an indirect result of the Council of Trent, which encouraged King Philip II to promote the founding of seminaries for the training of secular priests in the American dioceses. Construction, which began in the middle of the 18th century, was extended when the facilities were expanded with the Colegio de Indios.

Foundation of the Royal and Pontifical University of San Carlos Borromeo

Patio de la Real y Pontificia Universidad de San Carlos Borromeo. Photograph of 1971.

The mayor of Santiago de los Caballeros in Guatemala, Pedro Crespo Suárez, when he died, donated 20,000 pesos for the institution of chairs of a university "that was being managed", but the Jesuits stood in the way of the founding of the University, since it did not seem to them that the Mercedarians, Franciscans and Dominicans took the initiative in religious and educational matters. After several decades, allegations and petitions, King Carlos II issued a royal decree, dated January 31, 1676, which gave license to the capital of the Kingdom of Guatemala to found a real university or General Study This would be the third real and public university in Hispanic America, and the second in New Spain. After a conflictive organization process, five Years after the royal certificate was issued, the University of San Carlos of Guatemala began the lessons of five of its nine chairs, on January 7, 1681, with more than sixty students enrolled and being the Rec Doctor José de Baños y Soto Mayor, archdeacon of the Cathedral, Preacher of the King of Spain and Doctor of the University of Osuna. The university was inaugurated under the patronage of San Carlos Borromeo, dictated by Don Francisco Saraza y Arce, a copy of those of Mexico which, in turn, were adapted from those of the University of Salamanca in Spain.

The first chairs at the University of San Carlos were:

• Canons
• Laws
• Medicine
• Scholastic Theology
• Moral Theology
• Two language courses

The San Carlos University of Guatemala received papal approval by bull on June 18, 1687, 10 years after its founding and 6 years after classes began, becoming the Royal and Pontifical University of San Carlos Borromeo, whose teaching was completely controlled by the dictates of the Pope.

Christ of Esquipulas

Recorded by John Lloyd Stephens, an English anthropologist who visited the region between 1839 and 1840, during the Central American wars and the principle of the Rafael Carrera regime.

In 1594, the inhabitants of the town of Esquipulas asked the sculptor of Portuguese origin Quirio Cataño to sculpt a crucified Christ with a dark complexion. The Portuguese sculptor, who lived in Santiago de los Caballeros, Guatemala, delivered the Black Christ on March 9, 1595. to sculpture, which drew the attention of the surrounding Catholic towns. By 1650 the town was one of the most important Catholic sites in the country, visited by people from the provinces of El Salvador and Honduras. In 1680, the construction of the Santiago Parish began, which was completed in 1682, the year in which the sculpture of the Black Christ was moved from the provisional hermitage where it was located.

In 1740 the XV Bishop of Guatemala, Fray Pedro Pardo de Figueroa, in order to attend to the increasing number of pilgrimages dedicated to the Christ of Esquipulas and in gratitude for the healing of an illness, commissioned the construction of a temple eldest to Felipe José de Porres, son of Diego de Porres and grandson of José de Porres, renowned major architects of the capital city of the Kingdom of Guatemala, Santiago de los Caballeros. This temple is the Basilica of Esquipulas.

The Bourbon Reforms

King Carlos III of Spain, promoter of the Bourbon reforms.

In 1754, by virtue of a Royal Decree part of the Bourbon Reforms, all the parishes of the regular orders were transferred to the secular clergy.

In 1765 the Bourbon reforms of the Spanish Crown were published, which sought to recover royal power over the colonies and increase tax collection. With these reforms, tobacconists were created to control the production of intoxicating beverages, tobacco, gunpowder, cards and the patio of roosters. The royal treasury auctioned the tobacconist annually and an individual bought it, thus becoming the owner of the monopoly of a certain product. That same year, four sub-delegations of the Royal Treasury were created in San Salvador, Ciudad Real, Comayagua and León and the political-administrative structure of the Kingdom of Guatemala changed to fifteen provinces:

In addition to this administrative redistribution, the Spanish crown established a policy tending to diminish the power of the Catholic Church, which until then was practically absolute over the Spanish vassals. The church's de-empowerment policy was based on the Enlightenment and had six main points:

1. Decreasing the Jesuit cultural legacy
2. Trend towards a secularized culture
3. Determinedly rationalistic attitude of Cartesian heritage
4. Review of natural science on religious dogma
5. A critique of the role of the Church within society and its derivative organisms, especially of the brotherhoods and brotherhoods..
6. Promotion of royalism.

Expulsion of the Jesuits

Poet noble and priest Rafael Landívar, S.J.. He was expelled from Guatemala along with the rest of the Jesuits on April 2, 1767.

Another strong blow to ecclesiastical interests was the expulsion of the Jesuits in 1767. The spread of Jansenism —a heavily anti-Jesuit doctrine and movement— and of the Enlightenment throughout the xviii left certain aspects of the Jesuit ideology outdated, especially, according to Antonio Domínguez Ortiz, «its educational methods, and in general, its concept of authority and the State. An increasingly secularized and absolute monarchy began to consider the Jesuits not as useful collaborators, but as annoying competitors». In addition, conflicts with the regular orders continued.

When King Carlos III came to the throne in 1759, the situation became difficult for the Jesuits, since unlike his two predecessors, the new monarch was not favorable to the Society of Jesus, influenced by his mother, Queen Elizabeth from Farnesio, who "always had a warning about them", and because of the anti-Jesuit environment that prevailed in the Naples court where he came from.

2,641 Jesuits were expelled from Spain and 2,630 from the Indies. The former were concentrated and embarked in certain ports, initially being welcomed on the island of Corsica, which then belonged to the Republic of Genoa. But the following year the island fell into the hands of the French Monarchy, where the order had been prohibited since 1762, forcing Pope Clement XIII (Venice, 1693-Rome, 1769) Pontiff (1758-1769) to admit them to the Papal States., to which until then he had refused. There they lived on the meager pension that Carlos III assigned them with the money obtained from the sale of some of his assets.

Historians of the xxi century associate the expulsion of the order with the royalist policy carried out by Carlos III, taking advantage of the new powers he had granted to the Crown in ecclesiastical matters the Concordat of 1753, signed during the reign of Ferdinand VI, and which would constitute the most radical measure of that policy, directed precisely against the religious order most linked to the pope due to its "fourth vote" #3. 4; of absolute obedience to it. Thus the expulsion "constitutes an act of force and the symbol of the attempt to control the Spanish church. In this attempt, it is evident that the main recipients of the message were members of the regular clergy. The exemption of religious was a constant concern of the government and it sought to avoid direct dependence on Rome.

In Guatemala, the Jesuits abandoned their convent in the city of Santiago los Caballeros de Guatemala and their mill was auctioned off and sold to the Dominicans. For its part, the church and the San Borja school were left in charge of the dean of the Cathedral. Their estates passed into private hands and it is considered that many of the sculptures and paintings that existed in the oratories of the estates are in private collections of the descendants of those who acquired the haciendas at the end of the 18th century.

Santa Marta earthquakes

Convent of Santo Domingo in 2013.

On February 21, 1768, Pedro Cortés y Larraz arrived in Guatemala, becoming the third archbishop of Guatemala, and on June 12, 1773, Captain General Martín de Mayorga took office. Both, as the highest authorities of the kingdom, would be the main actors in the events that occurred after the earthquakes of 1773. By 1769, Cortés y Larraz was so disappointed in the ecclesiastical situation in the kingdom due to the havoc caused by the Bourbon reforms that he presented his he renounced the miter, but King Carlos III did not accept it and he had to continue as archbishop. Among the problems he observed was the excessive drunkenness of the people during liturgical acts and the poor preparation of the secular priests in charge of most of the parishes.

After the earthquakes of 1751, many buildings were renovated and numerous new structures were built, so that by 1773 it looked like the city was brand new. Most of the private houses in the city were spacious and sumptuous, to the point that both the exterior doors and those of the rooms were made of carved wood and the windows were made of fine glass and had carved wooden portals. It was common to find in the residences paintings by local artists with frames covered in gold, mother-of-pearl or tortoiseshell, fine mirrors, silver lamps, and delicate carpets. And the Catholic temples were magnificent: there were 26 churches in the city, and 15 hermitages and oratorios. The cathedral and the churches of the religious orders of the Dominicans, Franciscans, Mercedarians and Recollects, were the most sumptuous, demonstrating the economic and political power that the regular clergy had at that time; In these temples all the walls were covered with carved and gilded altarpieces, mirrors and richly decorated paintings and carefully carved religious images; on the ceiling there were gilt or enameled wooden bars that covered the transepts and main vaults.

In 1773 small earthquakes began in May, increasing their intensity on June 11 with a tremor that damaged some houses and temples. Then the earthquakes continued, until July 29, 1773, the day of Santa Marta, when the catastrophic earthquake occurred: the ruin was complete for the temple of Santo Domingo, which was turned into a promontory of stones and bricks, which they hid the destroyed sculptures and paintings that it housed, in addition to the sacred vessels and other ornaments. The cells were mostly destroyed, and the walls on the ground and several pieces of walls fell in the library, the convent, the cloister and the pharmacy. The image of Our Lady of the Rosary itself was severely damaged, although it would later be restored.

According to a report by the Dominican friar Felipe Cadena in 1774, the neighborhood of the La Candelaria neighborhood and the convent of Santo Domingo was where the earthquake showed the greatest damage: the buildings were completely demolished, the ruins were scattered everywhere showing remains of victims, and the streets could not be distinguished by the amount of rubble. The church, which had been magnificent, was destroyed to its foundations and turned into a promontory of ruins. Earthquake survivors were horrified to realize that such an apparently solid and majestic structure had been destroyed by such a short quake.

Transfer to New Guatemala de la Asunción

Transfer

Image of Jesus Nazareth of MercyMatthew of Zúñiga. He was transferred to the New Guatemala of the Assumption in 1778 to force the transfer of the citizens of the capital after the Earthquakes of Santa Marta.

One of the measures taken by the president of the audience, Martín de Mayorga, to force the transfer of the city was the shipment of the most important religious sculpture in the city; For this reason, in 1778 he ordered the transfer of Jesus Nazareno de la Merced, along with the image of the Virgin of Sorrows, to force the Mercedarians to move. The transfer was painful, as the indigenous people in charge of the work took a long time to arrive to pick it up and the Antigüeño parishioners prayed and mourned the loss of the image while they waited. When Jesús de la Merced came out in a box, the people accompanied him to the Animas sentry box on the outskirts of the city; a devotee carried the cross of the image to San Lucas, a town fifteen kilometers from the Mercedarian convent in Antigua Guatemala. After stopping in San Lucas Sacatepéquez and Mixco, the images finally reached Nueva Guatemala de la Asunción by night, and the Christ was received by the Franciscan friars and then by the Mercedarians, to be deposited in a wooden frame on the land where he was going to build the Mercedarian temple of the new city. Martín de Mayorga came to see the image, thus concluding the most difficult episode of the transfer of the city. In 1801, the brotherhood of Jesús Nazareno de la Merced moved the altarpiece of the image to the new city, although the church it had not yet been built.

Because the Dominican convent was completely ruined after the earthquake, the friars moved to Nueva Guatemala de la Asunción in 1776, with the image of Nuestra Señora del Rosario, already repaired, the processional images of the Holy Burial, and a few images that they were able to save from ruin. In the new city, they were granted several blocks to the east of it. In 1778 it was estimated that 44,218 pesos were invested and it was calculated that another 92,000 pesos were required to complete the work. In order to secure funds, the Dominicans leased their mills and the Chácara farm to the citizen Juan Capetillo for 150 pesos per year, who fell into arrears; then they leased it to Jacobo Vázquez for 125 pesos per year, but by 1819 the new tenant also fell into default. The farm and two of the three mills were finally leased for 350 pesos per year to Sebastián Morales.

The old courtyard and atrium of the church in Antigua Guatemala were leased from Paulino González for 12 pesos a year, and in the new capital, the temple and convent were inaugurated with the help of royal funds and the efforts of the Dominicans, on November 8, 1808. The inauguration was part of the commemorations of the coronation of Ferdinand VII.

Transfer of the Cathedral to New Guatemala

Recorded from the central square of the New Guatemala of the Assumption in 1844, before the towers of the cathedral were built.

Recorded of the Metropolina Cathedral, as it looked in the century xix. Note the sculptures of the apostles in the court.

After the Santa Marta Earthquakes in 1773 it was decided to transfer the capital of Guatemala from Santiago de los Caballeros to Nueva Guatemala de la Asunción, not without strong opposition from the Archbishop of Guatemala, Pedro Cortés y Larraz who feared that the main orders regulars asked for a good part of their revenues.

On October 7, 1779, the new Archbishop of Guatemala, Cayetano Francos y Monroy, made his public entry into Nueva Guatemala de la Asunción, with an escort of eight knights. A month earlier, Pedro Cortés y Larraz published a pastoral letter denouncing the arrival of a usurper and threatening to excommunicate him, but Francos y Monroy immediately took his first steps, appointing a priest in the indigenous town of Jocotenango and went to search for the destroyed Santiago de the Knights of Guatemala to the devout women of Santa Rosa. In the same way, he had decided that in November he would transfer the images. He spent a lot of money to finish the construction of the Carmelite and Capuchin monasteries. Cortés y Larraz did not want to continue resisting and fled at the beginning of October. He also took important steps to fight the smallpox epidemic (see the list of his works). He remained quite active at the head of his diocese: he founded the Colegio de San José de los Infantes (1781), created the quadrant of the products of his 129 parishes (1784), collected the subsidy (1784), wrote a report on the state of the brotherhoods (1787), published a Manual for Parish Priests to Administer the Holy Sacraments (1788), left 40,000 pesos for the foundation of two public schools and drafted the rules for their government (1789)... He encountered many difficulties in his relations with the regular clergy who often denounced the abuses of his authority: in particular the friar José Antonio Goicoechea. However, he did not refuse to support the Mercedarians, who were in an almost hopeless economic state after the earthquake. On December 6, 1782, Francos y Monroy informed the king that they had transferred to the new city, the cathedral, the seminary school, the convents of religious men and women, beaterios and other bodies subject to the Miter, to formal buildings. To finish these works it had been necessary to leave the work of the Archbishop's palace and he had to live, until then, in a rented house with great discomfort and narrowness, lacking the main offices and room for his family.

The cathedral moved to the new capital on November 22, 1779. The altarpieces, furniture, and instruments from the old Cathedral of Santiago remained in the old church, although in 1783 they were removed and stored in the University building of San Carlos Borromeo in Antigua Guatemala and in the sacristy of the church of El Sagrario, which also functioned in the grounds of the cathedral.

Initially, the cathedral was provisionally located in a small chapel, but it was quickly damaged, forcing the cathedral to be moved in 1786 to the Beaterio de Santa Rosa, where it remained until it was moved to its current site in 1815. For that year, most of the temple was finished and the organ was transferred to it, as well as numerous images of saints, which were transferred in solemn procession. In 1816 the gold was removed from the altarpieces of the old cathedral and the altarpieces in the new cathedral were gilded with the same.

The Cathedral remained under construction for many years, concluding in 1871, when the main bell was installed.

Santiago de los Caballeros after the transfer of the capital

Parish of San Jose and Plaza Mayor, when the Palace of the General Captains had not yet been rebuilt; 1884.

After the transfer of the Recoletos to Nueva Guatemala de la Asunción in 1775, the La Recolección complex was sold to private individuals, who during the nineteenth century used it as a stable, soap factory, and sports complex. Material was even extracted from the ruins to carry out other constructions in the city, which was now called Antigua Guatemala. As for the old convent of the Capuchinas, it had been abandoned after the transfer of the city, and in 1813 it was sold for the archbishopric to individuals, who used it as a patio for drying coffee and as a dry cleaner.

Condition of the Recollection complex at the end of the century xix.

The city began to be called "ruined Guatemala," "old Santiago de Guatemala," and the "old city." It was abandoned by all the royal and municipal authorities, and in 1784 by the last two parishes: Candelaria and Los Remedios, also remaining without ecclesiastical authorities. A few years later, Archbishop Cayetano Francos y Monroy authorized the operation of three interim parishes that carried the name of its predecessors: San Sebastián, Candelaria and Los Remedios, where the largest number of works of religious art that remained in ancient Guatemala were kept. Despite the transfer of the image of Jesús Nazareno de la Merced to Nueva Guatemala de la Asunción, the church of Nuestra Señora de las Mercedes continued to be used, as it did not suffer major damage and kept its images and altarpieces until 1813, when it was inaugurated. the Mercedarian church in the new city; even then, the altarpieces were sent to Nueva Guatemala but the church continued to function in Antigua Guatemala.

In 1804, Archbishop Peñalver y Cárdenas decided to create the parish of El Señor San José in Antigua Guatemala, which incorporated three provisional parishes that functioned in the old churches of Candelaria, San Sebastián and Los Remedios. The assets of La Candelaria were transferred to the building of the old University of San Carlos Borromeo, and the abandoned church. The new parish received among the Candelaria assets an image of the Lord of the Descent, which has been venerated in the parish ever since. In 1806, the priest Rafael José Luna, priest of San José, had the idea of using the ruins of the old cathedral as a parish; In 1814 the ecclesiastical chapter decided to accept the request and in 1819 some work began to remodel the building, collapsing ruined parts, such as the bell towers. The works stopped for a while, until they were restarted in 1832. When the works were finished, the parish of San José was moved from the old building of the University of San Carlos de Guatemala to the old cathedral, where it has been since then. The altarpieces that this new parish has are not the originals of the cathedral: they were made in 1856.

Independence of the Kingdom of Guatemala

Metropolitan Cathedral located in Zone 1 of Guatemala City.

In the 19th century Guatemala had a more Catholic beginning than many Latin American countries in terms of influence. The political-religious alliance was strengthened; the older clergy united with the old Creoles who were directly engaged in commerce were grouped in the so-called "conservative party", its main objective was to maintain the social structure that had prevailed during the Spanish Colony. For their part, the former criollo farmers who were engaged in production on their estates, dissatisfied with the prerogatives of the criollo merchants, formed the "liberal party", they sought to obtain commercial power. The liberal governments began to attack the Catholic Church, that they saw as an ally of their enemies and an obstacle to the emancipation and sovereignty of a new and purified State, in a new commercial order.

In 1829, the governor of the State of Guatemala, Mariano de Aycinena y Piñol, was overthrown by the federal forces of the liberal Francisco Morazán. From that account, all members of the Aycinena Clan were expelled from Guatemala and stripped of their property; likewise, the regular orders of the Catholic Church whose assets were confiscated by the state government were expelled. The liberals took power and began to implement secular legislation such as divorce and the elimination of the mandatory tithe; on the other hand, the most radical liberals went so far as to apply martial law to the secular priests of the Guatemalan parishes.

But the Church reacted, encouraging the indigenous women and mestizo peasants against the authorities because they were attacking the true religion. And in 1837, when there was a cholera epidemic in the country, the parish priests spread the news that it was the liberal government that was poisoning the rivers. Numerous insurrections took place against the liberal authorities led by Dr. Mariano Gálvez, until the peasant leader Rafael Carrera emerged in the town of Mataquescuintla under whose leadership the church and the members of the Aycinena Clan recovered the power of the State of Guatemala.

Conservative regimen at age 30

General Rafael Carrera y Turcios, president of Guatemala between 1847 and 1865. During his government the power of the regular orders of the Catholic Church was strengthened in Guatemala.

Liberal leader and general Francisco Morazán, president of Central America from 1835–1839, was the first to limit the power of the archbishop and secular clergy of the Catholic Church with the government's abolition of tithing and the expropriation and restriction of the use of real estate by the regular clergy. Morazán wanted to impose the same style of government in the State of Guatemala, but was completely defeated by Rafael Carrera in 1840, who implanted a conservative regime that lasted until 1871 in Guatemala. Rafael Carrera y Turcios, later he was Head of State (1844-1847) and president for life of the Republic of Guatemala (1847-1848; 1851-1865). During his government, General Carrera, who was of humble and popular origin, he allowed the regular orders to return to Guatemala and returned part of the property that the liberals had expropriated from them when Mariano Gálvez was head of the State of Guatemala. With the return of the regular clergy orders the conservative party of Guatemala was strengthened, and with the military force of Carrera, the attempt to reach a Central American union of a liberal nature was concluded.

In 1840, when the conservative regime had not yet been consolidated in Guatemala, the anthropologist John Lloyd Stephens visited Esquipulas, and described it as follows: «After breakfast we went to visit the only object of interest in the place, the great pilgrimage church, the Holy Place of Central America. Every year, on January 15, pilgrims visit it, arriving from places as far away as Peru or Mexico; the hardships of travelers on this pilgrimage are comparable to those suffered by pilgrims to Mecca. As in the East, "it is not forbidden to trade during the pilgrimage"; and when there are no wars that endanger travelers, eighty thousand people have gathered in the place to worship "Our Lord of Esquipulas"." At that time, the population of Esquipulas amounted to 1,500 indigenous people and had a street approximately one mile long with adobe houses on both sides and a bridge that passed over a stream, a tributary of the Lempa River. The area was largely unpopulated and the view from the bridge was magnificent. As for the temple, Stephens described it thus: The temple, standing alone in the midst of a wild and desolate country, seemed the work of a spell. The façade was rich, lavishly adorned with enormous stucco images, and at each corner stood a tower, and on the dome a spire, its pinnacle displaying to the four winds the crown of the once-proud empire that wrested most of America from its rulers. legitimate owners, he dominated it for three centuries with an iron hand, and now he had not a foot of land, nor a subject in all these lands. They entered the church through a magnificent portal, richly adorned with Christian images. Inside the church was the nave with two aisles, separated by rows of nine-foot-square plastras, and a magnificent dome, guarded by angels with outstretched wings. On the walls there are paintings, some of them by Guatemalan artists and others that had been brought from Spain; and the altars were filled with images of saints, some of which were made with exquisite workmanship. The pulpit is inlaid with gold, and the altar was protected by an iron grate with silver balustrades and adorned with six silver pillars about two feet high and two angels mounted guard on the steps. In front of the altar, in a lavish chapel, is an image of the Savior on the cross, "Nuestro Señor de Esquipulas," to whom the church is consecrated, famous for its miraculous powers. Every year thousands of believers ascend the stairs of this temple on their knees, or carrying a heavy cross, and who are not allowed to touch the sacred image, but who leave happy for having been able to obtain a small headband with the words " Sweet name of Jesus"."

During the conservative government of Carrera, the Jesuits returned to Guatemala in 1850; They stayed there for a little over twenty years, in a calm and profitable environment that resulted in the founding of a novitiate and a residence in Guatemala City, where they also took charge of the Tridentino College and Seminary of Our Lady of the Assumption. Guatemala was during those two decades a refuge for the order, which was expelled from several Latin American countries, including Colombia in 1851 and 1860 and Ecuador in 1852; the Colombian Mission was established in Guatemala, and had residences in Quetzaltenango and Livingston. From Guatemala, the Jesuits attempted to expand into Mexico in 1853, Colombia in 1857, Ecuador in 1862, and El Salvador in 1863, but were ultimately expelled on September 3, 1871 by General Justo Rufino Barrios, leader of the Liberal Reform in Guatemala, and they had to settle in Nicaragua.

Pavón's Law

In 1840, the Pontifical University of San Carlos Borromeo was formed again with the faculties that until then formed the secular Academy of Sciences that had been founded by Dr. Mariano Gálvez. The first rector of the University was Dr. and priest Juan José de Aycinena y Piñol -who had already been rector of the same between 1825 and 1829- who also served as Minister of Ecclesiastical Affairs of the government. Aycinena also convinced Carrera to once again allow access to the Society of Jesus to take charge of education in Guatemala.

Manuel Francisco Pavón Aycinena, one of the leaders of the Aycinena Clan and adviser to President Rafael Carrera, was responsible for the educational system during the 30-year regime; so much so that the liberal historians that emerged after 1871 accused him of being responsible for the retrograde pedagogical movement that took place in Guatemala during that time. Pavón's ideas handed over teaching to the tutelage of the Catholic Church through the Pavón Law, which was promulgated on September 16, 1852; According to the liberals, this legal instrument meant a setback in Guatemalan education since other towns followed the ideas of the Enlightenment that began at the end of the xviii span>. The law did not precisely indicate the gradual system of primary education, it claimed that power was of divine origin and therefore children owed absolute respect to their superiors, and it did not contain the necessary principles to learn natural sciences nor social. In addition, it did not teach Economics, History or Geography and did not contemplate a free, compulsory or secular education; It was therefore a return to education contemplated in the old laws of Spain in matters of Public Instruction.

The Pavón Law emphasized that the foundation of a solid education consisted of learning the doctrine of religion and morality instilling in youth from their earliest years, as well as instilling the respect that they must observe towards their elders, officials and authorities. The law was reviewed by the Council of Ministers and approved by the metropolitan archbishop. The law established in each parish at least two primary schools, one for boys and one for girls, they had the name of the parish that housed them and they were inspected by a commission made up of the parish priest, a person appointed by the City Council and a resident of the place elected by the parish priest and by the member appointed by the City Council. The commission was in charge of naming the teachers who would then have to be approved by the government, with the prior consent of the corregidor, the direction of the schools and the administration of funds; it was also up to the commission to monitor the proper functioning of the schools. The law specified that teachers should be an example for the students and recommended that those chosen were of recognized religiosity, good customs, sufficient education, moderate character and courteous treatment; and on the other hand, it did not specify the level of pedagogical preparation that teachers should have. Furthermore, the Pavón Law did not contemplate the training of teachers in any type of specific school for their preparation, which it generated an educational stagnation that only the self-taught managed to overcome successfully.

The law provided for a system of warders who controlled discipline, attendance, and health issues; in case of absence, the guards found out the reason for it and even visited the children's residence to find out more about it. These wardens ensured the regularity of the courses and helped to maintain discipline, punctuality and the health of the schools, while maintaining a bond between families and schools. Regarding the funds, these came from the corregidor departmental, of the municipalities and of a monthly tax that the commission of each parish received from the wealthy neighbors; these funds were not fixed and left the schools in precarious economic conditions.

The effects of the law were beneficial for the conservative government, since it achieved effective indoctrination that practically fell into a Catholic fanaticism that hindered the development of new ideas.

The Concordat of 1852

In 1854 the Concordat with the Holy See was established, which had been signed in 1852 by Cardinal Jacobo Antonelli -Secretary of State of the Holy See- and Fernando Lorenzana -Guatemala's Plenipotentiary Minister before the Holy See. Through this treaty, -which was designed by the leader of the Aycinena Clan, Dr. and clergyman Juan José de Aycinena y Piñol- Guatemala granted the education of the Guatemalan people to the regular orders of the Catholic Church, it promised to respect ecclesiastical properties and monasteries, authorized the obligatory tithe and allowed the bishops to censor what was published in the country; In exchange for this, Guatemala received graces for the members of the army, allowed those who had acquired the properties that the liberals had expropriated from the Church in 1829 to keep them, received taxes on the income generated by the properties of the Church, and had the right to to judge ecclesiastics who perpetrate crimes under Guatemalan law. The concordat maintained the close relationship between Church and State and was in force until the fall of the conservative government of Marshal Vicente Cerna y Cerna.

Liberal reform of 1871

General Justo Rufino Barrios, Guatemala's liberal president from 1873 to 1885; during his government the freedom of worship was approved in Guatemala.

Ramon Liberal writers explained their position in front of the regular orders of the Catholic Church in terms similar to those used here by Ramon Rosa, who was Minister of Education and Foreign Affairs in the government of Barrios: "In America, where popular instruction spreads with the speed of light, and where they do not exist, as in Europe, very entrenched and traditional religious interests, which give power and privilege to numerous social classes; in our America, where freedom of conscience is already a definitive conquest: all positive religions have to disappear, on no remote day, with their artificent and contradictory dogmas, with their privileged hysterical devices. - Rose Ramon In the prologue Poems of José Joaquín Palma Honduras, 1882.

Former Colegio Tridentino de Guatemala, expropriated to religious orders and converted into the Central National Institute for Males in 1875. In 1852 it was also known as the Jesuit College.

The Jesuits were expelled on September 3, 1871 after being given twenty-four hours to leave the country; seventy-two of them embarked in Puerto San José for Corinto, in Nicaragua. Then, they expelled Archbishop José Bernardo Piñol y Aycinena—a prominent member of the Catholic hierarchy but also of the Aycinena Clan—and the rest of the country's bishops, accused of promoting riots in eastern Guatemala; finally, to completely weaken the secular clergy, compulsory tithing was prohibited on December 22, 1871.

Being a lieutenant general of the army and in charge of the presidency of the provisional government of the Republic in the absence of García Granados, on May 24, 1872, he confiscated some properties of the religious and suppressed the Jesuits and other regular orders. Barrios was convinced that the Catholic Church had been responsible for the fall of the liberal government of Francisco Morazán and that it had given its full support to the government of Rafael Carrera; For this reason, he decided that this could never happen again in Guatemala and he set out to undermine the economic power of the church.

Properties expropriated to the regular clergy in Guatemala by the liberals in 1871

Congregation	Shield	Clero	Expropriated properties
Order of Preachers		Regular	Convents Treasury Ingenios azucareros Indian Doctrines and Land
Goods		Regular	Convents Treasury Ingenios azucareros Doctrines
Company of Jesus		Regular	The Jesuits had been expelled from Guatemala by King Carlos III in 1765, but returned during the government of Rafael Carrera to take care of education. When they were expelled in September 1871 they had no major possessions in Guatemala.
Collections		Regular	Convents
Conceptionists		Regular	Convents Treasury
Archdiocese of Guatemala		Secular	Colegio y Seminario Tridentino de Nuestra Señora de la Asunción
Congregation of Saint Philip Neri		Secular	Temple and residence in Guatemala City destroyed to its foundations.

When the Catholic people rose up in protest of these provisions, Barrios promulgated the following decree:

By virtue of this decree, the army occupied the buildings of the orders, and gave the religious an ultimatum that if they wanted to remain in the country, they should be secularized —that is, they should become priests and leave the order to which they belonged.

Finally, in March 1873, it was decreed that the secular clergy would be subject to civil courts, freedom of worship was decreed, and religious orders were placed under government control.

Among the buildings that were removed from the clergy to convert them into secular educational institutions are:

• Colegio y Seminario Tridentino de Nuestra Señora de la Asunción: converted into the Central National Institute for Males
• College: converted into the Central Normal School for Men
• Convent of Bethlehem: converted into the Normal Section of the College of Girls
• Convent of the Collection: converted into the Polytechnic School
• Convent of Santa Teresa: converted into a prison for women

Now, the expulsion of the major religious orders did not mean the elimination of the Catholic Church in Guatemala; A situation similar to that which occurred with the promulgation of the Bourbon reforms in 1765 occurred: the priests of the secular clergy took charge of the parishes left by the friars. Catholicism continued, but many of the secular priests had little religious instruction and with the elimination of the obligatory tithe the economic and political power of the Archbishop of Guatemala was reduced to a minimum. The Protestant tradition took advantage of the occasion to become a viable alternative for Christian evangelization.

Concordat of 1884

By 1881, relations between President Justo Rufino Barrios and representatives of the Catholic Church had improved considerably, and President Barrios sent his personal friend -and former priest- Ángel María Arroyo as minister plenipotentiary to the Holy See to work on a new concordat, which would replace the 1852 Concordat. The document was ready on July 2, 1884, but it was not discussed in the Assembly of 1885 because it was not included in the legislative agenda; however, the President Barrios died in Chalchuapa that year and his successor, General Manuel Lisandro Barillas Bercián, no longer ratified the treaty.

Encyclical Rerum Novarum and the Reyna Barrios regime

Metropolitan Cathedral of Guatemala following the earthquakes of 1917-1918. The liberal government of the graduate Manuel Estrada Cabrera did not reconstruct any Catholic structure that was collapsed by these earthquakes. The churches were rebuilt after several decades and with the contribution of the faithful.

Lic. Ricardo Casanova and Estrada, Archbishop of Guatemala to return to the country in March 1897. Photograph by Alberto G. Valdeavellano.

Telegram sent to the Archbishop of Guatemala by General José María Reyna Barrios after his return to Guatemala in 1897.

In May 1891, Pope Leo XIII published his encyclical Rerum Novarum – On the situation of the workers – a key document that gradually transformed the Catholic Church to accommodate itself in the liberal states; In Guatemala, this reorganization was reinforced by a new form of reproduction of ideas, manifested in the printing press whose images and speeches were sent to the faithful by an efficient postal service developed by the Liberal State, which favored the circulation of various publications. periodicals such as La Semana Católica, which began to circulate in 1892, inspired by La Croix or L'Universe in Paris, drawing on local contributors to articles and news from the Catholic Times, which highlighted the progress of Catholicism in the United States, which was beginning to serve as an example in the reconquest of ideological power in totally liberal states.

There was a strengthening of Catholicism during the government of General José María Reyna Barrios (1892-1898), thanks to the political openness of his government and his concern for the dissemination of art and the defense of local culture, which led him to to subscribe to the Berne Convention, respecting the popular manifestations of faith, expressed in the Passion processions; and all this, despite the fact that Reyna Barrios was a high-ranking Freemason. In 1897, he issued an amnesty that allowed the return of Archbishop Ricardo Casanova y Estrada to Guatemala, who had been expelled by President Manuel Lisandro Barillas Bercián.The archbishop arrived on March 19 of that year, accompanied by Father Juan Paz; when he arrived at Puerto San José on the steamer Newport, a crowd came to receive him and listened submissively to the mass that the prelate celebrated. He then left by train for the city, where he was received by a huge crowd at the station, and then they accompanied him to the Plaza de Armas; there were also people on the roofs and in the windows of the houses, who frantically acclaimed the newcomer. Later, a majestic Te Deum was celebrated in the Metropolitan Cathedral, which was completely packed with representatives of all Guatemalan society. Even the agnostic writers of La Ilustración Guatemalteca, such as A. Macías del Real, could not help but congratulate the archbishop, who had arrived from San José, Costa Rica, and they could not deny that Catholicism was in that moment the preponderant religion in the country.

The Liberals remained in power until the end of the government of General Jorge Ubico Castañeda in 1944, which led to the loss of influence of the Catholic Church in the country, but instead of rigorous compliance such as that there was until 1871, the population remained precariously in the faith.

In 1944 the October Revolution arrived, in which the situation of the Catholic religious worsened, since social thought was no longer solely against the economic interests of the Church, but many revolutionaries began to declare themselves opposed to any kind of religion. Article 32 of the Constitution decreed by the revolutionary Constituent Assembly on March 11, 1945 says: «The right of association for the different purposes of human life is guaranteed, in accordance with the law. The establishment of conventual congregations and all kinds of monastic institutions or associations is prohibited, as well as the formation and operation of international or foreign political organizations. Organizations that advocate the Central American Union or the Pan-American or continental solidarity doctrines are not included in this prohibition". position of the Catholic Church in Guatemala and for that reason it allied itself with the interests of the United Fruit Company through the National Liberation Movement to overthrow the revolutionary governments that it branded as atheists and communists. After the consecration of the Sanctuary of Esquipulas (1950), as part of the smear campaign launched against the Arbenz government, he ordered the sculptor Julio Urruela Vásquez to carve a replica of the Christ of Esquipulas, which was transferred to bronze in 1952 and converted, the following year, into a symbol and banner of the national pilgrimage campaign against communism. This Christ was later named as "Commander in Chief" of the forces of the National Liberation Movement during the invasion that he carried out in June 1954.

On April 4, 1954, Rossell Arellano issued a pastoral letter in which he criticized the advances of communism in the country, and called on Guatemalans to rise up and fight against the common enemy of God and la patria, which was distributed throughout the country.

After the overthrow of Arbenz

The Catholic Church recovered part of the power it had during the conservative government of Rafael Carrera in the 19th century; thus, religious education The private sector had a boom starting in 1955, with the founding of several elitist schools for men, which absorbed the elite students who had previously attended classes in secular government institutions such as the National Central Institute for Men, the Normal School for Men or the Central Normal Institute for Young Ladies Belén.

Although the Archbishop of Guatemala, Mariano Rossell y Arellano, published a letter stating that the Catholic Church did not seek privileges in its fight against the Arbenz government, he managed to get the government of Colonel Carlos Castillo Armas to incorporate it into the 1956 Constitution the next:

• the legal capacity of the Catholic Church - and those of all other cults - to acquire, possess and dispose of properties, provided that they are intended for religious purposes, social assistance or education.
• that religious education should be declared optional in official premises: article 97 of the Constitution states that the law would regulate religious education in official premises and that the State would not impart it but declared it optional. It also guarantees freedom of education in all other establishments.
• that the State contribute to the maintenance of religious education: Article 111 states that private institutions providing free education shall be exempted from certain tax and municipal taxes in compensation for their services.

Rossell y Arellano began an aggressive campaign to recover the Catholic Church in Guatemala: they restored the Archbishop's Palace and the residence of Bishop Francisco Marroquín, in San Juan del Obispo, Sacatepéquez, on July 22, 1953, he received the priests Antonio Rodríguez Pedrazuela and José María Báscones who began the work of Opus Dei in Guatemala, and in 1959 held the First Central American Eucharistic Congress. Little by little he achieved the return of the [[Clergy # Regular Clergy | regular orders to Guatemala and participated in various sessions of the Second Vatican Council, organized by Pope John XXIII.

Over the years and with the advances in means of transportation and communication, the number of pilgrims and the devotion to the Lord of Esquipulas became the "Central American Capital of Faith." In 1956 Pope Pius XII erected the Prelature Nullius of the Christ of Esquipulas, which is made up of the Municipality of Esquipulas and has as its Cathedral the Sanctuary of Esquipulas. The Pope also named Archbishop Rossell y Arellano as First Prelate of Esquipulas. One of Rossell's first concerns was the search for a community of religious who would take charge of the pastoral care of the Sanctuary; After many failed initiatives, he managed to find the support of the Benedictine Abbey of San José in Louisiana, United States. On Palm Sunday in 1959, the first three Benedictine monks arrived in Esquipulas and thus began the foundation of the Benedictine Monastery of Esquipulas. Taking into consideration many religious, cultural and historical aspects, Blessed Pope John XXIII accepted the request made by Bishop Rossell Arellano and elevated the Sanctuary of Esquipulas to the rank of "Minor Basilica of Esquipulas" in 1961.

On January 6, 1960, the Archbishop of Guatemala Mariano Rossell y Arellano returned the San Francisco complex to the Franciscan friars. In 1961, amid much controversy, they began the reconstruction of the temple, which ended in 1967. The Franciscans had the help of the general president and engineer Miguel Ydígoras Fuentes, and members of the Committee for the Reconstruction of the Church. In this temple is the Virgen de los Reyes, the Immaculate Conception

In 1966 the percentage of Catholics dropped to eighty-eight percent, influenced by the period of absence and by the increasingly popular Protestant presence, especially with its evangelical denominations.

Civil War: Opus Dei and Liberation Theology

Liberation theology is a theological current that began together with the "Second Vatican Council" within the Catholic Church in Latin America and in some Protestant churches. The axis of liberation theology is the poor; The poor become the subject and the underlying theme of liberation theology not for political, social or economic reasons, but fundamentally for Biblical theological reasons. Consequently, the Church, if she is true Church, is a Church of the poor. The promoters of this theology were: the Colombian revolutionary priest Camilo Torres Restrepo, the Peruvian philosopher and theologian Gustavo Gutiérrez Merino and the Basque priest Xabier Gorostiaga, S.J., among others.

For its part, Opus Dei is an extreme right-wing Catholic ecclesiastical organization, with its influence in the Vatican and the links and support of Cardinal Mario Casariego y Acevedo. Since 1976, Opus Dei has organized workshops for businessmen in Guatemala City around two ideas: the attacks on Liberation Theology and the reformist attempts of the Guatemalan Christian Democracy.

On December 10, 1964, Archbishop Rossell y Arellano died and was replaced by Bishop Mario Casariego, the first Spaniard to occupy the position in Guatemala since 1821. From the beginning of his administration, he was accused of being at the service of interests anti-popular, favoring the country's elites and being influenced by Opus Dei In 1968, President Julio César Méndez Montenegro asked him to visit Mexican President Díaz Ordaz and ask him for support in his disputes with the military chiefs Arriaga Bosque and Arana Osorio. Returning to Guatemala in March, the archbishop was kidnapped by far-right groups; there were numerous groups of Christians who raised their prayers for the appearance of the archbishop; The Pope even sent him a letter and honored him with several ecclesiastical dignities and the position of "Counselor of the Sacred Consistorial Congregation", which granted him powers superior to those of the Apostolic Nuncio, since he had the right to review all appointments of bishops. in the region. He was even named "Prince of the Church" and obtained the Order of the Quetzal when he was released.

At the beginning of the 1970s, several parishes in the diocese of Escuintla, on the South Coast of Guatemala, began social pastoral work through the so-called Families of God, inspired by the pedagogy of Paulo Freire. This work addressed the study of the Bible from the perspective of the poor, oriented towards reflection on the role of Christians in building a more just society. An aspect of concern for the Catholic Church on the South Coast was the inhumane working conditions on the farms and the lack of organization for temporary workers and crews from the Altiplano.

According to publications by the Guatemalan Army, by the year 1980 the fronts of the Guerrilla Army of the Poor (EGP) had reached a very high level of organization, with the support and intervention of Jesuit priests, Maryknoll and Missionaries of the Sacred heart; These foreign priests, mostly Spanish, through Catholic Action, would have put together a framework perfectly designed by liberation theologians obtaining with their intervention and indoctrination, a wide domain over the communities of the Ixil triangle.. All this This effort of religious involvement was coordinated, from another guerrilla front, by Luis Gurriarán and Ricardo Falla Sánchez, S.J. The religious were thus in charge of developing a recruitment and recruitment strategy for the EGP. This strategy, based on the theory and praxis of the church of the poor, used among its procedures to increase its influence visits and constant indoctrination meetings. According to the army reports, these ideologues conducted in this way the indoctrination through liberation theology, through more than one hundred priests and nuns of different religious orders, together with the EGP.

The Nobel Peace Prize Laureate Mother Teresa of Calcutta visited the City of Esquipulas on July 18, 1980. The main reason for her visit was because she would have to inaugurate the Central American Plaza of Peace, located in the Belén convent, in the Cerrito Morola of the same city.

Three years later during the de facto government of Efraín Ríos Montt, on March 6, 1983, the first visit of Pope John Paul II took place when the country was going through the internal armed conflict between the Guatemalan Army and the Revolutionary Unity Guatemalan National. The pontiff's first gesture upon getting off the plane was to kiss the Guatemalan soil; He later asked Ríos Montt to suspend the execution of three prisoners sentenced to death, although his request was ignored and they were finally executed. On the other hand, on the morning of March 7, the pope celebrated a mass that was officiated in Campo Marte in Guatemala City, this is said to be the largest Catholic concentration in the country's history, it is estimated that it mobilized between 1.5 and two million people.

The Basilica of Esquipulas is one of the most important Catholic pilgrimage centers in Central America.

End of the civil war and civil governments

In 1985 the Political Constitution declared that Guatemala is a secular state. the high desertion of Catholics between the end of the 70s and the 80s propitious to the visits of Pope John Paul II in the country. On this occasion, the pontiff took his message to the city of Esquipulas, on February 6 of that year he officiated a mass in Valle de María, with some 40,000 people at the ceremony. John Paul II called several times the "Cradle of Peace" to this city, because it was the headquarters of the Central American Peace Agreement during 1986 and 1987, and which were finalized in Guatemala in 1996.

The ruins of the Santo Domingo Convent were sold to private individuals and converted into the Hotel Casa Santo Domingo in 1989.

Another event that shocked the Catholic Church was the assassination of Monsignor Juan Gerardi, two days after the publication of the report "Guatemala: Never Again," on April 26, 1998; In this document, the cleric denounced the abuses during the internal armed conflict. Bishop Gerardi was savagely beaten to death in the garage of the parish house of San Sebastián, in Guatemala City. The criminals apparently used a concrete block to smash his skull, disfiguring his face to the point of leaving him unrecognizable, his identification was achieved after verification of the episcopal ring on his hand.

In 2002, Guatemala received the third and last pastoral visit of John Paul II. On July 30, 2002, he arrived in Guatemala City and a mass was celebrated at the Hipódromo del Sur, the shortest visit - only twenty-seven hours - that he made to Guatemala. Visiting the blessed "Brother Pedro" He was declared a saint by John Paul II. Likewise, he was registered in the Catholic saints under the name of Santo Hermano Pedro de San José de Betancur; close to a million faithful attended the activity. At 5:00 p.m. -Guatemala time- the pontiff left for La Aurora International Airport, the last words he uttered on Guatemalan soil were: "Guatemala carried you in its heart". Due to the presence of the mortal remains of Santo Hermano Pedro, the church of San Francisco was elevated to the status of Archdiocesan Sanctuary by the Archbishop of Guatemala Cardinal Rodolfo Quezada Toruño on July 30, 2003.

Currently, despite the fact that Catholicism is generally the predominant Christianity in the country, there are exceptions where it has ceased to be so due to multiple factors such as poverty, crime, marginalization, among other problems. Culturally, in most areas of the Guatemalan territory, Catholic traditions are strongly lived, they are deeply rooted in the population. The departments with the highest percentage of Catholics according to various studies are Alta Verapaz, Baja Verapaz, Chiquimula, Sacatepéquez and Santa Rosa.

Catholic popular religiosity in Guatemala is lived with particular fervor in the liturgical times of Lent and Holy Week, tradition dresses the Passion of Christ and the pains of his mother the Virgin Mary with singular mysticism and devotion. In many parts of the country it is dressed in lilac and purple. The passage of solemn processions on colorful carpets are the center of attention, while funeral marches are heard. Prayers such as that of the Virgen de los Reyes, the Immaculate Conception or that of the Immaculate Cathedral known as the &# 34;First Lady of the Nation".

Marian Devotions in Guatemala

Guatemala was the first nation in the world to formally celebrate the Catholic liturgical feast of the coronation of the Blessed Virgin in her title as Queen of the entire Universe.

Among the most outstanding devotions to the Virgin Mary are: Our Lady of the Rosary, Our Lady of Mount Carmel and Our Lady of Guadalupe.

Our Lady of Mount Carmel

Devotion to the Virgen del Carmen in Guatemala is widespread, with several temples dedicated to her dedication in the Capital City, the main one being the Sanctuary of Cerrito del Carmen, place of the original seat of the Capital of Guatemala in its fourth transfer in 1776. The image of the Virgen del Carmen was brought to Guatemala in the 17th century. Legend has it that Saint Teresa of Ávila wanted this image to be taken to the New World, predicting that a great city would rise at its feet; it was delivered by the Carmelites of Ávila (Spain) to Juan de Corz, who came to the new world as a hermit. Thus, the Virgen del Carmen, became the first guest and patron saint of the Valley, which was renamed "Valle de la Virgen", where more than a century later Nueva Guatemala de la Asunción would be founded, the current capital of the Republic of Guatemala.

Our Lady of the Rosary

The carving of Our Lady of the Rosary, was ordered to be sculpted by the Dominican Fr. Lope de Montoya and blessed in 1592, it has been venerated in Guatemala for more than 4 centuries. In 1969 Pope Paul VI in Papal Bull elevated the Temple of Santo Domingo to the dignity of Pontifical Basilica of Our Lady of the Rosary. The coronation of the image must have been done outdoors as no temple large enough to accommodate the crowd was found.

Protestantism

Protestantism, divided into various denominations (Evangelicals, Lutherans, Episcopalians, Adventists, etc.) is regularly called Evangelical Christianity, (example: House of God Ministry, Shaddai Ministry, Eben-Ezer Ministry, Christian Fraternity Ministry, Word Ministry in Action, Ministry of Christian Motivation, Ciudad Del Rey ministry) began as a religious movement in Guatemala with the rise to presidential power of General Justo Rufino Barrios, who with his liberal reforms sought to reduce power from the Catholic Church; The president promulgated the law of freedom of worship on March 15, 1873. The Protestant missionaries began to make their way between the absolute presence of Catholicism that had been in the country for more than three centuries, one of the weaknesses that they took advantage of was that Catholic practice was already partly "lay", traditions were strong, but not necessarily the knowledge and conviction of the faith.

History

English Protestants

The first Protestant Christians to arrive in Central America were the buccaneers and privateers who pursued Spanish fleets leaving Atlantic ports for Spain. In Guatemala, the largest English settlement was Belize; the area that Belize occupies in the Yucatán peninsula was never occupied by Spain or Guatemala, although Spain did carry out some exploratory expeditions in the 16th century that served as basis to later claim the area as its own; Guatemala simply inherited that argument to claim the territory, despite the fact that it never sent expeditions to the area after independence due to the wars that took place in Central America between 1821 and 1860. For its part, the English had established small settlements since the mid 17th century century, mainly for buccaneering bases and later for logging; the settlements were never recognized as British colonies although they were governed in some way by the English government in Jamaica. In the 18th century Belize became the main smuggling point in Central America, although the British later recognized Spanish sovereignty over the region through treaties of 1783 and 1786, in exchange for the end of hostilities with Spain and for the Spanish to authorize the subjects of the British crown to exploit the precious woods that were in Belize.

After the independence of the Central American region from the Spanish crown in 1821, Belize became the spearhead of British commercial penetration in the Central American isthmus; British trading houses established themselves in Belize and began prosperous trade routes with the Caribbean ports of Guatemala, Honduras, and Nicaragua.

The Liberals seized power in Guatemala in 1829 after defeating and expelling members of the Aycinena Clan and the regular clergy of the Catholic Church and initiated a formal but unsuccessful claim over the Belizean region; this, despite the fact that by On the other hand, Francisco Morazán -then president of the Central American Federation- personally began commercial deals with the British, especially the mahogany trade. In Guatemala, Governor Mariano Gálvez granted several territorial concessions to English citizens, among them the best hacienda in Verapaz, Hacienda de San Jerónimo; These deals with the British were used by the Catholic parish priests in Guatemala -since the secular clergy had not been expelled for not having property or political power- to accuse the liberals of heresy and start a peasant revolution against the liberal heretics and in favor of the "true religion". When Rafael Carrera came to power in 1840 after the triumph of the revolution, not only did he not continue with the claims on Belizean territory, but he established a Guatemalan consulate in the region to look after the interests of Guatemala at that important commercial point. Belizean trade was predominant in the region until 1855, when the Colombians built a transoceanic railroad in Panama in 1855, allowing trade to flow more efficiently in the Guatemalan Pacific ports; from this point on, Belize began to decline in importance.

In order to expel American filibuster William Walker permanently from Central America, President Rafael Carrera was forced to request arms from England, which in turn forced him to define the border with Belize. On April 30, 1859, the convention was held between the representatives of Great Britain and Guatemala to define the limits with Belize, after which a decree was issued in which Guatemala was favored in the seventh article, which stipulates that England would open by his account a land communication route from Belize City to Guatemala City. The highway was never built because the Conservatives did not agree with the Belizeans on the exact location of the highway, and then when the Liberals seized power in 1871 they declared the treaty void because the highway had not been built.

Presbyterians

Arc ceremonial built by the Chinese colony in Guatemala for the centenary of independence in 1921. It was where the main porch of the National Palace was then built; the first presbyterian church in Guatemala is seen at the bottom.

North of the Plaza de Armas in 1925. The Central Presbyterian Church, which resisted the earthquakes of 1917-1918, is at the bottom.

The first officially accepted Protestant denomination in Guatemala was Presbyterianism, being founded in 1882 by the missionary John Clark Hill, by then they were a minority and were known in Guatemala City. From 1882 to 1940 the Evangelical population represented about 2 percent of the Guatemalan population. Barrios opened the doors of Guatemala to the migration of evangelical missionaries in this country because Protestantism represented an education system that would replace the scholastic of the Jesuits; for this it was necessary to take the path of pragmatic education, more inclined to science and technology, to get out of the traditionalism of belles lettres. The fact that Justo Rufino Barrios was an active Mason was not antagonistic to the Protestantism of that time; What's more, they had features in common, for example: the defense of religious freedom, declaring themselves against the monopoly of the Catholic Church, the ideas of ethical values, democracy and their theoretical perspective regarding work.

Despite the restrictions imposed for the entry of new foreign religious missions in the government of Jorge Ubico, Protestant denominations multiplied due to the divisions of existing churches and the few new foundations, among them: the Church of God of Complete Gospel (1934) and Assemblies of God (1937), these being the spearhead of Pentecostalism in the country.

Pentecostals

In 1930 the Pentecostal current arrived in Guatemala and from the 1940s these churches began their foray into the media. In 1950 the Central American Mission put on the air the first evangelical station, Radio Cultural TGN, which quickly gained a large audience. During this decade, the communities continued to grow towards the country's departments, mainly those in the west and south of Guatemala. others.

On March 15, 1937, during the government of General Jorge Ubico Castañeda, the first "Evangelical Synod" was organized; however, the Guatemalan president openly opposed the entry of new Protestant missions. Until after the 1944 Revolution, new missions were allowed to enter; Thus, in 1951 -during the government of Colonel Jacobo Árbenz Guzmán- the Evangelical Synod was called the "Evangelical Alliance of Guatemala".

In 1963 the revival of Pentecost occurred, as the number of believers and Pentecostal churches and other Protestant denominations increased in the country; this growth was caused by the "Funding Evangelism" campaign that began in 1962 and that For the first time in the country, it allowed the Guatemalan evangelical church to have a great mobilization.

In 1972, preparations began for the centenary celebrations of the official start of the Evangelical Church in Guatemala: in 1974 the Guatemalan Association of Evangelical Ministers was founded and membership quantification began. After the 1976 earthquake, foreign missionary organizations sent volunteers who left a legacy of faith in congregations like Verbo Church; Around that time, several neo-Pentecostal churches appeared -Elim, Fraternidad Cristriana, Puerta del Cielo, Lluvias de Gracia, Familia de Dios, among others- which over time gained a large number of followers until they became mega-churches.

In the xxi century, Pentecostal churches have become companies that develop marketing strategies and multilateral distribution of symbolic and religious goods. Pentecostal evangelization responds to the need to articulate the diversity of existing religious traditions and the need to adopt new practices and discourses that can generate greater interest; this has given that Pentecostal and neo-Pentecostal churches have a large number of followers:

• House of God: 13 thousand members
• Guatemalan Christian Fraternity: 12 thousand five hundred
• “El Shaddai” ministries: 12 thousand members.

Government of General Ríos Montt

On March 23, 1982, then-President Fernando Romeo Lucas García was overthrown by a group of young officers from the Guatemalan Army, who, once in power, called on General Efraín Ríos Montt to take charge of the triumvirate of government that they imposed. At that time, Ríos Montt was a leader of the evangelical church "El Verbo"; He was not discharged, but he enjoyed prestige among the middle officers who remembered him in his time as director of the Polytechnic School, considering him honest and not committed to the situations that they wanted to correct. Although he did not participate in the planning of the coup State that had been given and had not been consulted if he would agree to assume the government, they called him because they considered that he was the right person to get the country out of the crossroads at which it found itself and fight corruption. The coup leaders were apparently unaware of his new religious affiliation and his dedication to said activity.

One of the main points of contention during the government of General Ríos Montt would be religion. As the months of his government passed, his attitude gradually became that of a Protestant pastor who preached to the people of Guatemala using the phrase "You Dad, You Mom!" Although Ríos Montt shared command with Maldonado Shaad and Gordillo until June 9, 1982, it was evident that he held the reins of government from the beginning. He constituted a cabinet with proposals to institutions and other unions, excluding political parties; although he kept the private secretariat and the general secretariat of the Presidency for members of his church -the Word-. At that time, Ríos Montt believed that his ascension was of divine origin, and on Sunday afternoons, he went out preaching like a pastor using the style and rhetoric of religious sermons and taking advantage of the television space of the national radio and television network. He gave advice, scolded and always talked about the family union with his phrase of dad and mom.

In a special act, he sent ministers, deputy ministers, general directors, advisers, secretaries and others to the National Theater, in order to make them swear by God and by the country that they would change their attitude. He would read a page and then make the attendees repeat, in chorus: "I promise before God and before the country to change, and to achieve, through all my actions, change Guatemala. I promise that my actions are within the law...»; and then the motto arose: "I do not steal, I do not lie, I do not abuse" that all public employees had to wear on a badge. Alongside the motto, he used a right hand with outstretched fingers, which years later would become the symbol of his party, the Guatemalan Republican Front.

The visit of Pope John Paul II in March 1983 was perhaps the most tense period between the Protestant ruler and the Catholic people; the renowned Guatemalan historian Héctor Gaitán reflects how the Guatemalan people felt at the time when he mentions in his work The street where you live, that his faith was not broken “despite the insult that the Pope made to the cabal of the government of the day".

The rise of Protestantism after the Civil War was studied by the anthropologist Claudia Dary, who proposes some theses to explain it:

• Evangelization was part of the counter-insurgent plan that came from the United States: in this way, conversions would be the result of the success of the counter-insurgency and anti-communist plans designed from the United States, in which life away from politics was conceived as an ideal, as a worldly thing. It proposed a conformism to the situation that was lived in the late 1970s, which in the long run would not compromise the newly converted population with any social change, much less structural.
• The bread and dollar policy -pan and dollar- is responsible for conversions: this thesis explains that the change of religious creed is related to the impoverishment of the inhabitants of the rural area and the urban sectors. Regarded by their shortcomings, the weight of family responsibilities and the expenses involved in the ritual celebrations and commitments of popular Catholicism, many indigenous people would have preferred to express their religiosity in a less dispensing way by escaping the circle of custom that favors the redistribution of goods within their community.

For his part, Chilean religious sociologist Christian Parker mentions several factors that have caused the decline in Catholic membership since 1980:

• The strong influence of the globalized economy that promotes a "consumption culture" in which the market is constituted as a regulatory mechanism of the economy and reduces State interference. The market is more influential in the configuration of society and gives way to the emergence of religious and spiritual beliefs, symbols and rituals because access to the market and its forms of symbolization condition lifestyles.

In societies where a single religion predominates, practices tend to numb, and where religion is less regulated, competition is more marked. Latin America is in a process of transition and competition between a Catholic monopoly with diversified religious offers to a religious pluralization mainly led by Pentecostalists. The competition between various religious expressions that struggle for the accumulation and distribution of symbolic goods to satisfy the interest and demand of broad social sectors is characteristic of a market logic in which the law of the number becomes a criterion of success.

• Modern education - despite the shortcomings it suffers - is transforming the culture of society and impacting religious beliefs.
• The growing presence of indigenous movements, along with the right-wing demands for women and ethnic minorities, have revalued their own religious traditions.

To ensure their future, large sectors of the population demand religious goods that provide them with meaning in life and are willing to obey the direction of leaders without self-criticism that they exercise authority, power, through absolute rules. “The offers that are in high demand range from the anointing in the Spirit, charismatic experiences, direct participant in a spiritual warfare, miracles, wonders, that salvation is not lost, a gospel of prosperity and material wealth.

Prosperity Theology

Starting in the xxi century, the growth of Protestantism in the country is closely linked to the expansion of the so-called prosperity theology:

In the 1970s, some upper-middle-class Catholics who felt betrayed when a section of the Catholic Church turned to liberation theology and began to express a preferential option for the poor, found in the theology of the prosperity, the professionally staged shows of the televangelists and the prayer meetings in luxury hotels a new explanation from the Christian faith of their privileged position in society. Prosperity theology also offered an attractive option to many poor/lower-middle-class people who wished to strengthen their personal discipline and increase their self-esteem.

Lutheranism

It was another denomination that arrived in Guatemala at the end of the 19th century. Lutheranism in Guatemala was brought by German immigration to Guatemala, German settlers in Cobán brought Judaism while German settlers in Quetzaltenango brought the Lutheran church, although by the 1930s Lutheran churches and Jewish centers were replaced by meetings. nazis. But on September 19, 1946, Lutheran Pastors Herman A. Mayer and Bernard J. Pankow were in Guatemala for the first time in response to a request made to the Rev. Elmer J. Moeller, of North Dakota, by some Guatemalans from German ancestry.^{[citation needed]}

Methodism

The Methodist movement in Guatemala also began in the 1840s, like Presbyteranism, although it was not as popular, then it did start to be popular, currently there are two Methodist schools and their ministries in: Zacapa, Quiche and Petén.^{[citation needed]}

Anglicanism

The Anglican Church is very popular among the Garifuna population, the department with the most followers of Anglicanism is Izabal due to the immigration of Anglican Jamaicans.^{[citation required]}

Evangelism

Temple of The Church of Jesus Christ of the Last Day Saints in the 15th Zone of Guatemala City. The presence of Mormons in Guatemala is considerable, with numerous chapels and another temple in the city of Quetzaltenango.

By 1980 there were already 5 evangelical media stations and by 1982 there were around one hundred and twenty-five radio programs. Some of the fastest growing independent churches after this period ended were: Lluvias de Gracia, Casa de Dios and El Shaddai.

In politics, the country has had two evangelical presidents: General Efraín Ríos Montt who led the existing dictatorship in that country between 1982 and 1983 as de facto president; and Jorge Serrano Elías, who governed Guatemala constitutionally from 1991 to 1993 and presided over a short dictatorship of seven days after a self-coup.

Guatemala has the largest evangelical churches in Latin America, called "Mega-churches": the "Iglesia Fraternidad Cristiana" with capacity for twelve thousand two hundred people and the "Ciudad de Dios del Ministerio Casa de Dios" Church with capacity for twelve thousand people. Both are located in Guatemala City.

Currently, evangelical churches continue to grow and exert pressure in the political arena, becoming the majority in various sectors of the country. The departments with the most followers of Protestantism are: Izabal, Zacapa, San Marcos, Huehuetenango and Retalhuleu.

The Pentecostal or Pentecostal church is the Protestant church with the largest number of members, according to the "Evangelical Alliance of Guatemala": there are more than seven hundred registered Pentecostal churches in the country. For its part, Pastor Cash Luna's "House of God Ministry" is the ministry with the largest members in Guatemala and even has churches in southern Mexico.

There are around 1,750 different evangelical churches according to the "Evangelical Alliance of Guatemala" and the "Aid to the Church in Need" alliance, and their number is increasing.^{[citation needed ]}

Orthodox Church

The Orthodox Monastery of the Holy Trinity-Lavra Mambré was founded on April 30, 1986 by Mother Inés Ayau García and Mother María A. The Orthodox Church of Guatemala was legally established in 1995, being established by Antonio Chedraoui, Archbishop of Mexico, Venezuela, Central America and the Caribbean, the nuns of the Monastery of the Holy Trinity and 25 founding members in the municipality of Amatitlán.

Several branches of the Orthodox Church are currently present in Guatemalan territory. The most numerous is the Orthodox Catholic Church of Guatemala (ICOG) with 527,000 faithful, having 1 monastery and 334 temples in Guatemala and southern Mexico, 12 priests, 250 lay ministers, 14 seminarians and 380 catechists, administratively belonging to the Patriarchate of Constantinople. The Orthodox Church of Antioquia also has in Guatemala a monastery with an orphanage near the capital and a parish.

Religious syncretism between Mayan religions and Christianity

Cerro Pascual Abaj in Chichicastenango, which was a doctrine of the Order of Preachers between 1540 and 1754.

Panajachel Indians preparing for a Mayan ceremony in honor of the Black Christ of Esquipulas in 1892. Photograph by Alfred Percival Maudslay.

The Spanish conquerors tried to put an end to this with the so-called “evangelization process”, however some indigenous people did not completely abandon their religious practices, likewise the missionaries did not condemn all native cultural manifestations, or at least they did not do so with what that they considered good of them, resulting in the survival of some "Maya"ancestral practices; but with a new fully Christian feeling in view of the evangelizers. This is how elements of these two religions merged creating a religious syncretism, it is difficult to discern who took this as "hidden" paganism; under Christian appearance and those who lived it as inculturation of the gospel.

An example of the inculturation of Christianity by the missionaries are the Dances and ethnic dances of Guatemala that were created by the Dominican friars, to help them in the catechization of the Indians at the time of the conquest. Likewise, Mayan elements are used by devout Catholics during Holy Week processions or the elaboration of altars using corn and other fruits that are also common in ceremonies and rituals officiated by indigenous Mayan priests. This mixture occurs in the majority of municipalities in western Guatemala. Chichicastenango is the municipality where Mayan-Catholic religious syncretism occurs most.

In 1892, English archaeologist Alfred Percival Maudslay and his wife, Anne Maudslay, visited Guatemala and toured it for several months; while they were in Panajachel —where there was a [Franciscan] convent][169]

Over the years and with the advances in means of transportation and communication, the number of pilgrims and the devotion to the Lord of Esquipulas became the "Central American Capital of Faith." In 1956 Pope Pius XII erected the Prelature Nullius of the Christ of Esquipulas, which is made up of the Municipality of Esquipulas and has as its Cathedral the Sanctuary of Esquipulas. The Pope also named Archbishop Rossell y Arellano as First Prelate of Esquipulas. One of Rossell's first concerns was the search for a community of religious who would take charge of the pastoral care of the Sanctuary; After many failed initiatives, he managed to find the support of the Benedictine Abbey of San José in Louisiana, United States. On Palm Sunday in 1959, the first three Benedictine monks arrived in Esquipulas and thus began the foundation of the Benedictine Monastery of Esquipulas. Taking into consideration many religious, cultural and historical aspects, Blessed Pope John XXIII accepted the request made by Bishop Rossell Arellano and elevated the Sanctuary of Esquipulas to the rank of "Minor Basilica of Esquipulas" in 1961. On January 6, 1960, the Archbishop of Guatemala Mariano Rossell y Arellano returned the San Francisco complex to the Franciscan friars, who in 1961, amid much controversy, began the reconstruction of the temple, which was completed in 1967. Franciscans had the help of the general president and engineer Miguel Ydígoras Fuentes, and members of the Committee for the Reconstruction of the Church. In this temple is the Virgen de los Reyes, the Immaculate Conception.

Marian Devotions in Guatemala

Guatemala was the first nation in the world to formally celebrate the Catholic liturgical feast of the coronation of the Blessed Virgin in her title as Queen of the entire Universe.

Among the most outstanding devotions to the Virgin Mary are: Our Lady of the Rosary, Our Lady of Mount Carmel and Our Lady of Guadalupe.

Our Lady of Mount Carmel

Devotion to the Virgen del Carmen in Guatemala is widespread, with several temples dedicated to her dedication in the Capital City, the main one being the Sanctuary of Cerrito del Carmen, place of the original seat of the Capital of Guatemala in its fourth transfer in 1776. The image of the Virgen del Carmen was brought to Guatemala in the 17th century. Legend has it that Saint Teresa of Ávila wanted this image to be taken to the New World, predicting that a great city would rise at its feet; it was delivered by the Carmelites of Ávila (Spain) to Juan de Corz, who came to the new world as a hermit. Thus, the Virgen del Carmen, became the first guest and patron saint of the Valley, which was renamed "Valle de la Virgen", where more than a century later Nueva Guatemala de la Asunción would be founded, the current capital of the Republic of Guatemala.

Our Lady of the Rosary

The carving of Our Lady of the Rosary, was ordered to be sculpted by the Dominican Fr. Lope de Montoya and blessed in 1592, it has been venerated in Guatemala for more than 4 centuries. In the year 1969, Pope Paul VI in a Papal Bull elevated the Temple of Santo Domingo to the dignity of Pontifical Basilica of Our Lady of the Rosary, for recognizing that the "Queen and Patroness of the entire jurisdiction of Guatemala". The coronation of the image must have been done outdoors as no temple large enough to accommodate the crowd was found.

Other religions

Freemasonry

Ruins of the Masonic temple of Guatemala City after the earthquake of 1917-18.

Masonic Temple No. 4 of the West in San Marcos in 1925. Photograph by Newspaper Palingenesis.

After independence in 1821 there were several social groups that did not hesitate to embrace the new secular religion of the Freemasons, outlawed by the Catholic Church, and called themselves freethinkers. Among them were the conservative José Cecilio del Valle and the liberal José Francisco Barrundia y Cepeda.

Freemasonry is classically defined as a universal institution, essentially ethical, philosophical and initiatory, whose fundamental structure is constituted by a traditional and symbolic educational system, which is entered through Initiation. It is founded on the feeling of Fraternity, and constitutes the union center for free-spirited men of all races, nationalities and creeds. As an educational institution, its objective is the improvement of man in the environment in which he lives and the of humanity and promotes the search for truth. Freemasons treat each other as brothers and consider their association, freely consented to individually, as an Alliance of free men who wish to progress and develop internally.

Historically, Freemasonry in Latin America has been considered as a precursor of the independence and revolutionary struggles, to the point that great contributions to the geographical-political division would have been due to the great influence of Freemasons; However, later studies have shown that this was not entirely true, although the liberals opposed to the political and economic power of the Catholic Church embraced Freemasonry, despite the fact that the lodges have contemplated, in principle, avoiding political and religious issues. The first Central American lodge was founded in 1865 and in 1870 the Supreme Council of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite for Central America was created and whose seat was established in Costa Rica, its first Sovereign Grand Commander Francisco Calvo.

One of the main characters of Central American Freemasonry is the Honduran liberal general Francisco Morazán, despite the fact that he himself was not a Freemason -since he was shot in 1842, while the first Central American lodge was founded in 1865. The liberal government that he imposed in the Central American Federation was characterized by attacking the economic and political interests of the Catholic Church, which was closely linked to state power and members of the conservative group of the Aycinena Clan. The policy promoted against the interests of Catholicism was based on these principles:

• Declaring that marriage should be secular
• Introduced divorce
• Expulsed regular orders and suppressed tridentine seminars
• He proclaimed that all religions were equal
• The separation of Church and State in Central America

It has also been seen that even the shield of the United Provinces of the Centre of America includes the triangle due to the Masonic influence among the liberals.

Morazán did so much to reduce the absolute power of the Catholic Church, that the first Masonic lodge in Honduras was called Lodge "Francisco Morazán" No. 14 when it was founded in 1898 -although it was later called Lodge "Igualdad" from of 1922- and Morazán himself was declared "Benemérito de la Masonería en Honduras" on May 20, 1942 -although contemporary studies have shown that the decree by which the lodge declared him meritorious suffered from several historical inaccuracies. These studies They concluded that there is no reliable evidence that Morazán was an authentic Freemason, since there were no lodges or initiates in Central America while he lived.

Subsequently, among the presidents of Guatemala there were several high-ranking Freemasons:

• Just Rufino Barrios
• José María Reyna Barrios: During his management, Reyna Barrios was concerned about the culture of Guatemala, taking Guatemala to several theatre companies. On February 8, 1898, when he was on his way to visit one of the actresses of those companies named Josefina Roca, he was murdered by Edgar Zollinger, a British citizen of Swiss origin and who was living in Guatemala, where he worked for Juan Aparicio, a son in the farms he had in Quetzaltenango. Curiously, the president was killed at 8 p.m. on the 8th street, in front of the 8th house, an old nomenclature. For his part, Zollinger, was beaten by the police a few blocks from where the crime had occurred. When Zollinger's body was lying on the corner of the 10th. Street and 5th. Avenue, the Emilio Ubico gendarme approached and the curious people were taken away and shot at the head of the corpse. General Reyna Barrios was buried in the catacombs of the Metropolitan Cathedral of Guatemala City, with the authorization of Archbishop Ricardo Casanova, despite the fact that Reyna Barrios was a high-grade Mason.
• Lázaro Chacón: general who wanted to introduce the educational doctrica of theosophy to Guatemala.
• Carlos Manuel Arana Osorio: Carlos Arana Osorio was a school soldier and director of the Guatemalan Polytechnic School, an anti-communist politician and Mason, reaching grade 33, the last of the Scottish Rite. In addition, he was Knight of the Collar of the Military Order of the Blessed Saviour and St.Brigid of Sweden and Grand Honorary Master.
• Ramiro de León Carpio

Other renowned personalities in Guatemala also belonged to the lodge:

• Lorenzo Montúfar and Rivera: he was even deputy secretary of the Supreme Central American Council resident in Guatemala for the Masonic period of March 1, 1898 and March 1, 1903, although he could not exercise his post as he died in 1898.

Judaism

In Guatemala there are small communities of Jews -approximately one thousand two hundred practitioners- who have their own synagogues, Muslims -approximately one thousand practitioners- with two mosques in the country. Likewise, there are Buddhist parishioners in a small minority.^{[citation required]}

Irreligion

Irreligion in Guatemala is not a recent phenomenon. It has existed since the state broke away from the Catholic Church during the government of the liberal Justo Rufino Barrios in 1882. Historically, the dominant religion has been Catholic, however, due to political and social unrest in addition to increasing globalization and modernization that has affected society from the second half of the 20th century, this caused a metamorphosis of the evangelical Church, but also of secularization, that is, a growing number of people without religion within those who began to identify themselves as atheists or Agnostics.

From a social point of view, secularization or irreligion is more popular within the ladino population (mestizos and whites) than within the more religious Mayan population, according to a study carried out by ENSMI in 2002, the 16% of the ladino population is not religious while 9% of the Mayan population also belongs to that category, this is explained by the anthropologist Claudia Dary, saying that the Mayan population is much more affected within the framework of poverty, the 80% of them are submerged in it while in the non-Maya population it is 36%, which in a certain way leads them to believe in a superior being to comfort all their spiritual and material needs. The trend on irreligion also varies in other aspects, in age, this is more popular among people between 45 and 64 years of age as well as among those under 25 years of age, it is also more common among men than among Women's.

According to a study by ARDA (The Association of Religion Data Archives) in 2005, around 4% of the Guatemalan population does not believe in God, this percentage can be interpreted as including non-believers and people who do not believe in a personal God or they believe in a vital force, at the same time 97% are in the category of belonging to the Christian faith, the existence of God or an impersonal supreme being is important for an overwhelming totality of the population and the vast majority trust the institutions religious, which would end up re-evaluating the true impact of religions and beliefs at a social level in the country. Politically, religion continues to enjoy great influence, in 2022 the country was promoted as "Ibero-American Pro-Life Capital".

Additional bibliography