Fray Bartolomé de las Casas

Fray Bartolomé de Las Casas on the map of Guatemala

Fray Bartolomé de Las Casas is a city in Guatemala and administrative seat of the greater community ( municipality ) in the department of Alta Verapaz. In the 1229 km ² large municipality of about 50,000 people live in Fray Bartolomé de Las Casas about 7,000. The village and the municipality are named after the Spanish Dominican brother ( Fray ) Bartolomé de Las Casas, the missionary, the area in the 16th century peaceful.

Geography

Fray Bartolomé de Las Casas is located in the northern lowlands of Alta Verapaz, near the border with Nachbardepartamento Petén. In the south, the municipality achieved in the foothills of the Sierra de Chama 700 to 800 m in height, to the north it falls at the headwaters of the Río Sebol up to about 100 m from. The climate is tropical hot. Only in the 1960s, the rampant malaria here was curbed by government measures.

Fray Bartolomé de Las Casas is bordered to the north and east on the communities Sayaxché and San Luis, Peten, in the southeast by Chahal ( Alta Verapaz ), to the south Cahabón, on the southwest by San Pedro Carcha and to the west by the municipality formed in 2008 Raxruhá (before Chisec ).

History

The Fray Bartolomé de Las Casas place emerged in the early 1960s in the train of an agricultural development project of the government a few kilometers east of the settlement Sebol in the inaccessible north of Alta Verapaz. Originally lived here almost only Kekchi Maya who still predominate today. The many immigrants come from different regions and Mayan ethnic groups of Guatemala, only about 15 percent are now Ladinos. The strong population growth meant that the government in Guatemala City Fray Bartolomé de Las Casas got to municipality on 3 May 1980. The municipality was separated from the neighboring municipios Chahal and Cahabón. A large village Fray Bartolomé de Las Casas now comprises 21 rural communities ( Aldeas ) ( with its own " auxiliary mayors " ) with a total of 78 hamlets.

Economy and Transport

Fray Bartolomé de Las Casas is one of the places that benefit from the construction of the East-West highway Franja Transversal del Norte. This transversal to open up the very remote and inaccessible areas in the north of the departments of Izabal, Alta Verapaz, Quiché and Huehuetenango better. The eastern part of Modesto Méndez (at the Granze to Belize) until after Chisec was built many years ago (from 1975 ), so that Fray Bartolomé de Las Casas in this way and the highway CA 13 ( Izabal Petén ) and the Atlantic highway CA 9 with the most important business centers in eastern Guatemala and Guatemala City (420 miles) is connected. In addition, leads a few kilometers west of Fray Bartolomé de Las Casas, in Sebol, some of which is poorly built and curvy National Road 5 over, a very old north-south connection from Petén about Coban (112 km from Fray Bartolome ) to Guatemala City ( 325 km ). The most important industry is still agriculture and forestry. Despite all efforts, the municipality continues to suffer from underdevelopment.