San Juan Sacatepéquez

San Juan Sacatepéquez on the map of Guatemala

San Juan Sacatepéquez is a 100,000 inhabitants town in Guatemala. It is located 32 km northwest of Guatemala City at the height of about 1,800 m. San Juan Sacatepéquez is the administrative seat of the homonymous, 242 km ² Municipalities in the northwest of the department of Guatemala. The total of around 200,000 inhabitants of the municipios come mainly from the Maya and Cakchiquel speak next Spanish. About half of them live in many rural settlements and villages, including Cerro Alto, Comunidad de Ruiz, Cruz Blanca, Estancia Grande, Las Trojes, Alta Loma, Los Guates, Montúfar, Pachali, Pirires, Sajcavilla, Sacsuy and Suacité.

Adjacent Municipalities are San Raimundo in the east and San Pedro Sacatepéquez in the south. In the southwest of Santo Domingo Xenacoj and Sumpango follow in the neighboring Department of Sacatepéquez, in the West El Tejar, Chimaltenango and San Martín Jilotepeque in Chimaltenango, and in the north Granados ( Baja Verapaz ).

Economy and Transport

San Juan Sacatepéquez is known for its well-developed furniture industry, numerous craft and horticulture, which also export their products abroad. Besides there are some quarries. Tourism is not very pronounced, only attraction are the somewhat more northerly ruins of Mixco Viejo as well as the beautiful colonial buildings in the Old Town and the Plaza Cataluña, which were rebuilt after the devastating 1976 earthquake again.

In San Juan Sacatepéquez today is the traditional Military Academy of the Armed Forces of Guatemala, Escuela Politécnica the. Your seat they had earlier on Avenida La Reforma in downtown Guatemala City. There, now the Defense Department is housed.

The Calzada San Juan Sacatepéquez is an important traffic artery of the capital. It opens into the old National Road 5, which crosses San Juan Sacatepéquez Montúfar, Granados, El Chol, Rabinal and Salamá way to Coban and further north. Especially on this axis had in the 16th century, the Dominican friar Bartolomé de Las Casas.