San Miguel Ixtahuacán

San Miguel Ixtahuacán on the map of Guatemala

San Miguel Ixtahuacán is a village and a municipality in the department of San Marcos in Guatemala. The town is located approximately 320 km north-west of Guatemala City and about 65 km north of the Departamentshauptstadt San Marcos in the highlands of the Sierra Madre at 2,050 meters above sea level.

San Miguel Ixtahuacán can be reached from San Marcos on a country road that leads east of the volcano on La Tajumulco Grandeza, Serchil and Tejutla in the remote north of the department. In the 184 km ² large municipality of about 35,000 inhabitants, of which the vast majority in the country. About 90 percent of the population belongs to the Mam Maya. Subsistence farming is the norm. Also of importance is operated by the North American mining company ( Marlin mine, mining of gold and silver). In addition to the main town of the municipality consists of the rural communities ( Aldeas ) Agel, Baljetre Buena Vista, Cabajum, Chilive, Colmito, El Zapote, La Patria, Maquivil, Salitre, Sicabe Bella Vista, Subchal and Triunfo with a total of about 100 hamlets. The eastern part of the municipios crosses the headwaters of the Río Cuilco, which then empties into the Río Grijalva and thus the great Mexican hydroelectric power station La Angostura feeds.

Adjacent Municipalities are Sipacapa the southeast, Comitancillo in the south, Tejutla in the southwest, Concepción Tutuapa in the west and the Municipalities of San Idelfonso Ixtahuacán, San Gaspar Ixil and Santa Bárbara in the North and East, which already belong to the neighboring department of Huehuetenango.