Huehuetanango

Huehuetanango (i.e. in the local Indian dialect, “City of the Ancients”), the capital of the department of Huehuetanango, western Guatemala, 106 m. W.N.W. of Guatemala city, on the right bank and near the source of the river Salegua, a tributary of the Chiapas. Pop. (1905) about 12,000. Huehuetanango was built near the site of the ancient Indian city of Zakuleu, now represented by some ruins on a neighbouring ridge surrounded by deep ravines. It is the principal town of a fertile upland region, which produces coffee, cocoa and many European and tropical fruits. Chiantla, a neighbouring town mainly inhabited by Indians, was long the headquarters of a successful Dominican mission; its convent, enriched by the gifts of pilgrims and the revenues of the silver mines owned by the monks, became one of the wealthiest foundations in Central America. It was secularized in 1873, and the mines have been abandoned.

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