  | |
| Total population | |
|---|---|
| 1,000,000 (by ancestry) | |
| Regions with significant populations | |
| Guatemala city and the Guatemalan Highlands. | |
| Languages | |
| German and Spanish. | |
| Religion | |
| Jewish, Protestant, Catholic | |
| Related ethnic groups | |
| Germans, Guatemalans |
A German Guatemalan is a citizen of Guatemala whose ancestors were German settlers (along with other settlers from Belgium) who arrived in the 19th and 20th centuries. Guatemala had a massive immigration of Germans in the nineteenth century.[1] The government of Justo Rufino Barrios provided them with farmlands for coffee, farming in the Western Highlands, Verapaz region [2] and by the early 20th century Germans populated Guatemala City, Zacapa and Jutiapa. Guatemala currently has a strong community of Germans who make up the majority of European immigrants in the country, and it is also the most numerous German community in all Central American countries.[3]
In the 1940s, 8,000 German immigrants lived in Guatemala.[4] During World War II several hundred Germans were expelled to the United States by the Guatemalan government as part of the deportation of Germans from Latin America during World War II.
- ^ "The Germans in Guatemala 1820-1944". 2011-02-15.
- ^ Schoonover, Thomas (1936). Germany in Central America: Competitive Imperialism, 1821-1929 (1998 ed.). United States: The University of Alabama Press. pp. 88+316. ISBN 978-0-8173-8489-0. Retrieved 2014-10-28.
- ^ Schoonover, Thomas (October 1947). "German investment in Guatemala". The Journal of Business of the University of Chicago. 20 (4). Chicago: The University of Chicago Press: 212–219. doi:10.1086/232832. JSTOR 2350054.
- ^ Schoonover, Thomas (2008). Hitler's Man in Havana: Heinz Luning and Nazi Espionage in Latin America. United States of America: The University Press of Kentucky. p. 35. ISBN 978-0-8131-2501-5. Retrieved 27 May 2014.