Socio-Demographic Characteristics

According to the Population Census X of 1994, Guatemala has 8,322,051 inhabitants divided among twenty-two departments and 328 municipalities. Projections based on the previous census -- from 1981 -- estimated a population of ten million in 1993. The annual growth rate in the country is 2.9%, indicating that the current population will double in a period of twenty-five years (INE: 1995).

Population density increased from 25.63 inhabitants per square kilometer in 1950, to 73.43 inhabitants per square kilometer in 1994 (Paz C.: 1986). Women represent 49.5 per cent of the total population and men 50.5 per cent. Life expectancy at birth is 65 years.

One of the principal characteristics of the Guatemalan population is its broad ethnic diversity. There are twenty-one ethno-linguistic groups of Mayan origin, one group of Caribbean Arawak origin, and one mestizo (mixed-race) group of European origin. The most conservative figures indicate that indigenous peoples make up 39 per cent of the population, while other sources put the percentage of people belonging to one of those groups nationwide at 60 per cent. (Cojtí: 1995). In departments such as San Marcos, Huehuetenango, Quetzaltenango, Totonicapán, Sololá, El Quiché, Alta Verapaz, and Chimaltenango, the population of Mayan origin ranges from 70 to 95 per cent.

Another important characteristic of the country is that 40 per cent of the population is concentrated in urban areas, mainly in Guatemala City which has a population of nearly two million. The other 60 per cent are distributed among nearly 30,000 rural communities. This duality demonstrates that a significant majority of the country’s population "survives, lives, or gets rich through agricultural pursuits," (Paz C.: 1986).

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