El Chal is a

municipality A municipality is usually a single administrative division having municipal corporation, corporate status and powers of self-government or jurisdiction as granted by national and regional laws to which it is subordinate. The term ''municipality' ...

in the

Guatemala Guatemala, officially the Republic of Guatemala, is a country in Central America. It is bordered to the north and west by Mexico, to the northeast by Belize, to the east by Honduras, and to the southeast by El Salvador. It is hydrologically b ...

n department of Petén, located approximately southeast of the departmental capital,

Flores Flores is one of the Lesser Sunda Islands, a group of islands in the eastern half of Indonesia. Administratively, it forms the largest island in the East Nusa Tenggara Province. The area is 14,250 km2. Including Komodo and Rinca islands ...

. Its name may derive from Itzaʼ ''chal'', "shawl", or ''aj-chal ja'', "clear water."

Geography

El Chal is located in the southern part of the

Petén Basin The Petén Basin is a geographical subregion of the Maya Lowlands, primarily located in northern Guatemala within the Department of El Petén, and into the state of Campeche in southeastern Mexico. During the Late Preclassic and Classic periods ...

. It borders the municipalities of Santa Ana to the north, Dolores to the east, Poptún to the south,

Sayaxché Sayaxché () is a municipality in the El Petén department of Guatemala, on the Río La Pasión River. It covers an area of , and had 55,578 inhabitants at the 2002 Census; the latest official estimate (as at mid-2012) was 114,781 inhabitants. T ...

to the west, and

San Francisco San Francisco, officially the City and County of San Francisco, is a commercial, Financial District, San Francisco, financial, and Culture of San Francisco, cultural center of Northern California. With a population of 827,526 residents as of ...

to the northwest. The municipality covers an area of . The terrain of El Chal is slightly uneven, becoming more rugged as it approaches the

Maya Mountains The Maya Mountains are a mountain range located in Belize and eastern Guatemala, in Central America. Etymology The Maya Mountains were known as the ''Cockscomb'' or ''Coxcomb Mountains'' to Baymen and later Belizeans at least until the mid ...

in the southeast. It has been significantly deforested: as of 2015, 59% of the land is without any forest cover and only 14% is covered by the original forest. The southwestern tip of the municipality lies in the Machaquilá wildlife refuge. El Chal lies in the watershed of the

Pasión River The Pasión River (, ) is a river located in the northern lowlands region of Guatemala. The river is fed by a number of upstream tributaries whose sources lie in the hills of Alta Verapaz. These flow in a general northerly direction to form the Pa ...

, being drained by its tributaries such as the

San Juan San Juan, Spanish for Saint John (disambiguation), Saint John, most commonly refers to: * San Juan, Puerto Rico * San Juan, Argentina * San Juan, Metro Manila, a highly urbanized city in the Philippines San Juan may also refer to: Places Arge ...

, Poxte and

Machaquila Machaquila (or Machaquilá, using Spanish orthography) is a major ruined city of the Maya civilization in what is now the El Peten department of Guatemala. Location The ruins of Machaquila fall within the municipality of Poptún, in the Petén ...

. These rivers are permanent but non-navigable and have a low level of pollution. The largest body of water in the municipality is Lake Oquevix, which is located on the border between El Chal and Santa Ana and covers about .

Tilapia Tilapia ( ) is the common name for nearly a hundred species of cichlid fish from the coelotilapine, coptodonine, heterotilapine, oreochromine, pelmatolapiine, and tilapiine tribes (formerly all were "Tilapiini"), with the economically mos ...

is farmed in the lake. El Chal has a tropical climate with an annual average temperature of and a relative humidity generally ranging from 74% to 78%. The rainy season lasts from May to October and peaks in August. Annual precipitation is .

History

The place name of El Chal is attested in records of the

Spanish conquest of Petén The Spanish conquest of Petén was the last stage of the Spanish conquest of Guatemala, conquest of Guatemala, a prolonged conflict during the Spanish colonisation of the Americas. A wide lowland plain covered with dense rainforest, Petén co ...

. It was originally a stopping point where caravans travelling between Dolores and Flores could camp overnight. The first attempt at settling the area was made by the family of Ernesto Montejo and Felicita Cuoch in 1935, although they eventually returned to Santo Toribio near Dolores. The first permanent settlers were the family of Sebastián Cuz and Gertrudis Pop, who arrived in 1948 with their children. They also brought with them two workers named Gregorio Torres and Rodrigo Hernández, whose own families later joined them as well. In 1950s a road linking Poptún with Flores was built through El Chal, enabling more settlers to migrate into the area. After the

Guatemalan Civil War The Guatemalan Civil War was fought from 1960 to 1996 between the government of Guatemala and various Left-wing politics, leftist rebel groups. The Guatemalan government forces committed Guatemalan genocide, genocide against the Maya population o ...

, the neighbouring communities of El Chal and El Quetzal built their first water supply between 1986 and 1987. Negotiations to bring electricity to the area began in 1989, but El Chal did not achieve electrification until 2000. On 4 February 2014, the

Congress of the Republic of Guatemala The Congress of the Republic () is the unicameral legislature of the Republic of Guatemala. The Guatemalan Congress is made up of 160 deputies who are elected by direct universal suffrage to serve four-year terms. The electoral system is cl ...

decreed the creation of El Chal from territory previously part of the municipality of Dolores. The decree was gazetted in the ''

Diario de Centro América The ''Diario de Centro América'' is the newspaper of public record in Guatemala Guatemala, officially the Republic of Guatemala, is a country in Central America. It is bordered to the north and west by Mexico, to the northeast by Belize ...

'' on 6 March 2014.

Government

The following people have served as mayor of El Chal: *Mario Humberto Aldana León, 2014–2016 *Santos Martínez Martínez, 2016–2020 *Elías Calderón Álvarez, 2020–2024

Demographics

In the 2018 Guatemalan Census, which had an estimated underenumeration rate of 9.0%, El Chal recorded a total population of 13,819 inhabitants. The National Institute of Statistics subsequently estimated the population of El Chal in 2018 as 15,095. The largest inhabited locality in the municipality is the municipal seat, also called El Chal, with an estimated population of 2646 in 2015. Spanish is the first language of 89% of the population. The remainder speak

Qʼeqchiʼ Qʼeqchiʼ () (Kʼekchiʼ in the former orthography, or simply Kekchi in many English-language contexts, such as in Belize) are a Maya people Maya () are an ethnolinguistic group of Indigenous peoples of the Americas, Indigenous peoples o ...

but are usually bilingual in Spanish. Religion in El Chal is split almost evenly between Roman Catholicism (46%) and Protestantism (43%).

Culture

The pre-Columbian archaeological site of El Chal has been protected since 1975 by IDAEH and is located just south of the municipal seat. The local

continue to hold religious ceremonies there. The most important festival in El Chal is the

feast of Saint Joseph Saint Joseph's Day, also called the Feast of Saint Joseph or the Solemnity of Saint Joseph, is in Western Christianity the principal feast day of Saint Joseph, husband of the Virgin Mary and legal father of Jesus Christ, celebrated on 19 March. ...

, which has been celebrated there since 1969.

Economy and infrastructure

El Chal's economy relies mainly on

slash-and-burn Slash-and-burn agriculture is a form of shifting cultivation that involves the cutting and burning of plants in a forest or woodland to create a Field (agriculture), field called a swidden. The method begins by cutting down the trees and woody p ...

agriculture. Two crops of maize and beans are harvested per year and pumpkin seeds are also cultivated on commercial scale. Other fruits and vegetables are grown on small scale. Cattle farming has developed rapidly in recent years, such that El Chal leads all municipalities in Petén in milk production, averaging 60,000 litres daily. The municipal seat of El Chal lies on Central American Highway 13, the main road connection between Petén and the rest of Guatemala. Other roads in the municipality remain unpaved.

References

{{Petén Department, state=collapsed Municipalities of the Petén Department 2014 establishments in Guatemala States and territories established in 2014