Huehuetenango Department
department of Guatemala
Huehuetenango (Spanish pronunciation: [w̝e.we.t̪eˈnãŋ.ɡo]) is one of the 22 departments of Guatemala. It is located in the western highlands and shares the borders with the Mexican state of Chiapas in the north and west; with El Quiché in the east, and Totonicapán, Quetzaltenango and San Marcos in the south. The capital is the city of Huehuetenango.
Huehuetenango's ethnic composition is one of the most diverse in Guatemala. While the Mam are predominant in the department, other Maya groups are the Q'anjob'al, Chuj, Jakaltek, Tektik, Awakatek, Chalchitek, Akatek and K'iche'. Each of these nine Maya ethnic groups speaks its own language.
Name
The department of Huehuetenango takes its name from the city of the same name which serves as the departmental capital. The name derives from the Nahuatl language of central Mexico, given by the indigenous allies of the Spanish conquistadors during the Spanish Conquest of Guatemala. It is usually said to mean "place of the elders", but it may also mean a "place of the ahuehuete trees".
Geography
Huehuetenango covers an area of 7,403 square kilometres (2,858 sq mi) in western Guatemala and is bordered on the north and west by Mexico.
“Huehuetenango Department” enters the record as department of Guatemala. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Huehuetenango, Department and department can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 28, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q842266. Authority coordinates are 15.314, -91.476. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank.
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This entry incorporates text from “Huehuetenango Department” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.