Santa Catarina Ixtahuacan 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

Sololá department __NOTOC__ Sololá is a city in Guatemala. It is the capital of the department of Sololá and the administrative seat of Sololá municipality. It is located close to Lake Atitlan. The name is a Hispanicized form of its pre-Columbian name, one sp ...

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 ...

. It is located at about in altitude in the steep mountains of the Sierra Madre range, descending from the western highlands to the southern coastal plain. The indigenous language is Kʼicheʼ. The town experienced large landslides during

hurricane Mitch Hurricane Mitch was an extremely deadly and catastrophic Atlantic hurricane, which became the second-deadliest tropical cyclone in the Atlantic basin on record. Mitch caused 11,374 fatalities in Central America in 1998, including approximately ...

(1998); a year after this catastrophe, many residents moved to higher ground and founded the village of

Nueva Santa Catarina Ixtahuacan Nueva Santa Catarina Ixtahuacan is a village in the northwest corner of the Sololá Department, Sololá Departments of Guatemala, department of Guatemala, about west of Guatemala City. The village (not be confused with Santa Catarina Ixtahuacan, ...

, in territory called Chwi Pataan or “above the responsibility/duty,”within the independent township of

Nahualá Nahualá () is a Municipalities of Guatemala, municipality in the Sololá Department, Sololá department of Guatemala. The town is sometimes known as Santa Catalina Nahualá in honor of the town's patron saint, Saint Catherine of Alexandria, but ...

, and with private land plots owned principally by Nahualeños prior to 2005. Ixtahuacanecos have claimed since at least 2000 that they had only re-settled highland territory that Ixtahuacan had owned since time immemorial, and where they claim Ixtahuacaneco ancestors had lived prior to the Spanish Invasion. Nonetheless, the Título Cristobal Ramirez, a land title written in Totonicapan in the 16th century, makes clear that the entire highland area south of Totonicapan, including Chwi Pataan, belonged to the "navalak tak vinak" (or "spirited / magical people") of Nahualá, who are identified as Kaqoj Tamub’ sub-nation of the Kʼicheʼ. The Kaqoj () belonged to a different parcialidad from that which controlled Viejo Ixtahuacan prior to the Spanish invasion, according to paragraph 39 of the

Annals of the Cakchiquels The ''Annals of the Cakchiquels'' (, also known by the alternative Spanish titles, ''Anales de los Xahil'', ''Memorial de Tecpán-Atitlán'' or ''Memorial de Sololá'') is a manuscript written in Kaqchikel by Francisco Hernández Arana Xajilá i ...

, which identifies the people living bear the mountain Kaqix Kan, which rises above Ixtahuacan Viejo, as "Iqomaq'i'", a name that surely corresponds to the Ekomaq' Tamub' sub-nation, who lived in the valley south of Nahualá, among other places.

External links

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Project Info Ixtahuacan
Municipalities of the Sololá Department {{Guatemala-geo-stub