Chiquimuljá

Chiquimuljá lies among the hills of eastern Guatemala, in the country of the Ch'orti' Maya. At the time of Spanish contact the district belonged to the lordship of Payaquí, which was centred on Copán and whose reach extended into parts of Honduras and El Salvador.

Spanish scouts entered the region in 1524, and in 1526 three captains acting for Pedro de Alvarado led an invasion of Chiquimula. A rising against Spanish demands was crushed in April 1530, and Spanish control was consolidated only by a further campaign in 1531–1532. Disease, warfare and forced labour in mines and under the encomienda system severely reduced the Indigenous population of eastern Guatemala. Chiquimula de la Sierra became the seat of a corregimiento, which by the later eighteenth century stretched across eastern Guatemala from the Jalapa and Jutiapa country to Zacapa and Izabal. By the mid-eighteenth century the town had a parish church, a hermitage, a hall for the Indigenous council and royal buildings that served as the corregidor's residence and court. The Santísima Trinidad earthquake of 2 June 1765 ruined the church and killed fifty-three people, and the town was rebuilt near its old site. In 1825 Chiquimula became the capital of the department of the same name created by the State of Guatemala.

The later city of Jalapa also lies here.