Kekchí

Two Q'eqchi children in Belize

The Kekchí , in modern Mayan spelling Q'eqchi , are an ethnic group belonging to the Maya who now mainly live in the Guatemalan regions of Alta Verapaz and Peten . The Kekchí language is one of the most widely spoken Mayan languages .

There are now over 420,000 kekchí in these three countries:

• Guatemala - 400,000 kekchí,
• El Salvador - 12,000 kekchí and
• Belize - 9,000 kekchí.

Before the Spanish conquest of Guatemala in the 1520s, the Kekchí lived mainly in the area of ​​what is now the departments of Alta Verapaz and Baja Verapaz . Due to persecutions, land expropriations and resettlements, the Kekchí were spread over a larger area in the following centuries, for example to Izabal , Petén , El Quiché in southern Belize ( Toledo ), and more recently to El Salvador , Honduras and in smaller numbers to southern Mexico ( Chiapas , Campeche ). Because of this, they are the most dispersed Maya people in Guatemala today.

Individual evidence

1. ^ Kahn (2006), pages 34-49.

literature

• Hilary E. Kahn (2006): Seeing and Being Seen: The Q'eqchi 'Maya of Livingston, Guatemala, and Beyond. University of Texas Press, Austin 2006. ISBN 978-0-292-71348-2