Franja Transversal del Norte

Franja Transversal del Norte
Region
Country	Guatemala
Regions	Huehuetenango, Quiché, Alta Verapaz, Izabal
Area	15,750 km2 (6,081 sq mi)
Population	2,000,000 (2012)
Density	127/km2 (329/sq mi)
Location of Franja Transversal del Norte within Guatemala

Franja Transversal del Norte -or Northern Transversal Strip in English- is a region in Guatemala delimited at North by an imaginary line between Vértice de Santiago in Huehuetenango and Modesto Méndez Port in Izabal and at South by La Mesilla in Huehuetenango and Izabal lake. It is made, from West to East, of part of the Guatemalan departments of Huehuetenango, Quiché, Alta Verapaz and the whole department of Izabal. It has an approximated extension of 15750 km². During the Guatemalan Civil War it was the stage of most of the massacres that took place within that period due to the oil, mineral and precious wood reserves in the region. In the 21st century, there are projects to work in the region and a modern highway was built in 2010.

In 1840, Belgium began to act as an external source of support for Carrera's conservative movement, in an effort to exert influence in Central America. The Compagnie belge de colonisation (Belgian Colonization Company), commissioned by Belgian King Leopold I, became the administrator of Santo Tomas de Castilla in Izabal replacing the failed British Eastern Coast of Central America Commercial and Agricultural Company. Even though the colony eventually crumbled due to the endemic diseases that plagued the area, Belgium continued to support Carrera in the mid-19th century, although Britain continued to be the main business and political partner to Carrera's regime.

As of 1850, Cobán -capital of Alta Verapaz had an estimated population of 12000. Ca. 1890, British archeologist Alfred Percival Maudslay and his wife came to Guatemala, and visited Cobán. Around the time the Maudslays visited Verapaz, a German colony had settled in the area thanks to generous concessions granted by liberal presidents Manuel Lisandro Barillas Bercián, José María Reyna Barrios and Manuel Estrada Cabrera. The Germans had a very united and solid community and had several activities in the German Club (Deutsche Verein), in Cobán, which they had founded in 1888. Their main commercial activity was coffee plantations. Maudslay described the Germans like this: "There is a larger proportion of foreigners in Coban than in any other town in the Republic: they are almost exclusively Germans engaged in coffee-planting, and some few of them in cattle-ranching and other industries; although complaints of isolation and of housekeeping and labour troubles are not unheard of amongst them, they seemed to me to be fortunate from a business point of view in the high reputation that the Vera Paz coffee holds in the market, and the very considerable commercial importance which their industry and foresight has brought to the district; and, from a personal point of view, in the enjoyment of a delicious climate in which their rosy-cheeked children can be reared in health and strength, and in all the comforts which pertain to a life half European and half tropical. Hotels or fondas appear to be scarce; but the hospitality of the foreign residents is proverbial."