Livingston, Guatemala

Livingston
Livingston main street
Livingston Location in Guatemala
Coordinates: 15°49′48″N 88°45′00″W / 15.83000°N 88.75000°W / 15.83000; -88.75000
Country	Guatemala
Department	Izabal Department
Climate	Af

Livingston is the name of a town in Izabal Department, eastern Guatemala, at the mouth of the Río Dulce at the Gulf of Honduras. The town serves as the municipal seat of the municipality of the same name. It was Guatemala's main port on the Caribbean Sea before the construction of nearby Puerto Barrios.

Livingston is noted for its unusual mix of Garífuna, Afro-Caribbean, Maya and Ladino people and culture. In recent decades Livingston has developed a large tourist industry.

Livingston is named after American jurist and politician Edward Livingston who wrote the Livingston Codes which - translated into Spanish by liberal leader José Francisco Barrundia - were used as the basis for the laws of the liberal government of the United Provinces of Central America in the early 19th century. This government did not came to fruition in Guatemala, however, because of the conservative and clerical revolution led by Rafael Carrera in 1838 that overthrew governor Mariano Galvez and gave way to a conservative and Catholic regime that lasted until 1871 in Guatemala.

In the 1960s, the importance of the region known as Franja Transversal del Norte was in livestock, exploitation of precious export wood and archaeological wealth. Timber contracts we granted to multinational companies such as Murphy Pacific Corporation from California, which invested US$30 million for the colonization of southern Petén and Alta Verapaz, and formed the North Impulsadora Company. Colonization of the area was made through a process by which inhospitable areas of the Franja Transversal del Norte (FTN) were granted to native peasants.

In 1964, the National Institute for Agrarian Transformation (INTA) defined the geography of the FTN as the northern part of the departments of Huehuetenango, Quiché , Alta Verapaz and Izabal and that same year priests of the Maryknoll order and the Order of the Sacred Heart began the first process of colonization, along with INTA, carrying settlers from Huehuetenango to the Ixcán sector in Quiché.