Izabal

Izabal (Puerto Izabal, Puerto del Golfo), the main port for commerce entering Guatemala from the Caribbean after its establishment in 1804 until the completion of the railroad, Ferrocarril del Norte, in 1908. The port was located on the south shore of Lake Izabal, the largest lake in Guatemala, known during the nineteenth century as the Golfo Dulce. The Río Dulce connects the lake to the Caribbean. Goods and passengers traveled up the river and lake by steamship and then were carried from Izabal to Guatemala City overland by mule train, crossing the Sierra de las Minas and following the Motagua River valley to the city.

Spanish authorities established Izabal after publicly declaring the necessity of relocation because of unhealthy conditions at the old port of Bodegas, about 4 miles to the east. Archival records indicate, however, that the shift was made in order to control customs taxes then collected by the Dominican order of the Roman Catholic Church, which had dominated Bodegas from its founding in 1567.

Great Britain became the main international trade partner of Guatemala after the country gained independence from Spain in 1821. Commerce came to Izabal by steamship via Belize, then a British colony. Nearly all imported goods entered Guatemala by this route until the early 1850s. At that time a railway across Panama made the Pacific port of Iztapa, nearer and more accessible to Guatemala City, the major port of entry for the country. After that time the route was used mainly by travelers to Guatemala on the Atlantic route, and Izabal was a transshipment point for coffee and bananas from the eastern part of the country.

With the arrival of the railroad at Puerto Barrios on the Caribbean, Izabal was abandoned as a port. Today it is a small fishing and farming village. Ruins of the church and army garrison remain as evidence of its earlier role.

See alsoRailroads .

BIBLIOGRAPHY

For a nineteenth-century view of Izabal, see John L. Stephens, Incidents of Travel in Central America, Chiapas and the Yucatán, 2 vols. edited by Richard L. Predmore (repr. 1969), esp. pp. 34-41. Great Britain's role in Guatemala's economic history is examined in Robert A. Naylor, Influenica británica en el comercio centroamericano durante las primeras décadas de la independencia (1821–1851), translated by J. C. Cambranes (1988).

Additional Bibliography

Pompejano, Daniele. La crisis del antiguo régimen en Guatemala (1839–1871). Guatemala: Editorial Universitaria, Universidad de San Carlos de Guatemala, 1997.

Woodward, Ralph Lee. Rafael Carrera and the Emergence of the Republic of Guatemala, 1821–1871. Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1993.

                                    Rebecca J. Orozco