The Franja Transversal del Norte (English: Northern Transversal Strip) is a region in Guatemala delimited to the north by an imaginary line between Vértice de Santiago in Huehuetenango and Modesto Méndez Port in Izabal and in the south by La Mesilla in Huehuetenango and Izabal lake. It is composed, from west to east, of part of the Guatemalan departments of Huehuetenango, Quiché, Alta Verapaz and the entire department of Izabal. It extends roughly 15,750 km2. During the Guatemalan Civil War, most of the massacres took place there 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.
Origins
Belgian colony
In 1840, Belgium began to act as an external source of support for Rafael Carrera's conservative movement, in an effort to exert influence in Central America. The (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 of Carrera's regime.
German colony in Verapaz
As of 1850, Cobán, the capital of Alta Verapaz, had an estimated population of 12000. Around 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 towns 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."
The city was developed by German coffee growers towards the end of the 19th century and was operated as a largely independent dominion until World War II. In 1888 a German club was founded and in 1935 a German school opened its doors in Cobán. Until 1930, about 2000 Germans populated the city. In 1941, all Germans were expelled by the Guatemalan government, led at the time by Jorge Ubico, because of pressure from the United States; it has also been suggested that Ubico wanted to seize control of the vast amounts of land Germans owned in the area. Many ended up in internment camps in Texas and were later traded for American POWs held in Germany. A sizable resident German population persists though, most completely assimilated into the Guatemalan culture through intermarriage. Multiple German architectural elements still remain throughout Cobán.
The Germans also set up Ferrocarril Verapaz, a railway which connected Cobán with Lake Izabal, operated from 1895 until 1963 and was a symbol for the wealth in this coffee-growing region those days.
During the Nazi era
While the Nazis were in power in Germany (1933–1945), rumors circulated in Guatemala that the Germans in Verapaz wanted to establish themselves as a national socialist "new Germany". The Germans had acquired land, houses and farms through concessions from the liberal presidents who ruled from 1885 to 1920 in Guatemala and enjoyed privileges during the dictatorship of General Jorge Ubico, who admired the fascist policies of Benito Mussolini in Italy and Francisco Franco in Spain and the Nazism of Hitler in Germany.
An incident involving the German community in Verapaz occurred when Nazi Germany asked its citizens to vote on the annexation of Austria to Germany: a German ship anchored in Puerto Barrios for this activity and those who attended were "counted" as Nazi supporters.
During World War II
Tension increased when World War II between Germany, France and England started in 1939 with the German invasion of Poland and came to a critical point when Japan, an ally of the Germans, attacked the US military base of Pearl Harbor in Oahu, Hawaii on 7 December 1941. When the United States entered the war, it forced President Jorge Ubico to expel all Germans from Guatemala and to confiscate all of their properties. The United States had a strong influence on the Guatemalan government, through concessions granted to American companies, such as the United Fruit Company who had a monopoly on the export of bananas and which practically paid no taxes to Guatemala, and that of railway transport through its subsidiary International Railroads of Central America (IRCA). The fruit company was the strongest pillar of Ubico's regime and was part of the American policy for the region since President Teddy Roosevelt started negotiations with Colombia to build the Panama Canal in 1903. German males also were forced to leave their country and forced into the ranks of the German army. Guatemalan historian Francis Polo Sifontes wrote that during the Second World War many Germans were called for military service in his country. After the war, some were imprisoned in concentration camps in Russia, and others claimed to be Guatemalans to avoid prison.
There are a number of names that Germans bequeathed their children; due to the mix with the Maya-Q'eqchi' population, many German names have remained in Q'eqchi' people since.Among the common German last names in Guatemala are: – Stubbs, Brocke, Droeger, Hengstenberg, Lantzendorffer, Fritz, Wholers, Weyman, Dieseldorff, Sapper, Foucht, Wellmann, Majus, Quirin, Nisthal, Fraatz, Kress, Droege, Hoenes, Turckheim, Duering, Hummler, Stanley, Moll, Moeschler, Diemecke, Maas, Rummler, Hasse, Sarg, Sapper, Mittelstaedt, Daetz, Gelpke, Kufeld, Wasem, Wranger, Euler, Buechsel, Spiegeler, Winter, Thomae, Fetzer, Burmester, Wagner, Hoenes.
After the overthrow of Jacobo Árbenz
After the counterrevolution of 1954, the Guatemalan government established the Council for Economic Planning and started using free-market strategies, advised by the World Bank and the International Cooperation Administration (ICA) of United States government. CNPE and ICA created the Directorate General of Land Affairs (DGAA) which was responsible for dismantling and negating the effects of Decree 900 of Agragia Government Reform created by Jacobo Árbenz. In 1959, Decree 1286 was passed into law and created the National Development Corporation and Economic Development of Petén (FYDEP), an agency of the Presidency of the Republic, responsible for colonization in the department of Petén. In practice, however, FYDEP was directed by the military and was an agency of the Ministry of Defense, while in parallel DGAA handled the geographical strip bordering on the departmental boundary of Petén and the borders of Belize, Honduras and Mexico and which eventually became the Northern Transversal Strip.
The first settler project in the FTN was in Sebol-Chinajá in Alta Verapaz. Sebol, then regarded as a strategic point and route through Cancuén River, which communicated with Petén through the Usumacinta River on the border with Mexico. The only road that existed was a dirt one built by President Lázaro Chacón in 1928. In 1958, during the government of General Miguel Ydígoras Fuentes the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) financed infrastructure projects in Sebol.Sebol finally adopted the name "Fray Bartolomé de las Casas', a municipality created in 1983 in Alta Verapaz. In 1960, then-Army captain Fernando Romeo Lucas García inherited Saquixquib and Punta de Boloncó farms in northeastern Sebol. In 1963 he bought the farm "San Fernando" El Palmar de Sejux and finally bought the "Sepur" farm near San Fernando. During those years, Lucas was in the Guatemalan legislature and lobbied in Congress to boost investment in that area of the country.
In those years, the importance of the region was in livestock, exploitation of precious export wood and archaeological wealth. Timber contracts were 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 a process by which inhospitable areas of the FTN were granted to native peasants.
In 1962, the DGAA became the National Institute of Agrarian Reform (INTA), by Decree 1551 which created the law of Agrarian Transformation. In 1964, 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 Society of the Sacred Heart began the first process of colonization along with INTA, carrying settlers from Huehuetenango to the Ixcán sector in Quiché.
The Northern Transversal Strip was officially created during the government of General Carlos Arana Osorio in 1970, by Decree 60–70 of the Congress, for agricultural development.
Oil potential
In 1971 indigenous Q'eqchi' people from 24 villages in the Cancuén area, in southern Petén and the north of Chisec were evicted by the Army because the region was rich in oil.
Since 1974, oil had been commercially extracted in the FTN vicinity following discoveries made by Shenandoah Oil and Basic Resources, which together operated the Rubelsanto oil field in Alta Verapaz. In 1976, when then-president Kjell Laugerud Garcia came to visit the Mayalán cooperative in Ixcán, Quiché—which had been formed just 10 years before—said: "Mayalán is seated on top of the gold", hinting that the North Transversal Strip would no longer be used for agriculture and the cooperative movement, but rather for strategic exploitation of natural resources. After that visit, the two oil companies conducted explorations in Xacbal, near Mayalán in Ixcán, where they drilled the "San Lucas" well with unsuccessful results. These initial explorations, however, paved the way for future Ixcán and FTN oil experiments, and were also the main reason for building the dirt road that runs along the Strip. Shenandoah Oil, the National Institute of Agrarian Reform (INTA) and the Army Engineer Battalion coordinated the construction of that corridor between 1975 and 1979, which eventually allowed political, military and powerful businessmen of the time become owners of many lands where potential timber and oil wealth lay.
High Guatemalan government officers became large landowners and investors taking advantage of peasant transfer policies, privileged insider information, expansion of public credit and major development projects; the Army entered the business world with the Bank of the Army, pension funds and others.
Participation of Fernando Romeo Lucas García in FTN