Esquipulas

Before the conquest the hills around Esquipulas were home to the Ch'orti' Maya, related to the people of Copán across today's Honduran border, and to the Payaqui. In 1525 captains under Pedro de Alvarado conquered the province of Chiquimula, and in 1530 the local people, led by the chiefs Copantl and Galel, rose again and held out for three days before surrendering. Between 1550 and 1560 Juan Pérez Dardón founded the town of Yzquipulas, laying out a main street from the parish church of Santiago to the aqueduct.

In 1594 the townspeople commissioned the Portuguese sculptor Quirio Cataño, working in Santiago de los Caballeros, to carve a crucified Christ with a dark complexion. It arrived on 9 March 1595, and its reputation for miracles spread so quickly that by 1650 pilgrims were coming from as far as El Salvador and Comayagua. The church of Santiago was finished in 1682 to receive it, and in 1740 Bishop Pedro Pardo de Figueroa commissioned a far larger sanctuary from the architect Felipe José de Porres. Pardo de Figueroa died during a visit in 1751 and was buried there; the basilica was completed in 1758, and the image moved into it in January 1759.

In 1956 Pope Pius XII created a territorial prelature for the shrine, Benedictine monks arrived in 1959, and in 1961 John XXIII raised the church to a minor basilica. In May 1986 the five Central American presidents met here at the summit known as Esquipulas I, starting the peace process that bears the town's name. Pope John Paul II visited in 1996, and in 2002 Esquipulas was placed on UNESCO's tentative World Heritage list.

Everything in Esquipulas turns on the Black Christ. The image is one of the most famous of the dark crucifixes of Latin America, and the town receives hundreds of pilgrimages a year, most of them in January and March. Pilgrims arrive by car and bus, on motorbikes, bicycles and horses, and some walk all the way from Guatemala City. The patronal fiesta of the Black Christ, from 11 to 15 January, brings the largest crowds; the town's other fiesta, for its patron St James, falls in late July.

Pilgrims take home Tierra Santa, small tablets of local clay, also called tierra bendita, that is cleaned and pressed into cakes; some eat it or rub it on their bodies as a cure, and the custom has spread under many names across Central America. The devotion also reached the United States: the Santuario de Chimayó in New Mexico is closely linked with Esquipulas and keeps similar customs.

Older beliefs survive beside Catholic ones. At the Piedra de los Compadres, two huge balanced stones, local legend tells of two friends turned to stone for betraying their bond, while traditional communities treat the place as sacred, and candles and offerings blacken the rock. Like much of the east, Esquipulas is Spanish-speaking Ladino country, but the Ch'orti' Maya heritage of the area is part of its story.

The 2018 census counted about 18,700 people in the town and about 53,600 in the municipality, which spreads over 495 square kilometres of villages and hamlets. More than half the population is under 25, and most pupils attend private schools; the town is known in Guatemala for its success in the national science olympiad.

The economy is built on the pilgrims. Religious tourism and hotels have boomed, and the town is said to receive four to five million visitors a year, more than anywhere in Guatemala except the capital. Hotels, restaurants and souvenir stalls line the approach to the basilica, and much of the town's work depends on the January fiesta and Holy Week. Coffee is the other mainstay: farms in the municipality have won national and international prizes for the quality of their beans.

Ordinary life goes on around the Parque Centroamérica and the old parish church in the north of the town, away from the pilgrim crowds, and cross-border trade with Honduras, only a few kilometres away, is part of the local economy.

Esquipulas eats like the rest of eastern Guatemala: cattle-country food of grilled beef, fresh cheese, cream and thick tortillas, with beans and eggs at breakfast. Comedores and restaurants around the basilica cater to pilgrims with simple, filling plates, and at fiesta time street stalls fill the surrounding streets.

The town's own speciality is sweets. Stalls around the basilica sell coconut sweets and other sugar confections, bought by pilgrims to take home along with the decorated hats and souvenirs of the pilgrimage. Tierra Santa, the blessed clay tablets that pilgrims buy during the church festivals, is not food, but some pilgrims eat it for its supposed healing powers.

Coffee is the local drink to seek out. The municipality's farms grow beans that have won awards as some of the best in Guatemala. In the heat, cold beer is the usual drink, and closer to the Salvadoran border pupusas, thick maize cakes stuffed with cheese, beans or pork, are common across the east.