Page 56 - tesis

Guatemala is a multiethnic multilingual country whose official language is Spanish. Along with Bolivia and Peru it has a large indigenous population. Forty three per cent of Guatemalans identify themselves with one or other of the twenty-three ethnic groups who speak a similar number of different local languages (United Nations 2002: 283). According to indigenous sources 50 to 60 per cent of the population has an indigenous background. Flavio Rojas in his book Indios de Guatemala (Guatemalan Indians) underscores the fact that this large indigenous presence makes Guatemala an \u2018indigenous\u2019 land (1995: 7).\u000AGuatemala is also known to be a Christian country. Sixty-five per cent of the total population are Catholics while 30 per cent are Evangelicals. At the same time the majority take part in practices of other religions such as that of the Mayans (\u2018Religious Composition\u2019 World Bank 2004a). [More details of indigenous groups will be analysed in Chapter V]. These figures reflect in some way the global Christianity growth tendency in the world. According to the Encyclopedia Britannica 2006, the largest religious groups in the World are: Christian 2.173 bn (33.2%), Muslim 1.335 bn (20.4%) and Hindu in only 116 countries at 0.871bn (13.3%).17 The figures for religion in Guatemala by Johnstone & Mandryk, show that in 2000 there were 97.52 percent of Christian (Catholics and Protestants). Among the Protestants, Evangelicals made up 26.0% percent; Charismatics 20.3 percent; and Pentecostals 17:9 percent (2001).\u000AOn the economic front, the Gross Internal Product in 2006 was 35, 339 millions of dollars. The most common products are coffee, sugar, bananas, fruit, vegetables, meat, petroleum and cardamom (\u2018Guatemala en cifras\u2019 World Bank 2004b). Tourism and family remittances which come mainly from the United States contribute to the entrance of currency to the country. The public debt in 2005 reached the sum of 4,500 millions of dollars (Ministerio de Econom\u00EDa 2006). The minimal salary in Quetzals is equivalent to $162 per month.\u000A17\u000A Cited by John H. Williams, \u2018Demography of religions: A review\u2019 2007 May in Agnosticism and\u000A Atheism\u2019s rapid growth Available at http://www.adam.com.au/bstett/ReligStatistics114.htm Accessed\u000A 01.12.08\u000A43\u000A