Flag of Guatemala

How to read it

The flag is governed by Decree 104-97 of Guatemala’s Congress, the Ley Normativa de la Bandera Nacional y del Escudo de Armas, published and in force on 28 October 1997 according to the Ministry of Culture and Sports. The law calls the flag the supreme emblem of the nation: it salutes no one, renders no honours and carries no added legend or inscription. Its height and length are in the ratio 5 to 8, which the law calls the golden rule of aesthetic proportion, and it has three vertical stripes of the same width, sky blue (azul celeste) at the edges and white in the centre. The coat of arms is a national symbol in its own right. The law makes 17 August Flag Day, for the decree that created the flag in 1871.

Also searched as: flag of guatemala, guatemala flag, guatemala flag meaning, guatemalan flag, guatemalan flag meaning.

The coat of arms piece by piece

Prensa Libre, summarising the 1997 decree, gives each part its meaning: the sword is justice and sovereignty, the laurel branches victory, the scroll the immortality of the date the nation was born, and the quetzal supreme liberty. The scroll reads “Libertad 15 de Septiembre de 1821” (Liberty, 15 September 1821), La Hora reports, citing the Ministry of Culture and Sports: the day Guatemala proclaimed independence from Spain. La Hora also describes two crossed Remington rifles, two swords and a laurel wreath, and says the arms were designed by the Swiss artist Juan Bautista Frener, who won a competition after the Liberal Revolution of 1871. In the version used from 1968 to 1997 the month was spelt without its p (“Setiembre”); the 1997 version added it.

Why the flag is blue and white

The blue and white go back to the United Provinces of Central America: from 1823 to 1838 Guatemala used a flag much like the present one, La Hora writes, citing Guatemala’s Institute of Anthropology and History (IDAEH). Under Rafael Carrera, from 1858 to 1871, the flag had red, yellow, white and blue horizontal stripes. The Liberal government of Miguel García Granados and Justo Rufino Barrios restored blue and white by an executive decree of 17 August 1871, Prensa Libre writes, and changed the arms the same year to remove the conservative elements. The newspaper also gives a popular reading of the stripes: the white between the two blues is the country lying between the Pacific Ocean and the Caribbean Sea.

Telling it from the other blue and white flags of Central America

Guatemala’s stripes run from top to bottom. El Salvador’s and Honduras’s flags, and Nicaragua’s, have the same blue and white in horizontal stripes, from the flag of the Central American federation of 1823: El Salvador’s law describes two horizontal blue stripes with a white one between them, and Honduras’s decree three equal horizontal stripes with five blue stars in the centre.