Rabinal

Rabinal
Municipality
Nickname:  Rabinal
Rabinal Location in Guatemala
Coordinates: 15°4′4.70″N 90°29′20.50″W / 15.0679722°N 90.4890278°W / 15.0679722; -90.4890278
Country	Guatemala
Department	Baja Verapaz
Founded	1537
Government
• Mayor	Luis Morales (PP)
Area
• Total	336 km2 (130 sq mi)
Population  (2018 census)[1]
• Total	40,797
• Density	120/km2 (310/sq mi)
Climate	Aw
Website	Official Website of the Municipality of Rabinal

Rabinal is a small town, with a population of 15,157 (2018 census),

The settlement of Rabinal is founded by Bartolomé de las Casas, during his expedition into the lands of the Maya in 1537.

On his second visit to Guatemala, in 1537, friar

In 1572 construction finished on the grand colonial Catholic Baroque church, a project begun by then Bishop of Chiapas Bartolomé de las Casas.

During the mid-19th century Charles Étienne Brasseur de Bourbourg, serving as Parish Priest, conducts some of the first ethnographic studies of the highland Maya and collects folk tales and documents making the first translations into European languages, of the Rabinal Achí.^{[citation needed]} As of 1850, the population was estimated to be 6,500.^[5]

Rabinal is the site of some of the bloodiest massacres in Guatemala's Civil War, including those of Plan de Sánchez and Río Negro. The actual town of Rabinal was also the site of a large-scale massacre during the Independence Day celebration of 1981.

After the conquest, the Spanish crown focused on the Catholic indoctrination of the natives. Human settlements founded by royal missionaries in the New World were called "Indian doctrines" or simply "

But this plan never materialized, mainly because the Spanish crown lost control of the regular orders as soon as their friars set course to America. Shielded by their apostolic privileges granted to convert natives into Catholicism, the missionaries only responded to their order local authorities, and never to that of the Spanish government or the secular bishops. The orders local authorities, in turn, only dealt with their own order and not with the Spanish crown. Once a doctrine had been established, the protected their own economic interests, even against those of the King and thus, the doctrines became Indian towns that remains unaltered for the rest of the Spanish colony.

The doctrines were founded at the friars discretion, given that they were completely at liberty to settle communities provided the main purpose was to eventually transfer it as a secular parish which would be tithing of the bishop. In reality, what happened was that the doctrines grew uncontrollably and were never transferred to any secular parish; they formed around the place where the friars had their monastery and from there, they would go out to preach to settlements that belong to the doctrine and were called "annexes", "visits" or "visit towns". Therefore, the doctrines had three main characteristics:

1. they were independent from external controls (both ecclesiastical and civilian )
2. were run by a group of friars
3. had a relatively larger number of annexes.^[6]

The main characteristic of the doctrines was that they were run by a group of friars, because it made sure that the community system would continue without any issue when one of the members died.^[7]

In 1638, the Order of Preachers split their large doctrines —which meant large economic benefits for them— in groups centered around each one of their six monasteries, and the Rabinal doctrine was moved under the Santiago de los Caballeros de Guatemala monastery jurisdiction:^[8]

The town of Rabinal boasts a large, colonial-era baroque church. Alongside the church is a small municipal museum, with exhibits on the local culture (particularly native healing techniques) and a section dealing with the massacres of the 1980s. Various pre-Hispanic archaeological sites are also located in the surrounding hills.

The town's annual fiesta patronal takes place in late January each year and is famous for its dances, including one that recreates a legendary battle between the Achi and the K'iche Maya, declared a UNESCO World Heritage Cultural monument, known as The Rabinal Achí.

Rabinal has a tropical savanna climate (Köppen: Aw).

• Bartolomé de las Casas
• Baja Verapaz

Media related to Rabinal at Wikimedia Commons

• Museo Comunitario Rabinal Achi
• Rabinal Achí in the UNESCO web site
• Rabinal: extensive photographic essay about the town and its people
• "Guatemala: The Forgotten Spirits of Rabinal," by Thaddeus al Nakba, describes the Independence Day massacre in detail