Population
In 2004 the department was recorded as having 745,805 inhabitants. The inhabitants are divided between three principal ethnicities; Ladino, K'iche' Maya and Mam Maya. Three languages are spoken in the department, broadly corresponding to the ethnic groups; Spanish, K'iche' and Mam. In 2004, 40.4% of the population was listed as non-indigenous (i.e. Ladino) and 59.6% as indigenous (mainly K'iche' and Mam). In 1999, average life expectancy was calculated as 63.7 years. In the same year, 63.7% of dwellings had electricity, 70.1% had drinking water and 92.5% had sanitation.
Each municipality is known for its different traditional indigenous dress, with the exceptions of Coatepeque, Colomba, Flores Costa Cuca and San Carlos Sija, where traditional clothing is not worn by the indigenous inhabitants. These trajes are manufactured by the local inhabitants themselves.
Read more about this topic: Quetzaltenango Department
Famous quotes containing the word population:
“This was the Eastham famous of late years for its camp- meetings, held in a grove near by, to which thousands flock from all parts of the Bay. We conjectured that the reason for the perhaps unusual, if not unhealthful development of the religious sentiment here, was the fact that a large portion of the population are women whose husbands and sons are either abroad on the sea, or else drowned, and there is nobody but they and the ministers left behind.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“The broad masses of a population are more amenable to the appeal of rhetoric than to any other force.”
—Adolf Hitler (1889–1945)
“The most advanced nations are always those who navigate the most. The power which the sea requires in the sailor makes a man of him very fast, and the change of shores and population clears his head of much nonsense of his wigwam.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)