-
1523
1523-24
Spanish adventurer Pedro de Alvarado defeats the indigenous Maya and turns Guatemala into a Spanish colony -
1821
Guatemala becomes independent and joins the Mexican empire the following year. -
1844-65
Guatemala ruled by conservative dictator Rafael Carrera. -
1944
Guatemala declares war on the Axis powers. -
1976
27,000 people are killed and more than a million rendered homeless by earthquake. -
1981
Around 11,000 people are killed by death squads and soldiers in response to growing anti-government guerilla activity. -
1998
Bishop Juan Gerardi, a human rights campaigner, murdered. -
1999
UN-backed commission says security forces were behind 93% of all human rights atrocities committed during the civil war, which claimed 200,000 lives, and that senior officials had overseen 626 massacres in Maya villages. -
December 2001
President Portillo pays $1.8m in compensation to the families of 226 men, women and children killed by soldiers and paramilitaries in the northern village of Las Dos Erres in 1982. -
September 2002
Guatemala and Belize agree on draft settlement to their long-standing border dispute at talks brokered by Organization of American States (OAS). Both nations will hold referendums on draft settlement. -
December 2003
Guatemala - along with Nicaragua, El Salvador and Honduras - agrees on a free-trade agreement with the US. -
May/June 2004
Major cuts to the army; bases are closed and 10,000 soldiers are retired. -
May 2007
Guatemala ratifies an international adoption treaty, committing it to ensure that babies are not bought or stolen. -
July 2007
Amnesty International urges the government to ratify the CICIG as a first step towards tackling the culture of impunity it says has contributed to Guatemala's soaring murder rate -
August 2011
Four former soldiers found guilty of a village massacre become the first to be convicted of rights abuses during the civil war. -
May 2013
Ex-military leader Efrain Rios Montt is convicted of genocide and crimes against humanity, only to have the ruling overturned by the constitutional court on a technicality, forcing a retrial, although no date is set. -
May 2014
Ex-President Alfonso Portillo pleads guilty in a US court to charges that he accepted $2.5m (£1.5m) in bribes from Taiwan in return for a promise of continued recognition by Guatemala. -
June 2014
The US to give millions of dollars of aid to Guatemala, El Salvador and Honduras to combat gang violence and help citizens repatriated from the US, as part of efforts to cope with growing migration. -
November 2016
El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras announce a joint security force aimed at fighting gangs and cross-border organised crime. -
August 2017
President Morales orders the expulsion of the head of the UN anti-corruption mission which backed calls by prosecutors for the removal of his political immunity. -
April 2018
Guatemalans vote in a referendum in favour of referring a two-centuries-old border dispute with what is now Belize to the International Court of Justice. -
May 2018
Guatemala becomes the second country after the US to move its embassy in Israel to Jerusalem. -
2019
El Fuego Volcano generated 14 to 18 moderate explosions on the morning of April 8, with ash columns at 4,800 meters above sea level.