AUGUST 22, 2025 — Last Sunday, both Guatemala and Bolivia celebrated their Flag Day, marking August 17 as a common date of remembrance and pride.
In Guatemala City, ceremonies unfolded in the Plaza de la Constitución, where authorities, soldiers, students, and marching bands gathered to honour the blue and white banner created in 1871. Governor Mauricio Benard recalled that its vertical stripes, unique in the region, symbolize the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans and the purity of national ideals.
“As Guatemalans, we must learn to honour and give the national flag of Guatemala the importance it deserves,” he said, according to the Agencia Guatemalteca de Noticias.
At nearly the same time in La Paz, Bolivians were not only commemorating their Tricolour flag, adopted in 1825, but also casting ballots in the general elections, says the Agencia Boliviana de Información.
President Luis Arce tied the two historic acts together by calling the day one of both symbolism and democracy.
“Together with [the flag], with the same dignity and pride rises our Wiphala, both intertwined at the highest point and are the strongest testimony of our integration, of the complementarity that strengthens us, and of the equality that we seek among all Bolivians,” he declared.
