In 2020, long queues formed from early morning at the National Registry of Persons office on Avenida Elena in Guatemala City. Local reporting recorded hundreds arriving each day to obtain or renew the personal identity document known as the DPI and waiting outside for service.
The DPI is a basic document through which citizens establish identity and proceed with many public and private transactions. People in this line were therefore waiting not only to submit paperwork but for a document that opens other parts of daily life. Because the inherited highland Indigenous and communal-food setting is not established, the record is narrowed to the directly documented administrative queue in the capital.