Both maps below show Guatemala highlighted. At 16° Mercator inflates Guatemala by only about 8%, so the two maps largely agree on it. Watch what the old map does to Cuba beside it. That contrast is why the new world map matters.
At 16°, Guatemala sits in the band the old map drew almost honestly. It is one of the regions Mercator quietly under-represented, and that is exactly what the new Equal Earth map restores.
Guatemala: key figures
| True area | On the old Mercator map | Distortion vs truth |
|---|
| Guatemala | 108,889 km² | 117,480 km² | 1.1× |
| Greenland | 2,166,086 km² | 25,576,494 km² | 11.8× |
| Africa | 30,370,000 km² | n/a | n/a |
Old maps drew Guatemala at about 117,480 km². The truth is 108,889 km², a difference of 8% that school atlases carried for centuries.