La Aurora began as green space. According to Spanish Wikipedia’s history of the airport, the estate belonged to President Manuel Lisandro Barillas and was developed by José María Reyna Barrios after 1892 as a recreational area, with plans for a railway station along what is now Bulevar 30 de Junio. After Reyna Barrios was assassinated in 1898 his successor, Manuel Estrada Cabrera, put debt repayment first and the plans stalled.

Aviation arrived in the 1920s. On 30 June 1921 the Escuela Militar de Mecánicos de Aviación moved formally to the La Aurora farm, with a Blériot XI-2, a Deperdussin and two Avro 504Ks, according to Spanish Wikipedia’s article on the air force; English Wikipedia credits a French military mission with opening a flying school the year before. The air force counts 1921 as its founding year. Under President José María Orellana the first flying activity at La Aurora took place in 1923, replacing the Campo de Marte as the country’s aviation centre, and for the rest of the decade and through the 1930s a grass runway was all it needed.

Spanish Wikipedia also records the opening of the airport building in 1936 and the arrival of Pan American, which began operating in Guatemala in 1929. Civil and military flying have shared the field ever since.

The Second World War changed La Aurora. Spanish Wikipedia’s airport history says the first paved runway, 2,000 metres long, was built in 1942 as part of the establishment of a US military base. The same year Guatemala received lend-lease aid; the air force article lists seven Boeing P-26 fighters, armed T-6 Texans, BT-13s, PT-19s and Stearmans delivered in 1943.

After the war the field became the air force’s school as well as its headquarters. The Escuela Militar de Aviación was based at the airport from 1947 until 1989, when it moved to the new southern base at Retalhuleu. In between, La Aurora saw the arrival of the Mustangs from July 1954, the first T-33 jets in January 1963 and the A-37 Dragonflies of the 1970s, though which types were based here at which time was not set out in the sources checked.

On the civil side, a DC-8 of Panavías, a Pan American subsidiary, made the first commercial jet landing in 1959 after the runway was extended, and a new terminal begun in 1966 was finished in 1968 under President Julio César Méndez Montenegro.

Since the reorganisation of 2003, created by Acuerdo Gubernativo 312-2003 of 19 May 2003, La Aurora has been the seat of the Central Air Command "General José Víctor Mejía", covering Guatemala, Baja Verapaz, southern Alta Verapaz, Izabal, Zacapa, Jutiapa, Chiquimula, El Progreso, Chimaltenango, Sacatepéquez, Sololá, Totonicapán, most of Quiché and Huehuetenango. The Comandancia of the FAG and the military aviation technical school are on the same field. The civil airport around them was expanded under the Plan Nueva Aurora launched on 14 April 2005, and its runway and taxiway were rehabilitated in March 2010.

Recent events at the base show what the air force now is: a helicopter and transport force with a security role. On 15 December 2023, at the 102nd anniversary, President Alejandro Giammattei handed a Bell 429 to the commander, Juan Carlos Ponce Valdez, according to AGN. On 29 December 2024 Infodefensa reported that a Bell 407GX which had left the Central Air Command to support security forces had hit power lines over the Chixoy river, killing both pilots. And at the end of May 2026 a C-130 of the Arkansas Air National Guard landed at La Aurora with equipment for the FAG, presented by both governments as the return of cooperation after decades of suspension.

The air show for the 103rd anniversary, on 8 December 2024, was also held at FAG installations, with formation flights and parachute jumps, according to AGN; the venue was not named, and La Aurora is assumed but not confirmed.