Pub Date : 2022-01-13DOI: 10.1093/oxfordhb/9780190928360.013.1
R. Holden
As Latin America’s most well-defined multinational region, Central America stands apart primarily for its distinctive status as an isthmus between the Atlantic and Pacific oceans, surely its most historically consequential feature, but not its only one. Ever since its separation from the Spanish monarchy two centuries ago, Central America’s fraught political history has been marked by antagonistic tendencies within the region both for and against unification, by successive national and regional movements in favor of reform, revolution and counter-revolution, and by the intervention of external powers, particularly the United States. As a result, a persistent pattern of violence, instability and lawlessness has also distinguished its political history, as its economy continues to rank among the poorest of Latin America. This introductory essay interprets the region’s largely unsought separation from Spain (a process that spanned the years 1808 to 1821) as the hinge event of the last 500 years, having launched what the author calls Central America’s ongoing, two-century “crisis of order.” The cross-regional and country-level essays that follow this introduction reach back to the period before the Spanish conquest and proceed to the beginning of the twenty-first century. Each chapter aims to both synthesize and evaluate the main directions of the historiography related to its particular theme. The overall purpose of the volume is to highlight both Central America’s distinctiveness as a region and the attributes it shares with the rest of Latin America, while encouraging the comparative study of national, cross-national, and subnational historical experiences both within Central America, and between it and other places within and beyond Latin America.
{"title":"Interpreting the History of a Region in Crisis","authors":"R. Holden","doi":"10.1093/oxfordhb/9780190928360.013.1","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780190928360.013.1","url":null,"abstract":"As Latin America’s most well-defined multinational region, Central America stands apart primarily for its distinctive status as an isthmus between the Atlantic and Pacific oceans, surely its most historically consequential feature, but not its only one. Ever since its separation from the Spanish monarchy two centuries ago, Central America’s fraught political history has been marked by antagonistic tendencies within the region both for and against unification, by successive national and regional movements in favor of reform, revolution and counter-revolution, and by the intervention of external powers, particularly the United States. As a result, a persistent pattern of violence, instability and lawlessness has also distinguished its political history, as its economy continues to rank among the poorest of Latin America. This introductory essay interprets the region’s largely unsought separation from Spain (a process that spanned the years 1808 to 1821) as the hinge event of the last 500 years, having launched what the author calls Central America’s ongoing, two-century “crisis of order.” The cross-regional and country-level essays that follow this introduction reach back to the period before the Spanish conquest and proceed to the beginning of the twenty-first century. Each chapter aims to both synthesize and evaluate the main directions of the historiography related to its particular theme. The overall purpose of the volume is to highlight both Central America’s distinctiveness as a region and the attributes it shares with the rest of Latin America, while encouraging the comparative study of national, cross-national, and subnational historical experiences both within Central America, and between it and other places within and beyond Latin America.","PeriodicalId":398874,"journal":{"name":"The Oxford Handbook of Central American History","volume":"7 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-01-13","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"121706721","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2021-12-08DOI: 10.1093/oxfordhb/9780190928360.013.25
Brianna Leavitt-Alcántara
The study of colonial Central American history, particularly its cultural history, remains in a nascent stage of development compared to that of other parts of colonial Spanish America such as Mexico and Peru. This partly reflects historical study’s “center–periphery paradigm,” which has tended to concentrate scholarly attention on powerful political and economic centers while neglecting places like Central America, deemed as peripheral. Twentieth-century civil wars and political violence impeded archival research and also directed research agendas toward modern historical topics. Over the last thirty years, a small but lively field has expanded in exciting directions including the following four: colonial religious encounters and the emergence of diverse Mayan Christianities; Afro-Central American society and culture; women, sexuality, and gender in urban society; and the images, ideas, and innovations that brought Central Americans closer together but also sparked controversies and conflicts over the long eighteenth century, here defined roughly as 1670 to 1820.
{"title":"The Cultural Crossroads of Colonial Central America","authors":"Brianna Leavitt-Alcántara","doi":"10.1093/oxfordhb/9780190928360.013.25","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780190928360.013.25","url":null,"abstract":"The study of colonial Central American history, particularly its cultural history, remains in a nascent stage of development compared to that of other parts of colonial Spanish America such as Mexico and Peru. This partly reflects historical study’s “center–periphery paradigm,” which has tended to concentrate scholarly attention on powerful political and economic centers while neglecting places like Central America, deemed as peripheral. Twentieth-century civil wars and political violence impeded archival research and also directed research agendas toward modern historical topics. Over the last thirty years, a small but lively field has expanded in exciting directions including the following four: colonial religious encounters and the emergence of diverse Mayan Christianities; Afro-Central American society and culture; women, sexuality, and gender in urban society; and the images, ideas, and innovations that brought Central Americans closer together but also sparked controversies and conflicts over the long eighteenth century, here defined roughly as 1670 to 1820.","PeriodicalId":398874,"journal":{"name":"The Oxford Handbook of Central American History","volume":"20 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-12-08","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"122897084","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2021-11-10DOI: 10.1093/oxfordhb/9780190928360.013.4
William R. Fowler
This chapter provides an interpretive synthesis of the current state of knowledge of the pre-Columbian civilizations of Central America from the time of earliest human habitation until European contact. In terms of cultural affinities, the northern portion of the area formed the southeastern periphery of the culture area of Mesoamerica, and the southern regions pertained to the Isthmo-Colombian area (or Intermediate Area). With its relatively high population density, the area is highly susceptible to volcanic, seismic, and climatic natural disasters such as droughts, tropical storms, flooding, and landslides, and the same was true in the past. A recurrent theme in the study of ancient Central American civilizations is the impact of natural disasters and societal responses to cataclysmic events.
{"title":"The Ancient Civilizations","authors":"William R. Fowler","doi":"10.1093/oxfordhb/9780190928360.013.4","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780190928360.013.4","url":null,"abstract":"This chapter provides an interpretive synthesis of the current state of knowledge of the pre-Columbian civilizations of Central America from the time of earliest human habitation until European contact. In terms of cultural affinities, the northern portion of the area formed the southeastern periphery of the culture area of Mesoamerica, and the southern regions pertained to the Isthmo-Colombian area (or Intermediate Area). With its relatively high population density, the area is highly susceptible to volcanic, seismic, and climatic natural disasters such as droughts, tropical storms, flooding, and landslides, and the same was true in the past. A recurrent theme in the study of ancient Central American civilizations is the impact of natural disasters and societal responses to cataclysmic events.","PeriodicalId":398874,"journal":{"name":"The Oxford Handbook of Central American History","volume":"69 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-11-10","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"122621663","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2021-09-08DOI: 10.1093/oxfordhb/9780190928360.013.7
S. Webre
The Central American isthmus was under Spanish colonial rule for approximately three centuries (ca. 1502–1821). Known interchangeably as the kingdom, audiencia, or captaincy-general of Guatemala, the region occupied territory that would later become the republics of Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras, Nicaragua, and Costa Rica, plus the state of Chiapas, Mexico. Unlike New Spain and Peru, Central America did not possess great mineral wealth, but its location between the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans made it an important strategic asset. As did other parts of Spain’s overseas empire, Central America presented challenges of governance and defense. During the Habsburg era (to 1700), the colonial state took shape organically, drawing upon existing peninsular models within a framework of collaboration between the monarchy and local allies, including colonial and indigenous elites and the Roman Catholic Church. This system was not elegant, but it worked as long as authorities in Spain were willing to accept a degree of corruption and inefficiency in public administration. Under the Bourbons (1700–1821), Spain’s new rulers undertook an ambitious program of reforms meant to correct the weaknesses of the old system, while promoting economic growth, strengthening defenses, and enhancing revenues. Judged by their own standards, the Bourbon Reforms registered some successes, but they also bred disaffection. The eventual cost became apparent when the traditional allegiances forged in the Habsburg era dissolved under the pressure of constant warfare, and especially the 1808 Napoleonic invasion of Spain, which precipitated the empire-wide independence crisis.
{"title":"Central America under Spanish Colonial Rule","authors":"S. Webre","doi":"10.1093/oxfordhb/9780190928360.013.7","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780190928360.013.7","url":null,"abstract":"The Central American isthmus was under Spanish colonial rule for approximately three centuries (ca. 1502–1821). Known interchangeably as the kingdom, audiencia, or captaincy-general of Guatemala, the region occupied territory that would later become the republics of Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras, Nicaragua, and Costa Rica, plus the state of Chiapas, Mexico. Unlike New Spain and Peru, Central America did not possess great mineral wealth, but its location between the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans made it an important strategic asset. As did other parts of Spain’s overseas empire, Central America presented challenges of governance and defense. During the Habsburg era (to 1700), the colonial state took shape organically, drawing upon existing peninsular models within a framework of collaboration between the monarchy and local allies, including colonial and indigenous elites and the Roman Catholic Church. This system was not elegant, but it worked as long as authorities in Spain were willing to accept a degree of corruption and inefficiency in public administration. Under the Bourbons (1700–1821), Spain’s new rulers undertook an ambitious program of reforms meant to correct the weaknesses of the old system, while promoting economic growth, strengthening defenses, and enhancing revenues. Judged by their own standards, the Bourbon Reforms registered some successes, but they also bred disaffection. The eventual cost became apparent when the traditional allegiances forged in the Habsburg era dissolved under the pressure of constant warfare, and especially the 1808 Napoleonic invasion of Spain, which precipitated the empire-wide independence crisis.","PeriodicalId":398874,"journal":{"name":"The Oxford Handbook of Central American History","volume":"46 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-09-08","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"114197401","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2021-02-10DOI: 10.1093/oxfordhb/9780190928360.013.3
P. Herlihy, Matthew Fahrenbruch, Taylor Tappan
This chapter describes the geographies of indigenous populations and their territories in Central America, past and present. A brief discussion of previous archaeological research provides a context for the region’s pre-Columbian populations and settlement distributions prior to an examination of the territorial and demographic collapse precipitated by European conquest. The chapter chronicles a twenty-first-century resurgence of indigenous populations and their territorial rights in Central America, including the emergence of geopolitical units that we call indigenous territorial jurisdictions (ITJs), the likes of which represent new strategies for accommodating indigenous land ownership and governance within the context of modern states. Archival and census research, in situ field experience, and geographic information system (GIS)-based land use and cadastral mapping inform the understanding of indigenous peoples’ past and contemporary demographic trends, settlement patterns, and territorial challenges.
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Pub Date : 2020-09-02DOI: 10.1093/oxfordhb/9780190928360.013.19
D. Euraque
A fact of Honduran history after the 1840s is the structural weakness of the state as an organized political agent capable of administering a nationally defined territory, managing its constitutionally prescribed monopoly over security, and effectively addressing the most minimal aspects of the population’s economic and social welfare. Various factors explain this. A key problem has been Honduran elites’ lack of cohesion and enlightened commitment to their long-term interests among themselves and beyond their borders. Resorting to lethal violence to secure advantaged and corrupt access to state resources has been the result and norm, even to the detriment of elite unity and hegemony. This has often placed the state and country at the mercy of economic and military forces, local and international, that elites cannot control, and with which they have negotiated for short-term benefit and even personal survival, most often to the detriment of national interests, and Hondurans’ rudimentary well-being.
{"title":"Honduras","authors":"D. Euraque","doi":"10.1093/oxfordhb/9780190928360.013.19","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780190928360.013.19","url":null,"abstract":"A fact of Honduran history after the 1840s is the structural weakness of the state as an organized political agent capable of administering a nationally defined territory, managing its constitutionally prescribed monopoly over security, and effectively addressing the most minimal aspects of the population’s economic and social welfare. Various factors explain this. A key problem has been Honduran elites’ lack of cohesion and enlightened commitment to their long-term interests among themselves and beyond their borders. Resorting to lethal violence to secure advantaged and corrupt access to state resources has been the result and norm, even to the detriment of elite unity and hegemony. This has often placed the state and country at the mercy of economic and military forces, local and international, that elites cannot control, and with which they have negotiated for short-term benefit and even personal survival, most often to the detriment of national interests, and Hondurans’ rudimentary well-being.","PeriodicalId":398874,"journal":{"name":"The Oxford Handbook of Central American History","volume":"43 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-09-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"132006755","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2020-06-08DOI: 10.1093/oxfordhb/9780190928360.013.13
Joaquín M. Chávez
Global and regional political and cultural trends shaped a set of interrelated and persistent conflicts between authoritarian regimes and democratic and revolutionary forces during the Cold War in Central America. US Cold War anticommunism, in particular, abetted authoritarian governments that sparked major conflicts in Guatemala, El Salvador, and Nicaragua. The failure of the post-World War II wave of democratization in Central America led to persistent revolutionary and counterrevolutionary politics in the next three decades. Two successive waves of revolution emerged in the 1960s and 1970s. The reverberations of the Cuban Revolution and US counterinsurgency mainly shaped the first wave of revolution and counterrevolution in the 1960s. The Cuban Revolution, progressive Catholicism, and the Sandinista Revolution mainly shaped the second wave of revolution and counterrevolution in the 1970s and 1980s. The armed conflict in Guatemala (1960–1996), El Salvador’s Civil War (1980–1992), and the Contra War in Nicaragua (1979–1991) became the last major Cold War conflicts in Latin America. The changing dynamics of the conflicts on the ground and the international consensus in favor of peace negotiations in Central America that emerged at the end of the Cold War enabled the political settlement of the conflicts. The peace processes that put an end to the armed conflicts created fragile democracies in the midst of the neoliberal restructuring of the 1990s, which limited the meaning of social citizenship in Central America.
{"title":"The Cold War","authors":"Joaquín M. Chávez","doi":"10.1093/oxfordhb/9780190928360.013.13","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780190928360.013.13","url":null,"abstract":"Global and regional political and cultural trends shaped a set of interrelated and persistent conflicts between authoritarian regimes and democratic and revolutionary forces during the Cold War in Central America. US Cold War anticommunism, in particular, abetted authoritarian governments that sparked major conflicts in Guatemala, El Salvador, and Nicaragua. The failure of the post-World War II wave of democratization in Central America led to persistent revolutionary and counterrevolutionary politics in the next three decades. Two successive waves of revolution emerged in the 1960s and 1970s. The reverberations of the Cuban Revolution and US counterinsurgency mainly shaped the first wave of revolution and counterrevolution in the 1960s. The Cuban Revolution, progressive Catholicism, and the Sandinista Revolution mainly shaped the second wave of revolution and counterrevolution in the 1970s and 1980s. The armed conflict in Guatemala (1960–1996), El Salvador’s Civil War (1980–1992), and the Contra War in Nicaragua (1979–1991) became the last major Cold War conflicts in Latin America. The changing dynamics of the conflicts on the ground and the international consensus in favor of peace negotiations in Central America that emerged at the end of the Cold War enabled the political settlement of the conflicts. The peace processes that put an end to the armed conflicts created fragile democracies in the midst of the neoliberal restructuring of the 1990s, which limited the meaning of social citizenship in Central America.","PeriodicalId":398874,"journal":{"name":"The Oxford Handbook of Central American History","volume":"17 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-06-08","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"114776287","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2020-06-08DOI: 10.1093/oxfordhb/9780190928360.013.20
Erik Ching
El Salvador stands out as exceptional in the history of modern Latin America for some tragic reasons: its duration of military rule (1931–1979), the scale of its government-ordered mass execution of citizens (1932), and its distinctly brutal civil conflict (1980–1992). These episodes, and many others like them, are the consequence of modern El Salvador’s history as a deeply divided society. This division has its origins in a racially charged ethnic differentiation coming out of the colonial era, which then survived into the twentieth century as conflict between ethnically homogenous classes. Consequently, shared concepts of the public good have been all too rare. Instead, rivaling stakeholders have defined politics as a zero-sum game, such that any sacrifice on one group’s part is seen inherently as an advantage for a rival. In general, El Salvador has been a place where authoritarian conservatives have won the day, meaning the people who wish to maintain their privilege and preserve the status quo have successfully done so, but not without facing significant challenges and having to grant some concessions along the way.
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Pub Date : 2020-06-08DOI: 10.1093/oxfordhb/9780190928360.013.15
Orlando J. Pérez, Randy Pestana
The armed forces of Central America predate the development of the modern nation-state. It is difficult to understand the political and social history of the region without examining the role of the military. Strong men leading local armed militias emerged out of the ashes of the Spanish Empire to rule the newly independent nations. As military institutions developed, an alliance between the armed forces and powerful economic elites sought to govern the nation-states by suppressing and exploiting popular sectors often through brutal repression. Authoritarianism and economic underdevelopment led to multiple uprisings which helped shape the nature of politics and democratic governance in contemporary Central America. In explaining this we explore the evolution of the armed forces, focusing particular attention on the political influence of the military in the development of the modern nation-state, and on the process of democratization in the late twentieth century. We then examine the role the United States has played in promoting and sustaining military rule. Finally, we analyze the consequences of late-twentieth-century peace processes on the retreat of military power and on the building of democracy.
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Pub Date : 2020-06-08DOI: 10.1093/oxfordhb/9780190928360.013.12
M. Gobat
Central America has endured more US interventions than any other region in the world. This history reflects the long-standing belief of US officials that their country’s global aspirations hinged on its control of an interoceanic canal cutting across the isthmus. Yet geography alone does not explain the fixation with Central America. Ever since Manifest Destiny expansion of the mid-nineteenth century, the region has also served as a proving ground for new forms of US power such as overseas settler colonialism, dollar diplomacy, and counterinsurgency strategies. Central America’s lengthy encounter with the United States has generally been viewed by scholars in dichotomous terms: Central Americans either abetted US impositions or bravely rejected them. These Manichean images of accommodation and resistance have also served as political weapons for Central Americans and foreigners alike. In reality, such images obscure the ambiguities that not only define the region’s history with the northern “colossus” but also best capture the limits of US power.
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