Central America

Antigua, Guatemala. Antigua was one of the most important seats of Spanish colonial rule in Central America, and was Guatemala's capital before it was destroyed by an earthquake in 1773. The remains of many buildings from the colonial period can still be seen in the city.

The part of the Americas that links Mexico with the Isthmus of Panama, comprising Belize and the republics of Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua, and Panama.

It is also an isthmus, crossed by mountains that form part of the Cordilleras, rising to a maximum height of 4,220 m/13,845 ft. There are numerous active volcanoes. The principal river is the Usumacinta, which rises in Guatemala and flows north for 965 km/600 mi, crossing Mexico, and empties into the Bay of Campeche in the Gulf of Mexico. Central America has an area of about 523,000 sq km/200,000 sq mi, and a population (2001 est) of 28,764,000, comprising mostly Indians or mestizos (of mixed white-Indian ancestry), with the exception of Costa Rica, which has a predominantly white population. Tropical agricultural products, raw materials, and other basic commodities are exported.

Much of Central America formed part of the Maya civilization. Christopher Columbus first reached the isthmus in 1502, landing in Panama, where he founded the town of Santa María de Belén. Spanish settlers married indigenous women, and the area remained outside mainstream Spanish Empire history. When the Spanish Empire collapsed in the early 1800s, the area formed the Central American Federation, with a constitution based on that of the USA. The federation disintegrated in 1840.

Completion of the Panama Canal in 1914 enhanced the region's position as a strategic international crossroads. Demand for cash crops (bananas, coffee, cotton), especially from the USA, created a strong landowning class controlling a serf-like peasantry by military means. There has been US military intervention in the area, for example, in Nicaragua, where the dynasty of General Anastasio Somoza was founded. US President Carter reversed support for such regimes, but in the 1980s, the Reagan and Bush administrations again favoured military and financial aid to right-wing political groups, including the Contras in Nicaragua. Continuing US interest was underscored by its invasion of Panama in December 1989. In 1987 President Oscar Arias Sánchez of Costa Rica formulated the Central American Peace Plan, with a view to reduce civil unrest in individual countries; it was signed by the presidents of Nicaragua, Honduras, El Salvador, Guatemala, and Costa Rica.