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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 February 2009
For the vast majority of people around the world, Central America is a small group of countries bridging the gap between the Mayan ruins of Guatemala and the Panama Canal. The names of those countries are only recognized when the major contending ideologies of capitalism and communism clash in one of them, or when an international figure of ill or good repute establishes some sort of link with them. A football game that leads to war also catches the eye of the media. An example of the first situation would be the ousting of the communist regime of Jacobo Arbenz in Guatemala by Honduran troops backed by the United Fruit Company and the CIA in 1954; another would be the rise of the marxist regime in Nicaragua in 1979. The second is evident in the establishment in Costa Rica of the international fugitive Robert Vesco around 1970, as well as in the visit of Pope John Paul II to each of the five nations in 1983. The last refers to the ‘soccer war’ between El Salvador and Honduras in 1967. In each instance the countries concerned made headlines around the world for a short time and people learned their approximate geographical location even if in a passing fashion.
1 Thomas, L. Karnes, The Failure of Union (Chapel Hill, The University of North Carolina Press, 1961).Google Scholar See also Samuel, Stone, ‘Las Convulsiones del Istmo Centroamericano’, in Estudios del Ciapa (San José, CIAPA, 1979).Google Scholar
2 Samuel, Stone, La Dinastía de los Conquisiadores (San José, EDUCA, 1975).Google Scholar See also Stone, , ‘Las Convulsiones.… loc cit.Google Scholar
3 ibid..
4 A caballería in Guatemala equals approximately 110 acres or 44 hectares. In Cuba it is much bigger.
5 Stacy, May and Galo, Plaza, The United Fruit Company in Central America (Washington D.C., National Planning Association, 1958).Google Scholar
6 Joseph, A. Schumpeter, Imperialism and Social Classes (New York, The World Publishing Company, 1966).Google Scholar
7 Murdo, MacLeod, Spanish Central America (Berkeley, University of California Press, 1973).Google Scholar
8 Richard, N. Adams, ‘Rural Labor’, in Continuity and Change in Latin America, John J., Johnson (ed.) (California, Stanford University Press, 1967).Google Scholar
9 On 6 April 1983 the press in Costa Rica announced the expected arrival of 3,000 more wetbacks in the near future.
10 Stone, , La Dinastía, op. cit.Google Scholar
11 One exception was General Jorge Ubico Castañ;eda, former President of Guatemala, who in spite of his noble ancestry and against all odds was able to make it through the Guatemalan ‘West Point’.
12 Stone, , La Dinastía, op. cit. (taken from Newsweek magazine).Google Scholar
13 Very closely related to this idea is the Costa Rican mythology of the country which has more teachers than soldiers and the nation which converted a military fort into a museum. Although we suspect that the abolition of the army had economic and propagandistic ends, the numerical supremacy of teachers over soldiers probably responds to the preference of less strenuous activity involved in the work of the former. The conversion of a fort into a museum, we know, was due to the effort of a very small group of citizens on the museum Board of Directors at that time to obtain a larger and more majestic location for their institution. Politicians from all parties have known how to profit from this ever since.
14 Stone, , ‘Las Convulsiones.…’, op. cit.Google Scholar
15 The groups representing this party had won the civil war in 1948. They remained in power for a year and a half, turned the government back to the planters in 1949, won the elections in 1953 and lost them in 1958.
