BIBLIOGRAFIA HISTORICA CENTROAMERICANA

Firma del Acta de Independencia de Centroamerica (1821)

GENERAL

Rodolfo Cardenal

MANUAL DE HISTORIA DE CENTROAMERICA

La de América Central es una historia de vencedores y vencidos y, sobre todo, de pueblos sojuzgados. La formación de las sociedades prehispánicas, el modo en que fueron conquistadas por los españoles, que los redujeron a la esclavitud y a la segregación en la modalidad de los pueblos de indios, y los posteriores regímenes criollos, oligárquicos y militares marcan el pulso de la memoria regional y establecen los grandes momentos de este manual de historia.

McCann, Thomas

An American Company: The Tragedy of United Fruit. New York: Crown Publishers, 1976.

Guatemala's peasants were powerless against United Fruit, so it took a corporate raider by the name of Eli Black to bring it down. In 1968, when United Fruit was 70 years old, Black began acquiring shares. After six years as CEO, making all the wrong decisions and alienating everyone who could help him, United Fruit was in deep trouble. Black jumped out of his office window on the 44th floor in 1975, while the SEC investigated his bribes to Honduran officials for tax relief on banana exports. Now peasants had only the CIA to worry about -- those thugs from that big banana republic up north, whose job it is to keep all the little bananas in line.

Anderson, Thomas P. 

Politics in Central America: Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras, and Nicaragua. New York: Praeger, 1988.

Neuberger, Guenter and Opperskalski, Michael

CIA in Mittelamerika. Goettingen, Germany: Lamuv Verlag Gmbh, 1983

In 1983 Neuberger expanded his list with another 100 names and placed them all in an appendix to "CIA in Mittelamerika." The bulk of the book consists of essays on U.S. intervention in various Central American countries, but most of these are based on research that first appeared in English publications already in NameBase. For this reason -- and also because our German is rusty -- we restricted our inputting to the appendix.

Tomado de Central America, A Nation Divided,  del profesor Ralph Lee Woodward, Jr. (Oxford University Press, 1999.)
 

A Selective Guide to the Literature on Central America
 

Obras en inglés - Viajeros - Historia - Precolombina - Período hispánico - Independencia - Siglo XIX - Siglo XX

The focus of international attention on Central America in the 1980s resulted in an explosion of scholarly and journalistic writing about the region, not only on its contemporary situation, but on many periods of its history. This bibliographical essay reflects the surge in historical and other publication during the past two decades. Many works mentioned in earlier editions of this work have been eclipsed by newer works and are thus not mentioned here. Those earlier edition, however, may have utility for those seeking greater detail on some topics. This essay provides an introductory guide to the literature for both the general reader and the specialist. It concentrates for the most part on books, but the reader should remember that periodical literature and unpublished (or obscurely published) theses and dissertations also constitute important sources of additional information and interpretation on the region which the serious student should consult. The Handbook of Latin American Studies and the Hispanic American Periodicals Index are the most convenient guides to the periodical literature.

The first section surveys a brief selection of materials in the English language for the general reader. The second is devoted to a selection of travelers' accounts. The third and most extensive section deals with the history of the isthmus. Subsequent sections treat the economy, inter-state relations, the society, culture, and the arts. The final section discusses bibliographies and current periodicals of the region.
 

I. Selected works in English
 

Whereas there were once very few works in English on Central America, the recent outpouring of scholarly research and publication has now provided the English-language reader with a wealth of material. The present section calls attention to only a small portion of that literature, providing a highly selective list of works that will provide an introduction to the study of Central America. Many more works in English are to be found in each of the subsequent sections. Héctor Pérez Brignoli, A Brief History of Central America (Berkeley, 1989) is a useful brief synopsis. Also excellent as an overview of Central American history are the various relevant chapters of the Cambridge History of Latin America, edited by Leslie Bethell (11 vols., Cambridge, 1984-95). The essays for the 19th and 20th centuries from that work have been republished separately in a paperback edition, Central America since Independence (Cambridge, 1991). An economic focus, sharply critical of both native and foreign elites, is provided by Frederick Stirton Weaver, Inside the Volcano: The History and Political Economy of Central America (Boulder, 1994). Jeffrey Paige, Coffee and Power: Revolution and the Rise of Democracy in Central America(Cambridge, Mass., 1997), offers an important interpretation of modern Central American politics, as does Robert Williams in States and Social Evolution: Coffee and the Rise of National Governments in Central America (Chapel Hill, 1994). Another provocative interpretation of the differences among the Central American states drawn from genealogical research on national elites is Samuel Stone, Heritage of the Conquistadors: Ruling Classes in Central America from Conquest to the Sandinistas (Lincoln, 1990).

Three, more detailed works provide a more comprehensive history of the isthmus: Murdo MacLeod, Spanish Central America: A Socioeconomic History, 1520-1720 (Berkeley, 1973), is a masterful description and analysis of the 16th and 17th centuries; Miles Wortman, Government and Society in Central America, 1680-1840 (N.Y., 1982), provides and overview of the Bourbon century and federation period, which, if less impressive than MacLeod's treatment is nonetheless convenient; and James Dunkerley, Power in the Isthmus, A Political History of Modern Central America (London, 1988), is a massive work which is primarily concerned with the political history of the 20th century, but which includes a fine opening chapter covering the 19th century. For the economic history of 20th-century Central America, see Víctor Bulmer-Thomas, The Political Economy of Central America since 1920 (Cambridge, 1987). Also useful, although uneven in quality, are the Country Studies, in the Area Handbook Series of the Federal Research Division of the Library of Congress (formerly U.S. Army Area Handbooks). The series of Historical Dictionaries of the Latin American countries published by the Scarecrow Press are also uneven, but are nevertheless useful for reference, as is Glen Taplin, Middle American Governors(Metuchen, N.J., 1972), published in the same series. For general reference, however, the Encyclopedia of Latin American History and Culture (5 vols., N.Y., 1996) is the most useful single work. For the geography of the region see Robert West and John Augelli, Middle America: Its Lands and Peoples (2d ed., Englewood Cliffs, N.J., 1976). The forthcoming Atlas of Central American History, by Carolyn Hall and Héctor Pérez Brignoli (Norman, edp. 1999), will advance the historical geography of the region immensely.

Useful for their description of the evolution of the culture and society of Central America are Eric Wolf, Sons of the Shaking Earth (Chicago, 1959); William Sanders and Barbara Price, Mesoamerica and the Evolution of a Civilization (N.Y., 1968); and Mary Helms, Middle America, A Culture History of Heartlands and Frontiers (Englewood Cliffs, N.J., 1975). Doris Stone, Pre-Columbian Man Finds Central America (Cambridge, Mass., 1972), is an excellent introduction to the archaeology of Central America. A wide assortment of current statistical data may be found in the Statistical Abstract of Latin America (Los Angeles, 1958-, annual) and in the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean, Statistical Yearbook for Latin America and the Caribbean (Santiago de Chile, 1986- ). Much current statistical and other data may be obtained via the Internet. The Mexico & Central American Handbook (Bath, England, and N.Y., 1990- , annual) provides a handy guide to basic current information on each Central American state.

Several monographic studies offer more detail on historical topics or periods. Christopher Lutz's Santiago de Guatemala, 1541-1773: City, Caste, and the Colonial Experience (Norman, 1994) offers a superb demographic history of the capital city of colonial Central America, and W. George Lovell's Conquest and Survival in Colonial Guatemala: A Historical Geography of the Cuchumatán Highlands, 1500-1821 (Rev. ed., Montreal, 1992) provides depth on the colonial history of a heavily-populated Indian region of western Guatemala. W. L. Sherman, Forced Native Labor in 16th-Century Central America (Lincoln, 1979) is both informative and insightful regarding Spanish enslavement of the Indian population in the early colonial period, as is Linda Newson, Indian Survival in Nicaragua (Norman, 1987). Troy Floyd, The Anglo-Spanish Struggle for Mosquitia (Albuquerque, 1967), details the colonial rivalry for the eastern coast of Central America, and is well supplemented by Robert Naylor, Penny Ante Imperialism: The Mosquito Shore and the Bay of Honduras, 1600-1914: A Case Study in British Informal Empire (Rutherford, N. J., 1989); Craig Dozier, Nicaragua's Mosquito Shore: The Years of British and American Presence(Tuscaloosa, 1985); and Charles Hale, Resistance and Contradiction: Miskitu Indians and the Nicaraguan State, 1894-1987 (Stanford, 1994) for the more recent period. D. J. McCreery, Rural Guatemala, 1760-1940 (Stanford, 1994), is the definitive work on rural labor in Guatemala and the evolution of the agro-export economy.

Mario Rodríguez, The Cádiz Experiment in Central America, 1808-1826(Berkeley, 1978), brilliantly describes the origins of Central American liberalism and its roots in the Spanish constitutional experiment of 1812, while Louis Bumgartner, José del Valle of Central America, Durham, N.C., 1963), illuminates the life and career of one of Central America's most important leaders during the period when the isthmus gained independence. T. L. Karnes, Failure of Union, Central America, 1824-1975 (2d ed., Tempe, Az., 1975), surveys the repeated failures at federation, while W. J. Griffith, Empires in the Wilderness: Foreign Colonization and Development in Guatemala, 1834-1844 (Chapel Hill, 1965), explores in depth efforts to establish foreign colonies on Central American shores. R. L. Woodward, Jr., first in Class Privilege and Economic Development: The Consulado de Comercio of Guatemala, 1793-1871 (Chapel Hill, 1966), tracing the history of the merchant guild in Guatemala, and then in Rafael Carrera and the Emergence of the Republic of Guatemala, 1821-71 (Athens, Ga., 1993), focuses on the conservative dictatorship of Rafael Carrera in Guatemala within the context of the development of Central America during the first half-century of independence. Lowell Gudmundson, Costa Rica Before Coffee: Society and Economy on the Eve of the Export Boon (Baton Rouge, 1986), explains the early development of the Costa Rican rural society and its elite. Mario Rodríguez, A Palmerstonian Diplomat in Central America (Tucson, 1964), traces the influential career of Frederick Chatfield. Bradford Burns, Patriarch and Folk: The Emergence of Nicaragua, 1798-1858 (Cambridge, Mass., 1991), is a perceptive interpretation of 19th-century Nicaragua.

The 20th century has received more attention, but much of it has been of rather transitory quality. T. F. Anderson, Politics in Central America (N.Y., 1982), is a fine political overview, although it omits Costa Rica, covered by Charles Ameringer in Democracy in Costa Rica (N.Y., 1982). Also useful for understanding the development of the state in modern Central America is Howard Lentner, State Formation in Central America: The Struggle for Autonomy, Development, and Democracy (Westport, Conn., 1993), a work written from a rather severe Costa Rican bias. A series published by the Inter-Hemispheric Education Resource Center and written by Tom Barry, et al, on each Central American Country, entitled Inside . . . (Albuquerque, 1992-95), is useful for basic data on each country.

Nicaragua has received considerably attention from English-speaking writers. Neill Macaulay, The Sandino Affair (2d ed., Durham, N.C., 1985); William Kamman, A Search for Stability, 1925-1933 (Notre Dame, Ind., 1968); Jeffrey Gould, To Lead as Equals: Rural Protest and Political Consciousness in Chinandega, Nicaragua, 1912-1979 (Chapel Hill, 1990); Richard Millet, Guardians of the Dynasty (Maryknoll, N.Y., 1977); and Knut Walter, The Regime of Anastasio Somoza (Chapel Hill, 1993), all reveal especially important aspects of Nicaraguan history before the Sandino Revolution of 1979. The large literature on the Sandinista Revolution and its aftermath is dealt with in the historical section, but especially useful volumes include Dennis Gilbert, The Sandinistas: The Party and the Revolution (Oxford, 1988); Rose Spalding, Capitalists and Revolution in Nicaragua: Opposition and Accommodation, 1979-1993 (Chapel Hill, 1994); and Mark Everinghham, Revolution and the Multiclass Coalition in Nicaragua(Pittsburgh, 1996). On the peace process see James Dunkerley, The Pacification of Central America: Political Change in the Isthmus, 1987-1993 (London, 1994).

David Browning's El Salvador, Landscape and Society (Oxford, 1971) is a splendid contribution to Salvadoran history. T. F. Anderson has shed light on two important periods with his Matanza: El Salvador's Communist Revolt of 1932 (2d ed., Willimantic, Conn., 1992), on the 1932 revolt, and The War of the Dispossessed (Lincoln, 1981), on the 1969 "soccer war." The most perceptive work coming out of the "soccer war", however, is William Durham, Scarcity and Survival in Central America: Ecological Origins of the Soccer War (Stanford, 1979). On more recent events in El Salvador, see J. A. Dunkerley, The Long War: Dictatorship and Revolution in El Salvador (London 1982); Philip Russell, El Salvador in Crisis (Austin, 1984); and Tommie Sue Montgomery, Revolution in El Salvador: From Civil Strife to Civil Peace (2d ed., Boulder, 1995).

On Honduras see J. A. Morris, Honduras: Caudillo Politics and Military Rulers (Boulder, 1984), and Darío Euraque, Reinterpreting the Banana Republic: Region & State in Honduras, 1870-1972 (Chapel Hill, 1997)

Jim Handy, Gift of the Devil, A History of Guatemala (Boston, 1984) provides a brief overview of Guatemalan history, and his Revolution in the Countryside: Rural Conflict & Agrarian Reform in Guatemala, 1944-1954 (Chapel Hill, 1994) is a major contribution to understanding the revolutionary period. Two books by Paul Dosal have enhanced our understanding of politics and economic interest groups in modern Guatemala: Power in Transition: The Rise of Guatemala's Industrial Oligarchy, 1871-1994 (Westport, Conn., 1995), and Doing Business with the Dictators: A Political History of United Fruit in Guatemala, 1899-1944 (Wilmington, Del., Del., 1993). K. J. Grieb has given us a detailed study on a Guatemalan Caudillo, the Regime of Jorge Ubico, 1931-1944(Athens, Ohio, 1979), while Piero Gleijeses, Shattered Hope: The Guatemalan Revolution and the United States, 1944-1954 (Princeton, 1991), has covered the revolution with particular reference to the United States. Richard Adams, Crucifixion by Power: Essays on Guatemalan Social Structure, 1944-1966 (Austin, 1970) offers perceptive analyses and insights into the structure of society in modern Guatemala, while Robert Carmack (ed.), Harvest of Violence: The Maya Indians and the Guatemalan Crisis (Norman, 1988), contains descriptive accounts of the military repression in the post-revolutionary period. Rigoberta Menchú, I, . . . Rigoberta Menchú: An Indian Woman in Guatemala (London, 1984), and Susanne Jonas, The Battle for Guatemala: Rebels, Death Squads, and U.S. Power (Boulder, 1991), also illustrate of the plight of the Guatemalan masses since 1954.

In addition to his excellent study of Central American political leaders found in The Democratic Left in Exile (Miami, 1974), Charles Ameringer has written a fine biography of José Figueres, Don Pepe (Albuquerque, 1978). J. P. Bell, Crisis in Costa Rica (Austin, 1971) remains the best account in English of the 1948 revolution, and Bruce Wilson, Costa Rica: Politics, Economics, and Democracy (Boulder, 1998) is excellent for modern Costa Rica.

On Belize there are now several useful histories, including Narda Dobson's general History of Belize (London, 1973); O. N. Bolland, The Formation of a Colonial Society (Baltimore, 1977), and Belize: A New Nation in Central America(Boulder, 1986); Wayne Clegern, British Honduras, Colonial Dead End, 1859-1900 (Baton Rouge, 1967); and C. H. Grant, The Making of Modern Belize(Cambridge, 1976). Liter Hunter Krohn, et al (eds.) Readings in Belizean History(2d ed., Belize City, 1987) is a useful collection of previously-published articles on Belizean history.

On Panama and the Canal, David McCullough, Path Between the Seas: The Creation of the Panama Canal, 1870-1914 (N.Y., 1977), is excellent on building the canal, as are Walter LaFeber, The Panama Canal: The Crisis in Historical Perspective (3d ed., N.Y., 1989); and John Major, Prize Possession: The United States and the Panama Canal, 1903-1979 (Cambridge, 1993), on subsequent relations with the United States. On U.S. Policy in Central America in general, see John Coatsworth, Central America and the United States: The Clients and the Colossus (N.Y., 1994); Walter LaFeber, Inevitable Revolutions: The United States and Central America (2d ed., N.Y., 1993); and Thomas Leonard, Central America and the United States: The Search for Stability(Athens, Ga., 1991).

II. Travel Accounts
 

The observations of travelers and foreign residents are often enormously informative. Central America has a particular wealth of such literature, especially for the 19th and 20th centuries. Such accounts must be used with care because of the peculiar biases and interests of their authors and their individual shortcomings in observation. Their value varies depending on the topic of interest, and thus the following is only a representative selection.

Few foreign travelers came to Central America during the colonial period and fewer still wrote accounts. There are some notable exceptions, however. David Jickling has compiled excerpts from the writings of visitors to Guatemala, mostly in the colonial period, in La ciudad de Santiago de Guatemala: Por sus cronistas y viajeros (Antigua Guatemala, 1987). For the 16th century there is the Relación breve y verdadera de algunas cosas de las muchas que sucedieron al padre Fray Alonso Ponce en las Provincias de la Nueva España . . . escrita por dos religiosos, sus compañeros (2 vols., Madrid, 1873). Grace Metcalf has indexed that work in the Boletín Bibliográfico de Antropología Americana 7 (1943-44), pp. 56-84. Also very informative and entertaining, but subject to distortions stemming from the author's fierce anti-Spanish bias, is Thomas Gage, New Survey of the West Indies, originally published in London in 1648, with several subsequent editions under a variety of titles. Lionel Wafer, a physician who accompanied a buccaneering expedition, described the isthmus in A New Voyage and Description of the Isthmus of America (London, 1699). Later, another Englishman, John Cockburn, recorded his adventures in A Journey Over Land from the Gulf of Honduras to the Great South Sea (London, 1735). Captain John Henderson, An Account of the British Settlement of Honduras (London, 1809) is an early view of the British activities on the eastern coast.

Independence brought more visitors to the isthmus. F. D. Parker, Travels in Central America, 1821-1840 (Gainesville, Fla., 1970), examines and analyzes the most important of these early accounts, while Ricardo Fernández Guardia assembled and translated a selection of the 19th-century travel accounts in his Costa Rica en el siglo XIX (2d ed., San José, 1970). One of the first British accounts to appear during the first decade of independence was Orlando Roberts, Narrative of Voyages and Excursions on the East Coast and in the Interior of Central America(Edinburgh, 1827), in which he pointed to the advantages of direct commerce with the natives of the Nicaraguan coast. Life in Guatemala was depicted in A Brief Memoir of the Life of James Wilson (London, 1829), and in Henry Dunn, Guatimala, or, the Republic of Central America, in 1827-8 (London, 1829). Two Dutch accounts by J. Haefkens are Reize naar Guatemala (2 vols., Hague, 1827-28), and Central Amerika, vit een geschiedkundig, aardrijskundigen statistiek oogpunt beschouwd (Dordrecht, 1832). Explaining economic conditions in the early republic is L. H. C. Obert, Mémoire contenant un aperçu statistique de l'état de Guatemala (Bruxelles, 1840). The first major North American account was George Washington Montgomery, Narrative of a Journey to Guatemala in Central America, in 1838 (N.Y., 1839). It was soon followed by one of the most perceptive and informative accounts ever to be written about Central America, that of U.S. envoy John Lloyd Stephens, Incidents of Travel in Central America, Chiapas, and Yucatan(2 vols., N.Y., 1841, with many subsequent editions). About the same time, Thomas Young published a revealing description of the Honduran north coast and Bay Islands, Narrative of a Residence on the Mosquito Shore (London, 1842). Other descriptive accounts of the 1840s include Philippe la Renaudière, Mexique et Guatemala (Paris, 1843); the pro-Liberal autobiographical account of Joseph Sue, Henri le Chancelier: Souvenirs d'un voyage dans l'Amérique Centrale (Paris, 1857); Robert Dunlop, Travels in Central America(London, 1847); Frederick Crowe, The Gospel in Central America (London, 1850); and John Baily, Central America (London, 1850).

The peak of travel literature popularity occurred in the latter half of the 19th century, when a number of notable works described Central America. The most informative were the works of E. G. Squier, the U.S. envoy to Central America, written in the 1850s and dealing principally with Honduras and Nicaragua, but providing much data on the other states as well. C. F. Reichardt, Centro-Amerika (Braunschweig, 1851), has an excellent map and notes on the principal towns. There were several French accounts around mid century: the French chargé d'affaires, Victor Herrán, Notice sur les cinque états du Centre-Amérique (Bordeaux, 1853); André Cornette, Relation d'un voyage de Mexico á Guatémala dans la cours de l'année 1855 (Paris, 1858); Charles E. Brasseur de Bourbourg, Aperçu d'un voyage dans les états de San-Salvador et de Guatémala(Paris, 1857); and Arthur Morelet, Voyage dans l'Amérique Centrale, l'ile de Cuba, et le Yucatan (2 vols., Paris, 1857; English edition in London, 1871). Another useful European impression is Karl Ritter von Scherzer, Travels in the Free States of Central America (London, 1857). The astute observations of the Chilean chargé d'affaires, Francisco Solano Astaburuaga, made principally from Costa Rica, are found in his Repúblicas de Centro América (Santiago de Chile, 1857). An important U.S. account was William V. Wells, Explorations and Adventures in Honduras, Comprising Sketches of Travel in the Gold Regions of Olancho, and a Review of the History and General Resources of Central America(N.Y., 1857). Sympathetic descriptions of William Walker's foray into Central America are Walker's own The War in Nicaragua (Mobile, 1860); and Lawrence Oliphant, Patriots and Filibusterers (London, 1860). Detailed descriptions of the isthmus in the following decade are Wilhelm Marr, Reise nach Central Amerika ( 2 vols., Hamburg, 1863); Felix Belly, A travers l'Amérique Centrale (2 vols., Paris, 1868); and Frederick Boyle, A Ride Across a Continent: A Personal Narrative of Wanderings through Nicaragua and Costa Rica (London, 1868). The wife of a British diplomat, Mrs. H. G. Foote, published perceptive observations of Central America in the 1860s in her Recollections of Central America and the West Coast of Africa (London, 1869). On Panama the observation of Charles Bidwell, The Isthmus of Panama (London, 1865), who served as British Consul there for nineteen years are very informative. See also F. N. Otis, History of the Panama Railroad and of the Pacific Mail Steamship Company (N.Y., 1867), written by the medical officer of the Panama Railroad. Another is Chauncey Griswold, The Isthmus of Panama, and What I saw There ((N. Y., 1852). J. W. Boddam-Wetham, Across Central America (London, 1877), describes Guatemala, including the Verapaz, Los Altos, and the Petén, in the early years of the Barrios regime, with detailed information on economic and social conditions. The French vice-counsel in El Salvador, Joseph Laferrière, recorded his impressions in De Paris à Guatemala; notes de voyages au Centre-Amérique, 1866-1875 (Paris, 1877). Other valuable French accounts of the period are Louis Verbugghe, À travers l'Isthme de Panama (Paris, 1879); and Alexandre Lambert de Sainte-Croix, Onze mois au Mexique et au Centre-Amérique (Paris, 1897). Otto Stoll published a descriptive account, Guatemala: Reisen und Schilerungen aus den Jahren 1878-1883 (Leipzig, 1886), as well as a pioneering ethnographical work on the Guatemalan Maya, Zur Ethnographie der Republik Guatemala (Zürich, 1884). British accounts by Mary Lester (María Soltera, pseud.), A Lady's Ride across Spanish Honduras (Edinburgh, 1884), and Anne and Alfred Maudslay, A Glimpse of Guatemala and some Notes on the Ancient Monuments of Central America(London, 1899), are both entertaining and informative. Social and political observations are blended exotically with zoological and botanical data in Thomas Belt, The Naturalist in Nicaragua (London, 1874). The best of many North American accounts is Helen Sanborn (the Chase & Sanborn coffee heiress), A Winter in Central America and Mexico (Boston, 1866). E. Bradford Burns, Eadweard Muybridge in Guatemala, 1875: The Photographer as Social Recorder(Berkeley, 1986), is a fine collection of photographs of rural Guatemala, while photographer Henry G. Morgan, Vistas de Costa Rica (San José, 1989), displays 56 illustrative rural and urban scenes of Costa Rica in 1892. Other late 19th-century U.S. accounts are Frank Vincent, In and Out of Central America (N.Y., 1890); Hezekiah Butterworth, Lost in Nicaragua(Boston, 1898); R. H. Davis, Three Gringos in Venezuela and Central America (N.Y., 1896); and Albert Morlan, A Hoosier in Honduras (Indianapolis, 1897). Henry Blaney, The Golden Caribbean (Boston, 1900), describes Central American banana lands and includes lovely water colors of Central American ports and cities at the turn of the century. J. W. G. Walker, head of the U.S. Canal Commission, wrote a valuable report, Ocean to Ocean: An Account, Personal and Historical, of Nicaragua and its People (Chicago, 1902). A useful description of the Mosquito Coast in 1899 is Charles N. Bell, Tangweera: Life and Adventures Among Gentle Savages(Austin, 1989). For an excellent collection of Guatemala City photographs from the mid-19th century through the 1930s, see Diego F. Molina, Cuando hablan las campanas: Album fotográfico del ayer (Guatemala, 1989).

The early 20th century saw a continuation of the popularity of travel accounts, but their quality seems to have suffered, for many are little more than rehashes of earlier accounts and reinforcements of older prejudices. The classic among such trash is G. L. Morrill, Rotten Republics (Chicago, 1916). More objective is Nevin Winters, Guatemala and her People of Today (Boston, 1909), but greater detail appears in C. W. Domville-Fife, Guatemala and the States of Central America (N.Y., 1913). Other descriptive accounts are Frederick Palmer, Central America and its Problems: An Account of a Journey from the Río Grande to Panama(N.Y., 1910); G. P. Putnam, The Southland of North America (N.Y., 1913); and W. H. Koebel, Central America (London, [1917]). James Bryce, South American Observations and Impressions (N.Y., 1912), contains extensive description of the Panama Canal construction. Perceptive accounts by Spaniards are José Segarra and Joaquín Julía, Escursión por América: Costa Rica (San José, 1907); and Jacinto Capella, La ciudad tranquilla (Guatemala) (Madrid, 1916). Dana Munro relates the experiences of the first U.S. Ph.D. candidate doing dissertation research on the isthmus in A Student in Central America, 1914-1916(New Orleans, 1983).

Several travel accounts illuminate the years between the World Wars, beginning with R. W. Babson, A Central American Journey (Yonkers, N.Y., 1920). Eugene Cunningham describes in lively style his overland jaunt through the isthmus in Gypsying through Central America (N.Y., 1922). Similar is Morely Roberts, On the Earthquake Line: Minor Adventures in Central America(London, 1924), which pays greater attention to social conditions and customs. L. E. Elliott, Central America, New Paths in Ancient Lands (London, 1924), provides greater detail. Wallace Thompson, Rainbow Countries of Central America (N.Y., 1926), is descriptive and informative. Arthur Ruhl, The Central Americans (N.Y., 1928), offers impressions of these countries on the eve of the Great Depression; and John W. and Evan Hannstein Smith, Twentieth-Century Pioneer: The Adventures of J. W. Smith in the American Southwest, Mexico, and Central America (South Woodstock, Vt., 1993), tells the story of a Texan who settled in Central America before and during the Depression. Aldous Huxley, Beyond the Mexique Bay(N.Y., 1934), is delightful as well as informative. His fascination with Guatemala is shared by several others in the 1930s, notably J. H. Jackson, Notes on a Drum (N.Y., 1937); Vera Kelsey and Lilly de Jongh Osborne, Four Keys to Guatemala (N.Y., 1939); and Erna Fergusson, Guatemala (N.Y., 1938). Frances Emery-Waterhouse, the wife of a United Fruit Company engineer, describes life in the banana country of Guatemala in the late 1930s and early 1940s in Banana Paradise (N.Y., 1947). William Krehm, Democracies and Tyrannies of the Caribbean(Westport, Conn., 1984), is a vivid, day-by-day account of events as seen by a Time magazine reporter in the 1940s.

Many of the accounts since World War II do no more than gloss over the region's picturesque scenery and people. A few, however, provide insight into the political, social, or economic conditions. Ralph Hancock, The Rainbow Republics(N.Y., 1947) reflects conditions and appearances in the mid-1940s. Jean Hersey, Halfway to Heaven, A Guatemala Holiday (N.Y., 1947), offers more sentimental insight into Guatemalan life. Hakon Morne, Caribbean Symphony(N.Y., 1955), describes the adventures of a Finnish couple in Panama, Costa Rica, and Nicaragua. Maria Schwauss, a German woman, describes her Guatemalan experiences in Tropenspiegel: Tagebuch einer deutschen Frau in Guatemala(Halle, 1949). David Doge, How Lost was my Weekend (N.Y., 1948), is an amusing and irreverent description of the problems of a foreign writer attempting to establish residence there. Maud Oakes, Beyond the Windy Place, Life in the Guatemalan Highlands (N.Y., 1951), recounts her experiences in Todos Santos and Huehuetenango. Tord Wallstrom, Wayfarer in Central America (N.Y., 1955), is a Swedish journalist's perceptive observation. Lilly de Jongh Osborne, Four Keys to El Salvador (N.Y., 1956), is descriptive of El Salvador at mid-century, and Donald E. Lundberg, Adventures in Costa Rica (2d ed., San José, 1968), provides a great deal of specific information on that country. Nicholas Wollaston, Red Rumba: A Journey through the Caribbean and Central America(London, 1962), includes a number of interviews with ordinary citizens. Hans Helfritz, Zentralamerika; die Ländebrücke im Karibishen Raum (Berlin, 1963), contains detailed descriptions of the region. Selden Rodman, Road to Panama (N.Y., 1966), is a travel guide with chapters on each country from Mexico to Panama. Albert Lisi, Round Trip from Poptún, A Journey in Search of the Maya (N.Y., 1968), describes adventures in highland Guatemala and the Petén. Attention to contemporary art occupied Manuel González, De Guatemala a Nicaragua: Diario del viaje de un estudiante de arte (México, 1968). Very useful is the impressionistic travel guide, containing current political, social, and economic descriptions, prepared by Hilda Cole Espy and Lex Creamer, Jr., Another World: Central America (N.Y., 1970). Paul Kennedy, an American journalist, has provided a useful survey of the post-war years in Middle Beat: A Correspondent's View of Mexico, Guatemala, and El Salvador (N.Y., 1971). The articles describing the travels in Central America of Luis Marañón Richi, Secretary to the Spanish Minister of Commerce, Centroamérica paso a paso (Madrid, 1968), are descriptive and perceptive. Doug Richmond, Central America: How to Get There and Back in One Piece with a Minimum of Hassle (Tucson, 1974), reflects the situation in the 1970s. Graham Greene, Getting to Know the General: The Story of an Involvement (N.Y., 1984), relates Greene's visits to Panama and conversations with Gen. Omar Torrijos during the canal treaty debates (1976-78). Herbert Knapp, Red, White, and Blue Paradise: The American Canal Zone in Panama (San Diego, 1984), is a fervent defense of the U.S. Panama Canal Zone by a resident.

The crises of the 1980s provoked many accounts by foreign visitors, but among the most sensitive and poignant are three on Guatemala: Jean-Marie Simon, Guatemala: Eternal Spring - Eternal Tyranny (N.Y., 1987); Victor Perera, Unfinished Conquest: The Guatemalan Tragedy(Berkeley, 1993); and W. G. Lovell, A Beauty that Hurts: Life and Death in Guatemala(Toronto, 1995). Lou Dematteis and Chris Vail, Nicaragua, A Decade of Revolution (N.Y., 1991), provides stunning photographs from both sides in the Nicaraguan civil war of the 'eighties. Other contemporary accounts of note include Lester Langley, The Real Stakes: Understanding Central America Before its Too Late (N.Y., 1985); Tom Buckley, Violent Neighbors: El Salvador, Central America, and the United States(N.Y., 1984); Christopher Dickey, With the Contras: A Reporter in the Wilds of Nicaragua (N.Y., 1987), one of the more useful eye-witness accounts of the contra war in Nicaragua; and Peter Canby (ed.), The Heart of the Sky: Travels Among the Maya (N.Y., 1992).

Among current travel guides, see the latest edition of the Mexico & Central American Handbook, Fodor's Central America, or for the more adventuresome Lonely Planet's Central America on a Shoestring (3d ed., Oakland, Calif., 1997). Beatrice Blake and Anne Becher, The New Key to Costa Rica (7th ed., San José, 1987) is an excellent guide to Costa Rica.
 

III. History
 

A. General Histories and Reference Works
 

The dearth of general histories of the isthmus has in recent years been relieved by both brief syntheses of Central American history, and more detailed, collaborative histories. The most ambitious of the latter projects is that of the Facultad Latinoamericana de Ciencias Sociales (FLACSO), under the general editorship of Edelberto Torres-Rivas, Historia general de Centroamérica (6 vols., Madrid, 1993; 2d ed., San José, 1994). Elizabeth Fonseca has written a very convenient, one-volume summary of this set, Centroamérica, su historia (San José, 1996). H. H. Bancroft's History of Central America (3 vols., San Francisco, 1886-87), retains some utility, as do the briefer histories of F. D. Parker, The Central American Republics (London, 1964), and Mario Rodríguez, Central America(Englewood Cliffs, N.J., 1965), but they have been largely eclipsed by Pérez Brignoli, Brief History of Central America (Berkeley, 1989), Weaver, Inside the Volcano (Boulder, 1994), and Bethell (ed.), Central America since Independence(Cambridge, 1991), as well as by this work. In addition, from an Honduran perspective, there is Rodolfo Pastor Fasquelle, Historia de Centroamérica(México, 1988); and still useful, especially for the Pre-Columbian and Hispanic periods, with less than half of the final volume devoted to independent Central America, is Ernesto Chinchilla Aguilar, Historia de Centroamérica (3 vols., Guatemala, 1974-77). Mario Monteforte Toledo, Centro América: Subdesarrollo y dependencia (México, 1972), remains useful from a dependency framework and for the considerable statistical data it includes. Gerhard Sandner, Zentralamerika und der Ferne Karibische Westen: Konjunkturen, Krisen u. Konflikte, 1503-1984(Stuttgart, 1985), is a splendidly detailed historical geography of the region. A valuable collection of essays on the emergence of the national states in the several states of the isthmus is Arturo Taracena and Jean Piel (eds.), Identidades nacionales y estado moderno en Centroamérica (San José, 1995). Dana Munro, The Five Republics of Central America (N.Y., 1918), surveys the 19th century, but is most useful for detail and analysis on the early 20th century. Another older survey is Antonio Batres Jáuregui, La América Central ante la historia (3 vols., Guatemala, 1916-49), but it contains nothing after 1921. Of more antiquarian than historical value is Federico Hernández de León, El libro de efemérides (6 vols., Guatemala, 1925-63), which contains a chapter of historical data for each day of the year. Miguel A. Gallardo (comp.), Cuatro constituciones federales de Centro América (San Salvador, 1945), provides a useful compilation of the federal constitutions from 1824 to 1921, but see also Ricardo Gallardo (ed.), Las constituciones de la República Federal de Centroamérica (2 vols., Madrid, 1958). Current Central American constitutions may be consulted on the Internet at "Constitutions of the Americas," (http://www.georgetown.edu/ LatAmerPolitical/Constitutions/constitutions.htm). For general reference, with hundreds of entries on Central American topics, Barbara Tenenbaum (ed.), Encyclopedia of Latin American History and Culture (5 vols., N.Y., 1996), is indispensable.

The military history of Central America through about 1920 is surveyed in some detail in J. N. Rodríguez, Estudios de historia militar de Centroamérica(Guatemala, 1930); and Pedro Zamora Castellanos, Vida militar de Centro América (Guatemala, 1934). For more recent periods see Gabriel Aguilera Peralta, El fusil y el olivo: La cuestión militar en Centroamérica (San José, 1989). Adrian English, Armed Forces of Latin America: Their Histories, Development, Present Strength, and Military Potential (London, 1984), is an excellent reference work for Central America's military forces.

Modern histories of the individual states are still few, but several recent volumes have begun to fill the vacuum. For Guatemala, Jorge Luján Muñoz, Historia general de Guatemala (5 vols., Guatemala, 1993-96) has brought together an impressive array of scholarly essays on that country's history. Francis Polo Sifontes, Historia de Guatemala (Guatemala, 1988), is a school text for Guatemalan history, but is rather thin on the 20th century. Jim Handy, Gift of the Devil, A History of Guatemala (Boston, 1984), on the other hand, deals primarily with the period since 1944, but is a readable survey. Also focussing mainly on the period since 1944 is the innovative interpretation of Nelson Amaro, Guatemala: Historia despierta (Guatemala, 1992). Another brief survey, concentrating principally on the 19th and 20th century is Fernando González Davison, Guatemala 1500-1970 (reflexiones sobre su desarrollo histórico) (Guatemala, 1987). Mónica Toussaint has both a brief survey of Guatemalan history from the late colonial period to 1920, Guatemala (México, 1988), and a compilation of articles and documents on Guatemalan history, Guatemala (México, 1988). A major contribution to the social history of Guatemala is Marta Casaus Arzú, Guatemala: Linaje y racismo (San José, 1992), using detailed genealogical data to trace the elites from colonial times to the present and concluding that racism is responsible for the repression of the indigenous majority. Regina Wagner, Historia social y económica de Guatemala, 1524-1900 (Guatemala, 1994), has synthesized the work of a several scholars into a readable and convenient socio-economic survey. Manuel Eduardo Hübner and Enrique Parrilla Barascut, Guatemala en la historia: Un pueblo que se resiste a morir (Guatemala, 1992), perpetuates the liberal interpretation of Guatemala's history in considerable detail to 1945. Carlos Guzmán-Böckler and Jean-Loup Herbert, Guatemala: Una interpretación histórico-social(Mexico, 1970), is a thoughtful, Marxist history in a dependency framework that pays considerable attention to Guatemala's unique social structure and ethnic divisions. J. C. Castellanos Cambranes (ed.), 500 años de lucha por la tierra: Estudios sobre propiedad rural y reforma agraria en Guatemala (2 vols., Guatemala, 1992), is a solid collection of articles on land tenure, social class, and land reform from the colonial period to the present. Clemente Marroquín Rojas, Historia de Guatemala (Guatemala, 1971), is injudicious in its use of the facts, but offers interesting hypotheses in it's nationalistic interpretation. A collaborative work of considerable utility that looks at government policy toward the majority indigenous population from the Conquest to the present, is Carol Smith and Marilyn Moore (eds.), Guatemalan Indians and the State, 1540 to 1988 (Austin, 1990). A useful source on that topic is Jorge Skinner-Klée (comp.), Legislación indigenista de Guatemala (2d ed., Guatemala, 1995). Juan de Dios Augilar details the military history, principally since independence, in Los cuarteles de Guatemala (Guatemala, 1993). Francis Polo Sifontes, Nuestros gobernantes, 1821-1981 (Guatemala, 1981), briefly sketches Guatemala's chiefs of state. Luis Mariñas Otero, Las constituciones de Guatemala(Madrid, 1958), is valuable both for its documents and its commentary. Works on recent Guatemalan history are dealt with elsewhere in this essay. Other useful reference works include J. L. Arriola, El libro de las geonimías de Guatemala; diccionario entimológico (Guatemala, 1973), describing thousands of Guatemalan place names; Carlos Haussler Yela, Diccionario general de Guatemala (3 vols., Guatemala, 1983), a compendium of biographical sketches and other entries on events and places in Guatemalan history; and Alfredo Guerra Borges, Compendio de geografía económica y humana de Guatemala (2 vols., Guatemala, 1981), is the most detailed economic geography. Regina Wagner has chronicled the substantial German influence in Los alemanes en Guatemala, 1828-1844 (2d ed., Guatemala, 1996).

Narda Dobson's History of Belize (London, 1973) is the most comprehensive general history of Belize, although she ignores major Spanish sources. Mexican approaches, with greater emphasis on the modern period and relations with Mexico are M. E. Paz Salinas, Belize, el despertar de una nación(México, 1979); and Mónica Toussaint Ribot, Belice: Una historia olvidada(México, 1993). For the 20th century, see O. Nigel Bolland, Belize: A New Nation in Central America(Boulder, 1986). Other useful surveys include D. A. G. Waddell, British Honduras: A Historical and Contemporary Survey (London, 1961); W. D. Setzekorn, Formerly British Honduras (2d ed., Athens, Ohio, 1981); John Burdon, Brief Sketch of British Honduras, Past, Present and Future(London, 1927); William Donohoe, A History of British Honduras (Montreal, 1946); and Archibald Gibbs, British Honduras: An Historical and Descriptive Account of the Colony from its Settlement, 1670 (London, 1883). The early history of settlement is treated by O. N. Bolland, The Formation of Colonial Society: Belize from Conquest to Crown Colony (Baltimore, 1977). See also Bolland and Assad Shoman, Land in Belize, 1765-1871 (Mona, Jamaica: 1977), and Bolland, Colonialism and Resistance in Belize: Essays in Historical Sociology. (Benque Viejo del Carmen, Belize, 1988). The diplomatic history of the settlement to the 20th century is R. A. Humphries, The Diplomatic History of British Honduras, 1638-1901 (London, 1961). For recollections of the early Menonite colonists in Belize, see Gerhard S. Koop, Pioneer years in Belize (Belize City, 1991).

For Honduras, Luis Mariñas Otero, Honduras (Madrid, 1963), is easily the most complete history. Mario Argueta and Edgardo Quiñónez, Historia de Honduras (2d ed., Tegucigalpa, 1979) is a traditional textbook history. Medardo Mejía, Historia de Honduras (6 vols., 1983-1990), offers considerable detail with little analysis. For a brief survey, there is Alison Acker, Honduras, the Making of a Banana Republic (Boston, 1988), and from a Honduran perspective, Marvin Barahona, Evolución histórica de la identidad nacional (Tegucigalpa, 1991), but for the periods which they cover, Darío Euraque's Reinterpreting the Banana Republic: Region and State in Honduras, 1870-1972 (Chapel Hill, 1996) and James Morris, Honduras: Caudillo Politics and Military Rulers (Boulder, 1984) are more authoritative. Mariñas also compiled Las constituciones de Honduras(Madrid, 1962). An excellent anthology or readings and documents on Honduras within the context of New World history, is Héctor Pérez Brignoli, et al. (eds.), De la sociedad colonial a la crisis de los años 30 (Tegucigalpa, 1972). Another large collection of readings and documents on Honduran history is Pablo Yankelevich (comp.), Honduras (México, 1990). Honduran labor history is treated by Víctor Meza, Historia del movimiento obrero hondureño (Tegucigalpa, 1980); Mario Argueta, Historia laboral de Honduras: de la conquista al siglo XIX(Tegucigalpa, 1985); and Mario Pozas, Luchas del movimiento obrero hondureño(San José, 1989). Marcelingo Bonilla, Diccionario histórico-geográfico de las poblaciones de Honduras (2d ed., Tegucigalpa, 1952), has some reference value, and Carlos Aguilar B., Texto de enseñanza de la geografía de Honduras (2 vols., Tegucigalpa, 1969-70), is a complete school geography. Rodolfo Pastor F., Biografía de San Pedro Sula, 1536-1954 (San Pedro Sula, 1989), is an excellent survey of the history of that major Honduran city. Mario Argueta, Los alemanes en Honduras: Datos para su estudio (Tegucigalpa, 1992), briefly chronicles German merchants in Honduras from the late 19th century to World War II; and his Diccionario histórico-biográfico hondureño (Tegucigalpa, 1990), is a useful reference, although it is superseded by Ramiro Colindres Ortega (ed.), Enciclopedia hondureña ilustrada: De personajes históricos y figuras contemporáneos (4 vols., Tegucigalpa, 1994).

Browning's brilliant 1971 Landscape and Society and Russell's 1984 El Salvador in Crisis are the most important surveys of Salvadoran history, but Roque Dalton, El Salvador (Havana, 1963), Mario Flores Macal, Origen, desarrollo y crisis de las formas de dominación en El Salvador(San José, 1983), and Rafael Guidos Vejar, Ascenso del militarismo en El Salvador (San José, 1982), are also insightful on the political history. An earlier work of great value is Rodolfo Barón Castro's monumental study of the development of the Salvadoran population from pre-Columbian times through 1942, La población de El Salvador(Madrid, 1942). Manuel Vidal, Nociones de historia de Centro América (especial para El Salvador) (10th ed., San Salvador, 1982), is useful for placing El Salvador in the context of Central America, but is thin on the 20^th century. Similarly, José Figeac, Recordatorio histórico de la República de El Salvador (S. S., 1938), offers much detail on the 19th century, rather cursory coverage of the colonial period, and nothing on the 20th century. Francisco Gavidia, Historia moderna de El Salvador (2d ed., San Salvador, 1958), extends only to 1814. Jorge Lardé y Larín, El Salvador: Historia de sus pueblos, villas y ciudades (San Salvador, 1957), details local history, while a large number of biographical sketches and a brief account of the founding of San Salvador is provided in the Academia Salvadoreña de la Historia, San Salvador y sus hombres (San Salvador, 1938). María and Freddy Leistenschneider, Gobernantes de El Salvador (San Salvador, 1980), provides a handy reference for biographical data on El Salvador's chiefs of state, and they also have begun to publish individual monographs on the Administración del general Francisco Malespín (San Salvador, 1983); Administración del general Francisco Morazán (San Salvador, 1982); Administraciones del Coronel Joaquín San Martín (San Salvador, [198?]); Dr. Rafael Zaldívar, recopilación de documentos históricos relativos a su administración (San Salvador, 1977); and Teniente Coronel Oscar Osorio y su administración (San Salvador, 1981). J. N. Rodríguez Ruíz, Historia de las instituciones jurídicas salvadoreñas (San Salvador, 1951), is a competent history of Salvadoran judicial development to the mid-20th century. The multi-volume Diccionario histórico enciclopédico de la República de El Salvador, published intermittently since 1927 in a variety of formats, is a sometimes inconsistent and confusing series of historical materials, but it contains much of value. The Diccionario geográfico de la República de El Salvador, published irregularly by the Dirección General de Estadística y Censos in San Salvador since 1940, provides a handy guide to place names. For Salvadoran constitutions prior to 1960, see Ricardo Gallardo, Las constituciones de El Salvador (2 vols., Madrid, 1961). Salvadoran labor history is dealt with by Rafael Menjívar, Formación y lucha del proletariado industrial salvadoreño (San Salvador, 1979).

The destruction of the national archives in the 1931 earthquake has severely handicapped Nicaraguan historians, but recently they have begun to write general histories of the country as well as competent monographs. The Sandinista Revolution attracted much new study by foreigners. The broad lines of Nicaraguan history were well laid out by David Radell in his Ph.D. dissertation, An Historical Geography of Western Nicaragua: The Spheres of Influence of León, Granada and Managua, 1519-1965 (Berkeley, 1969). Notable in his efforts to combine Nicaraguan nationalism with Marxist methodology is Jaime Wheelock Román, Native Roots of the Nicaraguan Anticolonial Struggle (N.Y., 1979), and Imperialismo y dictadura (México, 1975). Other competent general histories include David Close, Nicaragua: Politics, Economics and Society (London, 1988), and Francisco Lainez, Nicaragua: Colonialismo español, yanki y ruso(Guatemala, 1987). Detail and analysis characterize a collaborative history by Alberto Lanuza, J. L. Vásquez, Amarú Barahona, and Amalia Chamorro, Economía y sociedad en la construcción del estado en Nicaragua (San José, 1983). Traditionally, many Nicaraguan historians have concentrated on the rich local history of antiquarian nature, or on retelling the story of the William Walker episode or the U.S. intervention of 1912-33. Aldo Díaz Lacayo, Gobernantes de Nicaragua (1821-1956) (Managua, 1996) provides brief sketches of the chiefs of state. The best early histories are those of Tomás Ayón, Historia de Nicaragua desde los tiempos más remotos hasta 1852 (3 vols., Managua, 1882-89; 3d ed., 1977), which despite its title extends only to 1821; and J. D. Gámez, Historia de Nicaragua desde los tiempos pre-históricos hasta 1860 en sus relaciones con España, México y Centroamérica (3d. ed., Managua, 1975), especially useful for diplomatic history. Gámez also wrote an informative history of the Mosquito coast, Historia de la costa de Mosquitos, hasta 1894, a useful sequel to Floyd's Anglo-Spanish Struggle for Mosquitia, which extends only to 1790. See also the excellent work of Barbara Potthast, Die Mosquitoküste im Spannungsfeld Britischer und Spanisher Politik, 1502-1821 (Cologne, 1988). A brief survey of Nicaraguan history may be found in T. W. Walker, Nicaragua, Land of Sandino(3d., Boulder, 1991). Traditional political histories of some utility include Alberto Medina, Efemérides nicaragüenses y artículos históricos (Managua, 1961). A. S. Aguilar, Reseña histórica de la diócesis de Nicaragua (Madrid, 1958), contains both documents and detailed commentary on the ecclesiastical history. Nicaragua's labor history has been surveyed by Carlos Pérez Bermuda and Onofre Guevara, El movimiento obrero en Nicaragua (Managua, 1985). For the many Nicaraguan constitutions through the mid-20th century, see Emilio Alvarez Lejarza, Las constituciones de Nicaragua (Madrid, 1958). Roser Solá Montserrat, Geografía y estructuras económicas de Nicaragua (Managua, 1990), is a detailed, university text on Nicaragua's geography.

A useful introduction to Costa Rican history, especially its more recent development, is Marc Edelman and Joanne Kene (eds.), The Costa Rica Reader(N.Y., 1989). The growth of a strong school of history at the University of Costa Rica has resulted in historical publications of high quality in recent years, and has begun to produce more general works on the social and economic history of the country, notably Vladimir de la Cruz (ed.), Historia general de Costa Rica (6 vols. San José, 1988-89); V. H. Acuña Ortega and Iván Molina Jiménez, Historia económica y social de Costa Rica (1750-1950) (San José, 1991); Carlos Meléndez Ch., Historia de Costa Rica (San José, 1979); J. L. Vega Carballo, Historia social y económica de Costa Rica: Fuentes y bibliografía (San José, 1977), Hacía una interpretación del desarrollo costarricense (4th ed., San José, 1973), and Orden y progreso: La formación del estado nacional en Costa Rica (San José, 1981); and J. A. Cordero, El ser de la nacionalidad costarricense (2d ed., San José, 1980). Samuel Stone, Dinastía de los conquistadores (San José, 1976), studies in great depth the political and genealogical ties among Costa Ricans from the Conquest to the present in a model of scholarship and ingenuity. Richard, Karen, and Mavis Biesanz, The Costa Ricans (Englewood Cliffs, N.J., 1983), is a vivid portrayal of life in Costa Rica. Several older histories still have some utility, including C. L. Jones, Costa Rica and Civilization in the Caribbean (Madison, 1935); and Carlos Monge A., Historia de Costa Rica (San José, 1947). A major 19th-century history is Francisco Montero Barrantes, Elementos de historia de Costa Rica (2 vols., San José, 1892-94). Montero also wrote a descriptive Geografía de Costa Rica (Barcelona, 1892), but that has been superseded by Carolyn Hall's fine Costa Rica, A Geographical Interpretation in Historical Perspective (Boulder, 1985). Hernán Peralta compiled the Constituciones de Costa Rica(Madrid, 1962). Vladimir de la Cruz, Las luchas sociales en Costa Rica, 1870-1930 (San José, 1980), provides a history of the emergence of the labor movement in Costa Rica, but see also Edwin Chacón León, El sindicalismo en Costa Rica (San José, 1980). An excellent urban history is Carlos Araya Pochet and Priscilla Albarracín González, Historia de régimen municipal en Costa Rica (San José, 1986). Eugenio Herrera Balharry, Los alemanes y el estado cafetalero(San José, 1988) is a careful study of German infiltration of the Costa Rican coffee elite. A German approach, Jochen Fuchs, Costa Rica: von der Conquista bis zur "Revolution;" historische, ökonomische und soziale Determinanten eines konsensualistisch-neutralistischen Modells in Zentralamerika (Berlin, 1991), emphasizes the uniqueness of the Costa Rican experience to the extent that Fuchs doubts that it serves as a model for success elsewhere.

Greater attention has been given to the Panama transit route than to the history of the country generally, but there are several useful surveys: Almon Wright, Panama: Tension's Child, 1502-1989 (N.Y., 1990); Ernesto Castillero R., Historia de Panamá (8th ed., Pan., 1982); David Howarth, Panama, Four Hundred Years of Dreams and Cruelty (N.Y., 1966); Guy Vattier, Les grandes heures de l'histoire de Panama (Paris, 1965); and John and Mavis Biesanz, The People of Panama (N.Y., 1955). Rodrigo Espino and Raúl Martínez, Panamá(México, 1988), is a brief history from the Spanish conquest through 1903, with emphasis on the 19th century. Another brief history is Ricaurte Soler, Panamá: Historia de una crisis (Panamá, 1989). Soler has also compiled El pensamiento político en Panamá en los siglos XIX y XX (Panamá, 1988), an anthology of Panamanian political thought. John Niemier, The Panama Story (Portland, Ore., 1968), tells Panama's history since 1850 as reflected in the Panama Star & Herald. Manuel Alba C., Cronología de los gobernantes de Panamá, 1510-1967 (Panamá, 1967), provides biographical sketches of its chiefs of state, and Jorge Conte Porras, Panameños ilustres (San José, 1988), is another useful biographical reference work. Carlos Guevara Mann, Panamanian Militarism: A Historical Interpretation (Athens, Ohio, 1996), provides insight on Panama's military history. Andrés Achong, Orígenes del movimiento obrero panameño (Panamá, 1980), and M. A. Gandásegui, et al., Las luchas obreras en Panamá, 1850-1978 (Panamá, 1980), are serious studies of the history of Panamanian labor. See also the section on 20th-century Panama in III-F, below.
 

B. Pre-Columbian Central America
 

The literature on the indigenous peoples of Central America, particularly on the Maya, is vast, and the works mentioned here are only an introduction to the study of pre-Columbian life. Susan F. Magee (comp.), Mesoamerican Archaeology, A Guide to the Literature and Other Information Sources (Austin, 1981), suggests earlier sources for the study of Central American Indians, but the most valuable tool is Robert Wauchope, et al. (eds.), Handbook of Middle American Indians(Austin, 1964-76, with later supplements), which contains articles by leading scholars on various aspects of indigenous culture and history.

An excellent introduction to the Indian civilizations of all Central America is Doris Stone, Pre-Columbian Man Finds Central America (Cambridge, Mass., 1972), which treats more fully than do most general works the non-Mayan parts of the isthmus. The standard general histories of the Maya is S. G. Morley, G. W. Brainerd, and R. J. Sharer, The Ancient Maya (4th ed., Stanford, 1983), and Michael Coe, The Maya (5th ed., N.Y., 1993). Other useful surveys include Norman Hammond, Ancient Maya Civilization (New Brunswick, N.J., 1982); J. S. Henderson, The World of the Ancient Maya (Ithaca, N.Y., 1981); and J. Eric Thompson, The Rise and Fall of Maya Civilization (2d ed., Norman, 1966). Another important introduction to the region is Frederick W. Lange, Paths to Central American Prehistory (Niwot, Colo., 1996). Jeremy Sabloff, The New Archaeology and the Ancient Maya (N.Y., 1990), is a fine survey of the archaeology of the Mayan area and of newer interpretations resulting from new archaeological methods being applied in the region. An important, if controversial, new interpretive history of the Maya, using recently-deciphered Mayan hieroglyphs and emphasizing the importance of ritual blood sacrifice is Linda Schele and David Freidel, A Forest of Kings: The Untold Story of the Ancient Maya (N.Y., 1990). Schele and Mary Ellen Miller developed this thesis earlier in a richly-illustrated exhibition catalog, Blood of Kings: Dynasty and Ritual in Maya Art (Fort Worth, 1986). See also R. E. W. Adams, ed., The Origins of Maya Civilization(Albuquerque, 1973). Two collections of essays edited by T. Patrick Culbert provide a considerable range of research and insight by leading scholars: The Classic Maya Collapse (Albuquerque, 1973), and Classic Maya Political History: Hieroglyphic and Archaeological Evidence (Cambridge, 1991). Other useful anthologies include Mark Graham (ed.), Reinterpreting Prehistory of Central America (Niwot, Colo., 1993), and Arlen and Diane Chase (eds.), Mesoamerican Elites: An Archaeological Assessment (Norman, 1992). A useful study of early Maya scholars is R. L. Brunhouse, In Search of the Maya: The First Archaeologists (Albuquerque, 1973). See also Robert Wauchope, They Found the Buried Cities (Chicago, 1965); and Gordon Willey and Jeremy Sabloff, A History of American Archaeology (San Francisco, 1974).

English translations of Adrián Recino's Spanish versions of the highland Maya epic have been published by the University of Oklahoma Press at Norman: Popol Vuh (1950); and Annals of the Cakchiquels (1953). The latter also includes a translation of the Title of the Lords of Totonicapán. A more careful recent translation of the Popol Vuh, directly from the Quiché and using all available sources, is Munro Edmonson, The Book of Counsel, The Popol Vuh of the Quiché Maya of Guatemala (New Orleans, 1971). Ptolemy Tompkins, This Tree Grows out of Hell: Mesoamerica and the Search for the Magical Body (San Francisco, 1990), is a highly interpretive synthesis of ritual, belief, and philosophy that draws on Mayan symbolism and iconography of the classic lowland Maya and the Popol Vuh of the 16th-century Quiché. Robert Carmack has provided a detailed study of written sources for Quichean history in his Quichean Civilization: The Ethnohistorical, Ethnographic, and Archaeological Sources (Berkeley, 1973) and The Quiché Mayas of Utatlán, the Evolution of a Highland Guatemalan Kingdom(Norman, 1981). See also Carmack and D. T. Wallace, eds., Archaeology and Ethnology of the Central Quiché (Albany, 1976); and J. W. Fox, Quiché Conquest: Centralism and Regionalism in Highland Guatemalan State Development (Albuquerque, 1978). On the Pacific coastal region, see Frederick Bove, Formative settlement patterns on the Pacific Coast of Guatemala: A Spatial Analysis of Complex Societal Evolution (Oxford, 1989). Payson Sheets (ed.), Archaeology and Volcanism in Central America: The Zapotitlan Valley of El Salvador (Austin, 1983) is an anthology of original articles on the effects volcanic activity on El Salvadoran culture. On the frequently-neglected region of southeastern Central America Frederick Lange and other distinguished scholars collaborated on The Archaeology of Pacific Nicaragua (Albuquerque, 1992). Frederick Lange and Doris Stone, Archaeology of Lower Central America(Albuquerque, 1984), is another important collection of papers on that region, as is William R. Fowler (ed.), The Formation of Complex Society in Southeastern Mesoamerica (Boca Raton, Fla., 1991). Fowler deals with the Pipiles of El Salvador in The Cultural Evolution of Ancient Nahua Civilizations: The Pipils-Nicarao of Central America (Norman, 1989). T. P. Culbert and D. S. Rice (eds.), Precolumbian Population History in the Maya Lowlands (Albuquerque, 1990), deals with Copán, Quiriguá, Tikal, and other sites in the central Petén region.

A guide to the archaeology of Central America, with many pictures, is Claude Baudez, Central America (London, 1970). See also Joyce Kelly, The Complete Visitor's Guide to Mesoamerican Ruins (Norman, 1982). There is much excellent scholarship on Mayan ruins and relics. Frederick Lange (ed.), Precolumbian Jade: New Geological and Cultural Interpretations (Salt Lake City, 1993), is a monumental work on the history and role of jade in the region. Tatiana Proscouriakoff, A Study of Classic Maya Sculpture (Washington, 1950), remains among the most useful of volumes. For a guide to Belizean ruins see Anabel Ford, The Ancient Maya of Belize: Their Society and Sites (Santa Barbara, Calif., 1994). Two especially noteworthy photographic renderings of Maya ruins and relics are Merle Greene's rubbings, Maya Sculpture (Berkeley, 1972); and Francis Robicsek, Copán, Home of the Mayan Gods (N. Y., 1972). On Honduras, the best general work is Robert R. Reyes Mazzoni, Introducción a la arqueología de Honduras, 2 vols. (Tegucigalpa, 1976). P. F. Healy, Archaeology of the Rivas Region, Nicaragua (Waterloo, Ont.,1980) is a detailed description of a section of the Pacific coastal plain. On Costa Rica, see Doris Stone, Pre-Columbian Man in Costa Rica (Cambridge, Mass., 1977); Luis Ferrero Acosta, Costa Rica precolumbina (2d ed., 1977); and Oscar M. Fonseca Z., Historia antigua de Costa Rica: Surgimiento y caracterización de la primera civilización costarricense (San José, 1992).

A useful map of Mesoamerica extending from Mexico through Honduras and El Salvador, is the National Geographic Society, Archaeological Map of Middle America (Washington, n.d.), scale 1:2,250,000.
 

C. The Hispanic Period (1502-1821)
 

Murdo MacLeod, Spanish Central America (Berkeley, 1973), and Miles Wortman, Government and Society in Central America (N.Y., 1982), provide a survey of colonial Central American history. Both have ample bibliographies. A useful guide to Panamanian colonial history is Carlos Manuel Gasteazoro, Introducción al estudio de la historia de Panamá: Fuentes de la época hispánica(2d ed., Panamá, 1990), and a major work on colonial Panama is Christopher Ward, Imperial Panama: Commerce and Conflict in Isthmian America, 1550-1800 (Albuquerque, 1993). A more general colonial history of Panama is C. A. Araúz and Patricia Pizzurno, El Panamá hispano, 1501-1821 (Panamá, 1991). Note also that several of the works mentioned in Section III-A are principally histories of the Spanish period.

There are several major chronicles and contemporary accounts of the colonial period. Gonzalo Fernández de Oviedo y Valdés, Historia general y natural de las Indias (5 vols., Madrid, 1959), originally published in the mid-16th century, is a passionate account of the conquest of the isthmus by an arch foe of Pedrarias. Bartolomé de las Casas tells his story in the polemical Breve relación de la destrucción de las Indias Occidentales (México, 1957) and in the more historical Historia de las Indias (3 vols., México, 1965). The Colección Somoza(17 vols., Madrid, 1955-57), edited by Andrés Vega Bolaños, provides documents on Nicaragua during the first half of the 16th century. The first major history of Central America was that of Antonio de Remesal, Historia general de las Indias Occidentales, y particular de la Gobernación de Chiapa y Guatemala (2 vols., México, 1988), first published in 1619. Toribio de Motolinia, Memorias e historia de los indios de la Nueva España (Madrid, 1970), or History of the Indians of New Spain (Washington, 1950), also includes some description of Central America. A fuller description is found in the fifth book of Antonio Vásquez de Espinosa, Compendium and Description of the West Indies (Madrid, 1969). An important description of the Vera Paz and Lacandón region of Guatemala is the 1635 account by Martin Alfonso Tovilla, Relaciones histórico-descriptivas de la Verapaz, el Manché y Lacandón, en Guatemala (Guatemala, 1960). The late-17th-century work of Francisco Antonio de Fuentes y Guzmán, Recordación florida (2 vols., Guatemala, 1933), offers great detail on the social and economic life of the kingdom. Long delayed in publication, the chronicle of a Dominican friar, Francisco Ximénez, Historia de la provincia de San Vicente de Chiapa y Guatemala (3 vols., Guatemala, 1967), was written about 1700. Francisco Vásquez, Crónica de la Provincia del Santísimo Nombre de Jesús de Guatemala(4 vols., Guatemala, 1937-44), treats the history of the Franciscan order in Guatemala through the 17th century. Jaime Incer Barquero, Nicaragua, viajes, rutas y encuentros, 1502-1838: Historia de las exploraciones y descubrimientos, antes de ser Estado independiente, con observaciones sobre su geografía, etnia y naturaleza (San José, 1990), uses a variety of European forays into Nicaragua through the early 19th century to describe the physical appearance of the country. A valuable work of an 18th-century Guatemalan archbishop is Pedro Cortés y Larraz, Descripción geográfico-moral de la Diócesis de Goathemala, 1768-1770(2 vols., Guatemala, 1958). Antonio Gutiérrez y Ulloa describes the province of San Salvador as it was in 1807 in Estado general de la provincia de San Salvador(San Salvador, 1962). Near the close of the colonial era Domingo Juarros wrote his informative Compendio de la historia de la ciudad de Guatemala (2 vols., Guatemala, 1936), which is considerably more than just a history of the capital city. Soon thereafter, a translation by John Baily provided an abridged English edition, A Statistical and Commercial History of the Kingdom of Guatemala(London, 1823).

Of the traditional histories of Central America the most well known is José Milla and Augustín Gómez Carillo, Historia de la América Central desde 1502 hasta 1821 (5 vols., Madrid, 1892-1905). The first two volumes, written by Milla, cover the period through 1686. Another informative work, written soon after independence, is that of Archbishop Francisco de Paula García Peláez, Memoria para la historia del antiguo Reyno de Guatemala (3 vols., Guatemala, 1851-52). The burst of historical writing around the close of the 19th century produced several colonial surveys in addition to the Bancroft volumes. Some, such as M. M. de Peralta, Costa Rica, Nicaragua y Panamá en el siglo XVI, su historia y sus límites (San José, 1883), were stimulated by the boundary disputes among the states. Among those on Costa Rica is León Fernández, Historia de Costa Rica durante la dominación española (Madrid, 1889). A Honduran perspective came from Eduardo Martínez, Historia de Centro América (Tegucigalpa, 1907); and a Salvadoran one from Santiago Barberena, Historia de El Salvador (2 vols., San Salvador, 1914-17). Ayón's Historia de Nicaragua, mentioned above, is still a standard for colonial Nicaragua. Later, Nicaraguan Sofonías Salvatierra, Contribución a la historia de Centro-América (2 vols., Managua, 1939), offered some new materials and viewpoints, particularly on economic history, based on his research in Spain. J. Antonio Villacorta Calderón, Historia de la Capitanía General de Guatemala (Guatemala, 1942), became the standard colonial history at mid-century. More recent works, notably André Saint-Lu, Condition colonial et conscience créole au Guatemala (1524-1821) (Paris, 1970); Severo Martínez Peláez, La patria del criollo: Ensayo de interpretación de la realidad colonial guatemalteca (Guatemala, 1970); Germán Romero Vargas, Estructuras sociales de Nicaragua en el siglo XVIII (Managua, 1988); and Lowell Gudmundson, Estratificación socio-racial y económica de Costa Rica: 1700-1850(San José, 1978), have emphasized the social history to a greater degree than older works and have explored the development of the creole mentality. Costa Rica's colonial history has been further elucidated by Claudia Quirós, Historia de Costa Rica: La era de la encomienda (San José, 1990); and Eugenia Ibarra Rojas, Las sociedades cacicales de Costa Rica (siglo XVI) (San José, 1990). A more traditional new history of colonial Guatemala is José Antonio Móbil and Ariel Déleon Meléndez, Guatemala: Su pueblo y su historia (Guatemala, 1991). Mario Monteforte Toledo, et al. Las formas y los días: El barroco en Guatemala (Madrid, 1989), approaches the colonial social structure through its artistic production. A careful and useful study of colonial scribes is Jorge Luján Muñoz, Los escribanos en las Indias Occidentales y en particular en el Reino de Guatemala (Guatemala, 1977).

There are several accounts of the discovery and conquest of Central America. See J. H. Parry and R. J. Keith (eds.), New Iberian World, A Documentary History of the Discovery and Settlement of Latin America to the Early 17th Century (5 vols., N.Y., 1984), especially Vol. 3, Central America and Mexico, for commentary and a large collection of contemporary documents translated to English. C. L. G. Anderson, Old Panama and Castilla de Oro(Washington, 1911) surveys the exciting early days in Panama, supplemented by his Life and Letters of Vasco Núñez de Balboa (Westport, Conn., 1941); Kathleen Romoli, Balboa of Darien (Garden City, N.Y., 1953); and Octavio Méndez Perreira, Núñez de Balboa, el tesoro del Dabaibe (2d ed., Buenos Aires, 1943). Mary Helms, Ancient Panama, Chiefs in Search of Power (Austin, 1979), relates the history of Panamanian Indian elites during the Spanish conquest. Pablo Alvarez Rubiano wrote a documentary history on Pedrarias Dávila (Madrid, 1944). S. J. Mackie edited Pedro de Alvarado's Account of the Conquest of Guatemala in 1524 (N.Y., 1924), and J. E. Kelly wrote a popular biography, Pedro de Alvarado, Conquistador (Port Washington, N.Y., 1932). More thorough is Adrián Recinos, Pedro de Alvarado, Conquistador de México y Guatemala (México, 1952); and J. M. García Aoveras, Pedro de Alvarado(Madrid, 1986). Also relevant are Robert Chamberlain, Conquest and Colonization of Yucatán, 1517-1550 (Washington, 1948) and Conquest and Colonization of Honduras, 1502-1550 (Washington, 1953); Frans Blom, The Conquest of Yucatán (Boston, 1936); R. H. Valle, Crístobal de Olid, conquistador de México y Honduras (México, 1950); and Ricardo Fernández Guardia, Historia of the Discovery and Conquest of Costa Rica (N.Y., 1913). More recently, Carlos Meléndez, Juan Vásquez de Coronado, conquistador y fundador de Costa Rica(San José, 1966); and Víctor Urbano, Juan Vásquez de Coronado y su ética en la conquista de Costa Rica (Madrid, 1968), are both excellent biographies of the conqueror of Costa Rica. Carlos Molina Montes de Oca, Garcimuñoz: La ciudad que nunca murió; los primeros cien días de Costa Rica (San José, 1993), details the early settlement efforts in the western half of the Central Valley.

Among the most valuable of studies of the conquest and early colonization period are Sherman's Forced Native Labor in Sixteenth-Century Central America(Lincoln, 1979); Peter Gerhard, The Southeast Frontier of New Spain (Princeton, 1979); Linda Newson, Indian Survival in Colonial Nicaragua (Norman, 1987), and The Cost of Conquest: Indian Decline in Honduras under Spanish Rule(Boulder, 1986); Salvador Rodríguez Becerra, Encomienda y conquista: Los inicios de la colonización en Guatemala (Sevilla, 1977); Wendy Kramer, Encomienda Politics in Early Colonial Guatemala, 1524-1544: Dividing the Spoils (Boulder, 1994); and Murdo MacLeod and Robert Wasserstrom (eds.), Spaniards and Indians in Southeastern Mesoamerica: Essays on the History of Ethnic Relations (Lincoln, 1983). Much can be learned, too, from Nancy Farris' monumental Maya Society under Colonial Rule: The Collective Enterprise of Survival(Princeton, 1984). Other useful works on the period include Grant Jones, Maya Resistance to Spanish Rule: Time and History on a Colonial Frontier(Albuquerque, 1989); Severo Martínez Peláez, Motines de indios: La violencia colonial en Centroamérica y Chiapas (Puebla, 1985); Elías Zamora Acosta, Los mayas de las tierras altas en el siglo XVI: Tradición y cambio en Guatemala(Sevilla, 1985); Karl Sapper, The Verapaz in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries(Los Angeles, 1985); Juan Contreras y López de Ayala, Vida del segoviano Rodrigo de Contreras, gobernador de Nicaragua (1534-1544) (Toledo, 1920), with its large documentary appendix; Rodolfo Barón Castro, Reseña histórica de la villa de San Salvador (2d ed., 1996), thoroughly documented, but covering only the period 1525-46; Carlos Molina Argüello, El gobernador de Nicaragua en el siglo XVI (Sevilla, 1949); Leticia Oyuela, Un siglo en la hacienda: Estancias y haciendas ganaderas en la antigua Alcaldía Mayor de Tegucigalpa, 1670-1850 (Tegucigalpa, 1994); Ernesto Alvarado García, Los forjadores de la Honduras colonial (Tegucigalpa, 1928), and El significado histórico de la ciudad de Gracias (Tegucigalpa, 1936); and María del Carmen Mena García, La sociedad de Panamá en el siglo XVI (Sevilla, 1984). Héctor M. Leyva(comp.), Documentos coloniales de Honduras (Tegucigalpa, 1991), is a valuable collection of colonial documents from Spanish and Guatemalan archives, along with an index to other documents published elsewhere. A valuable collection of documents from the A.G.I. on colonial Panama is C. F. Jopling, Indios y negros en Panamá en los siglos XVI y XVII: Selecciones de los documentos del Archivo General de Indias (South Woodstock, Vt., and Antigua Guatemala, 1994). Manuel Rubio Sánchez, in the first (and only) volume of his Historia del Ejército de Guatemala: Siglo XVI-- antecedentes (Guatemala: 1987), relates the military history of Central America from the Spanish conquest to defense of isthmus against early foreign interlopers.

International rivalry has been the subject of extensive historical writing, although considerably more attention has been paid to the Caribbean island areas than to the mainland. Of particular utility for students of Central America are R. A. Humphreys, Diplomatic History of British Honduras, 1638-1901 (London, 1961); J. A. Calderón Quijano, Belice, 1663(?)-1821 (Sevilla, 1944); and Troy Floyd, The Anglo-Spanish Struggle for Mosquitia (Albuquerque, 1967). John Prebble, The Darien Disaster (N.Y. , 1968), is the most complete of a stream of works on William Paterson's ill-fated isthmian colony. Pedro Pérez Valenzuela made notable contributions with Historia de piratas: Los aventureros del mar en la América Central (Guatemala, 1936), and Santo Tomás de Castilla: Apuntes para la historia de las colonizaciones en la costa atlántica(Guatemala, 1955). On slavery and the slave trade, see Rafael Leiva Vivas, Tráfico de esclavos negros a Honduras (Tegucigalpa, 1982); and Pedro Tobar Cruz, La esclavitud del negro en Guatemala (Guatemala, 1953).

Several studies of colonial institutions offer glimpses into life and society in the kingdom. Silvio Zavala, Contribución a la historia de las instituciones coloniales en Guatemala (5th ed., Guatemala, 1986), deals with labor institutions in the colonial period and compares them with those of México. L. B. Simpson, The Repartimiento System of Native Labor in New Spain and Guatemala(Berkeley, 1938), is a brief but classic description of the system in Guatemala. Manuel Rubio Sánchez, Alcaldes mayores (2 vols., San Salvador, 1979), is a thorough study of El Salvador's colonial alcaldes mayores, justicias mayores, governors, intendents, corregidores, and jefes políticos. H. H. Samayoa Guevara made significant contributions with his Implantación del régimen de intendencias en el Reino de Guatemala (Guatemala, 1960) and Los gremios de artesanos en la ciudad de Guatemala, 1524-1821 (Guatemala, 1962). M. A. Burkholder and D. S. Chandler, From Impotence to Authority: The Spanish Crown and the American Audiencias, 1687-1808 (Columbia, Mo., 1977), describe the 18th-century trend toward greater peninsular authority in the Guatemalan and other audiencias. Ernesto Chinchilla Aguilar has described El ayuntamiento colonial de la ciudad de Guatemala (Guatemala, 1961). R. J. Shafer, Economic Societies in the Spanish World, 1763-1821 (Syracuse, N.Y., 1958), has an excellent chapter on the Guatemalan sociedad económica, but more detail is provided in J. L. Reyes M., Apuntes para una monografía de la Sociedad Económica de Amigos del País(Guatemala, 1964), and Elisa Luque Alcaide, La sociedad económica de amigos del país de Guatemala (Sevilla, 1962). R. L. Woodward details the role of the merchant guild in Privilegio de clase y desarrollo económico, Guatemala 1793-1871 (San José, 1981), with documentary appendices not included in the 1966 English edition. Marco Antonio Falla, La factoria de tabacos de Costa Rica (San José, 1972), and V. H. Acuña Ortega, Historia económica del tabaco: Epoca colonial (San José, 1974), are both useful studies of the tobacco industry in Costa Rica.

J. C. Pinto Soria has written a number of interesting studies on Guatemala's colonial development, which are synthesized in his Raices históricas del estado en Centroamérica (2d ed., Guatemala, 1983). See also Pinto's brilliant essay, El valle central de Guatemala, 1524-1821: Un análisis acerca del origen histórico-económico del regionalismo en Centroamérica (Guatemala, 1988); and Pinto and Edelberto Torres-Rivas, Problemas en la formación del estado nacional en Centroamérica (San José, 1983). Stephen Webre, ed., La sociedad colonial en Guatemala: Estudios regionales y locales (Antigua Guatemala, 1989), brings together seven diverse and perceptive studies on aspects of colonial life. George Lovell, Conquest and Survival in Colonial Guatemala (Montreal, 1992) is a splendid history of the Cuchumatán highlands in the colonial period. A useful work on colonial land and settlement in Costa Rica is Carlos Meléndez, Costa Rica, tierra y poblamiento en la colonia (San José, 1977). Other important regional studies include Germán Romero Vargas, Las sociedades del Atlántico de Nicaragua en los siglos XVII y XVIII (Managua, 1995), and Alberto Osorio Osorio, Chiriquí en su historia, 1502-1903 (2 vols., Panamá, 1988). Manuel Rubio Sánchez made major contributions to the economic history of the isthmus with his studies, based on thorough archival research, on Comercio terrestre de y entre las provincias de Centroamérica (Guatemala, 1973); Historia del añil o xiquilite en Centro América (2 vols., San Salvador, 1976); Historia del cultivo de la grana o cochinilla en Guatemala (Guatemala, 1994); Historia del puerto de la Santísima Trinidad de Sonsonate o Acajutla (San Salvador, 1977); Historia del Puerto de Trujillo (3 vols., Tegucigalpa, 1975); and Historia de El Realejo(Managua, 1975). Francisco de Solano, in addition to his highly significant Tierra y sociedad en el Reino de Guatemala (Guatemala, 1977), and several detailed articles on the 18th-century economy, has written Los Maya del siglo XVIII(Madrid, 1976). Richmond Brown has analyzed the remarkable career of the founder of the House of Aycinena in Guatemala, Juan Fermín de Aycinena, Central American Colonial Entrepreneur, 1729-1796 (Norman, 1997), greatly extending a pioneering chapter on the Aycinenas by Miles Wortman in Notable Family Networks in Latin America (Chicago, 1984).

Christopher Lutz's demographic study Santiago de Guatemala, 1541-1773(Norman, 1994), has been supplemented by a series of studies done in collaboration with William Swezey, George Lovell, and others. A splendid guide to the literature on colonial Central American demographic history is Lovell and Lutz, Demography and Empire: A Guide to the Population History of Spanish Central America, 1500-1821 (Boulder, 1995). Also, Lutz and Karen Dakin, have compiled Nuestro pesar, nuestra aflicción: Tunetuliniliz, tucucuca; memorias en lengua náhuatl enviadas a Felipe II por indígenas del Valle de Guatemala hacia 1572 (México. 1996), a collection of 22 Nahuatl-language memorias sent to the Crown by citizens of indigenous communities around Santiago de Guatemala. Sidney Markman, Architecture and Urbanization of Colonial Central America (2 vols. Tempe, Az., 1993-95) is a compilation of primary documentary and literary sources and a geographical gazetteer of both literary and visual sources. J. J. Pardo, Efemérides de la Antigua Guatemala, 1541-1779 (3d ed., Guatemala, 1984), is a very extensive chronology of events relating to the city's history. The standard work on the architecture of that city is Sidney Markman's Colonial Architecture of Antigua Guatemala(Philadelphia, 1966), but V. L. Annis, The Architecture of Antigua Guatemala, 1543-1773(Guatemala, 1968), is also a beautifully illustrated guide, and Luis Luján Muoz, El arquitecto mayor Diego de Porres, 1677-1741 (Guatemala, 1982), is a fine study of the life and work of a major colonial architect. Other important contributions to colonial urban history include D. T. Kinkead, ed. Urbanization in Colonial Central America (Sevilla, 1985), and Pedro Pérez Valenzuela, La nueva Guatemala de Asunción (2d ed., 2 vols., Guatemala, 1964), which details the 1773 destruction of the Guatemalan capital and its move to its present location. Other useful works on this topic are María Cristina Zilbermann de Luján, Aspectos socioeconómicos del traslado de la Ciudad de Guatemala (1773-1783) (Guatemala, 1987); Gisela Gellert and J. C. Pinto Soria, Ciudad de Guatemala: dos estudios sobre su evolución urbana, 1524-1950(Guatemala, 1990); and Inge Langenberg, Urbanisation und Bevölkerungsstructur der Stadt Guatemala in der ausgehenden Kolonialzeit: Eine sozialhistorische Analyse der Stadtverlegung und ihrer Auswirkungen auf die demographische, berufliche, und soziale Gliederung der Bevölkerung (1773-1824) (Köln, 1981), a more thorough sociodemographic study of the early history of Nueva Guatemala. José Reina Valenzuela, Comayagua antañona, 1537-1821(Tegucigalpa, 1968), and Carlos Meléndez, La ciudad de Lodo: Cartago (San José, 1964), are among the few descriptions of colonial cities in the rest of Central America, along with Irma Leticia de Oyuela, Historia mínima de Tegucigalpa: Vista a través de las fiestas del patrono San Miguel a partir de 1680 hasta fines del siglo XIX (Tegucigalpa, 1989), which traces Tegucigalpa's history from the 16th through the 19th centuries.

The colonial Church has received much attention from historians, although they have been hindered by the inaccessibility of ecclesiastical archives in Central America. The most important recent work in this area is Adriaan C. van Oss, Catholic Colonialism: A Parish History of Guatemala, 1524-1821 (Cambridge, 1986). Also important is Nancy Johnson Black, The Frontier Mission and Social Transformation in Western Honduras: the Order of Our Lady of Mercy, 1525-1773 (Leiden, 1995). In addition, the first volume of a projected, 4-volume, official history by Luis Diez de Arriba, Historia de la iglesia católica en Guatemala (Guatemala, 1988), covers the colonial period. Diez de Arriba has also published a work on the history of the Esquipulas shrine, Esquipulas: 400 años: "fe blanca en un Cristo negro" (Guatemala, ca. 1996). Lewis Hanke, The Spanish Struggle for Justice in the Conquest of America (Philadelphia, 1949), is the best introduction to the voluminous work on Bartolomé de Las Casas, but see also H. R. Wagner and H. R. Parish, The Life and Writings of Bartolomé de las Casas (Albuquerque, 1967). On Guatemala's Bethlehemite order, see José García de la Concepción, Historia betlemítica (Sevilla, 1723; 2d ed., Guatemala, 1956); David Vela, El Hermano Pedro en la vida y en las letras(Guatemala, 1935); and Mario Gilberto González R., El pedagogo de la caridad (Guatemala, 1982). Among other studies on the Church, see Ernesto Chinchilla Aguilar, La inquisición en Guatemala (Guatemala, 1953); Andrés Saint Lu, La Vera Paz, esprit évangelique et colonisation(Paris, 1968); Heinrich Berlin, Historia de la imaginería colonial en Guatemala (Guatemala, 1952); and María Concepción Amerlinck, Las catedrales de Santiago de los Caballeros de Guatemala (México, 1981). For Honduras, see José Reina Valenzuela, José, Historia eclesiástica de Honduras. Tomo 1, 1502-1600 (Tegucigalpa, 1983); and J. M. Tojeira, Panorama histórico de la Iglesia en Honduras (Tegucigalpa, 1986); for Nicaragua, Edgar Zúñiga C., Historia eclesiástica de Nicaragua. v. 1, La cristianidad colonial, 1524-1821 (Managua, 1982). The church in colonial Costa Rica has been dealt with by Ricardo Blanco Segura, Historia eclesiástica de Costa Rica: del descubrimiento a la erección de la diócesis, 1502-1850 (2d ed., San José, 1983), and Víctor Sanabria Martínez, Reseña histórica de la Iglesia en Costa Rica desde 1502 hasta 1850 (San José, 1984).

The intellectual history of colonial Central America is reviewed in Constantino Láscaris Comneno, Historia de las ideas en Centroamérica (San José, 1970). Carlos Meléndez provides a brief survey of the 18th century in La ilustración en el antiguo reino de Guatemala (San José, 1970). See also John T. Lanning's two classic works, The University in the Kingdom of Guatemala(Ithaca, 1955), and The Eighteenth-Century Enlightenment in the University of San Carlos de Guatemala (Ithaca, 1956), on colonial academic life and its role the society; and T. B. Irving, "On the Enlightenment in Central America," in A. O. Owen, ed. The Ibero-American Enlightenment (Urbana, 1971).
 

D. Independence (1800-1823)
 

The best introduction to the period of independence is Mario Rodríguez, The Cádiz Experiment(Berkeley, 1978), which goes considerably beyond J. M. García Laguardia's perceptive Orígenes de la democracia constitucional en Centroamérica (San José, 1971) and his documentary collection, La genesis del constutcionalismo guatemalteco (Guatemala, 1971). Also very useful as an overview of the period and for its perceptive interpretations is J. C. Pinto Soria, Centroamérica: De la colonia al Estado nacional, 1800-1840 (Guatemala, 1986), but for a more traditional view see Carlos Meléndez, La independencia de Centroamérica (Madrid, 1993). A detailed and scholarly treatment of the period is also provided by Oscar Benítez Porta, Secessión pacífica de Guatemala de España (Guatemala, 1973). In contrast to Benítez, Arturo Valdés Oliva, Centro América alcanzó la libertad al precio de su sangre (Guatemala, 1965), emphasizes the violence of the period. Still useful, also, is Ramón Salazar's narrative Historia de veintiún años (Guatemala, 1928) and his collection of biographical essays, Los hombres de la independencia (Guatemala, 1899), several of which have been more recently reprinted. H. H. Samayoa Guevara, Ensayos sobre la independencia de Centroamérica (Guatemala, 1972), deals with several themes in the period leading to independence, including studies of Alejandro Ramírez and Fray Matías de Córdova. Bernabé Fernández Hernández, El Reino de Guatemala durante el gobierno de Antonio González Saravia, 1801-1811 (Guatemala, 1993) is a detailed study of one of the last Spanish Governors of the kingdom. See also Francisco Peccorini Letona,La voluntad del pueblo en la emancipación de El Salvador (San Salvador, 1972); Chester Zelaya, Nicaragua en la independencia (San José, 1971); Ricardo Fernández Guardia, La independencia: Historia de Costa Rica (3d ed., San José, 1971); Rafael Obregón, Costa Rica en la independencia y la federación (San José, 1977); and Guillermo Mayes, Honduras en la independencia de Centro América y anexión a México(Tegucigalpa, 1931). More detailed on Honduras is Antonio Vallejo, Compendio de la historia social y política de Honduras (2d ed., Tegucigalpa, 1926), which treats only the period 1811-29. See also Pedro Zamora Castellanos, El grito de la independencia(Guatemala, 1935); and Virgilio Rodríguez B., Ideología de la independencia (Paris, 1926). Covering a much broader period of the transition from colony to independent state, is the superb work on the Guatemalan western highlands of Arturo Taracena Arriola, Invención criolla, sueño ladino, pesadilla indígena. Los Altos de Guatemala: De región a Estado, 1740-1850(Guatemala, 1997).

R. H. Valle compiled documents relative to annexation to Mexico in La anexión de Centro América a México (6 vols., México, 1924-49). H. G. Peralta, Agustín Iturbide y Cosa Rica (2d ed., San José, 1968), focusses on the period with particular reference to Costa Rica. Francisco Barnoya Gálvez, Fray Ignacio Barnoya, prócer ignorado (Guatemala, 1967), details the efforts of a Catalonian friar who played an active, if unsuccessful, role in preventing the separation of Chiapas from Guatemala. César Brañas, Antonio Larrazábal, un guatemalteco en la historia (2 vols., Guatemala, 1969), provides a detailed, but undocumented account of a key figure of the Cádiz period. Other useful biographical works covering the period include Carlos Meléndez' anthology, Próceres de la independencia centroamericana (San José, 1971); and Arturo Aguilar, Hombres de la independencia en Nicaragua y Costa Rica (León, 1939). Enrique del Cid Fernández, Don Gabino de Gaínza y otros estudios (Guatemala, 1959), treats Spain's last Central American governor. Rubén Leyton Rodríguez traces the careers of José Cecilio del Valle and Pedro Molina in Valle, padre del panamericanismo (Guatemala, 1955), and Doctor Pedro Molina, o Centro América y su prócer (Guatemala, 1958). The most enlightening book on del Valle's role is Louis Bumgartner, José del Valle (Durham, N.C., 1963), but Ramón Rosa's late-19th-century Biografía de José Cecilio del Valle (Tegucigalpa, 1971), still has utility, as do the newer Central American interpretations of Pedro Tobar Cruz, Valle, el hombre--el político--el sabio (Guatemala, 1961), and Ramón López Jiménez, José Cecilio del Valle, Fouché de Centro América (Guatemala, 1968). Rosa's study appeared originally as an introduction to the collection he edited with Rómulo E. Durón, Obras de D. José Cecilio del Valle (Tegucigalpa, 1906 [1914]). Molina's and Valle's important periodicals, Editor Constitucionaland El Amigo de la Patria, were reprinted in Guatemala in 1969.

Considerable work has been done, especially by Salvadorans, on José Matías Delgado. Notable among these works are M. A. Durán, Ausencia y presencia de José Matías Delgado en el proceso emancipador (San Salvador, 1961); Rodolfo Barón Castro, José Matías Delgado y el movimiento insurgente de 1811 (San Salvador, 1962); Ramón López Jiménez, José Matías Delgado y de León: Su personalidad, su obra y su destino (San Salvador, 1962); Carlos Meléndez, El presbítero y doctor don José Matías Delgado en la forja de la nacionalidad centroamericana (San Salvador, 1962); and J. S. Guandique, Presbítero y doctor José Matías Delgado (San Salvador, 1962). Roberto Turcios, Los primeros patriotas: San Salvador, 1811(San Salvador, 1995) deals with the first attempt at independence in San Salvador. Carlos Meléndez and José Villalobos have shed considerable light on Costa Rican events during the period in their brief but valuable biography of the neglected Costa Rican military and naval leader, Gregorio José Ramírez (San José, 1973).
 

E. The Nineteenth Century (1823-1900)
 

The best-known history of 19th-century Central America was Guatemalan Lorenzo Montúfar's Reseña histórica de Centro América (7 vols., Guatemala, 1878-87). Although Montúfar vehemently proclaimed his objectivity, his Liberal bias is obvious throughout the work, which extends only to 1860. Subsequent histories, including Bancroft, relied heavily on Montúfar, and the influence of his interpretations has thus been very great. Somewhat more balanced, but also devoted almost exclusively to political history is J. A. Villacorta Calderón, Historia de la República de Guatemala (Guatemala, 1960). Useful accounts of individual states in the 19th century are headed by J. L. Vega Carballo, Orden y progreso: La formación del Estado nacional en Costa Rica (San José, 1981); Lowell Gudmundson, Costa Rica Before Coffee: Society and Economy on the Eve of the Export Boom (Baton Rouge, 1986); Yamileth González García, Continuidad y cambio en la historia agraria de Costa Rica (San José, 1989); Iván Molina Jiménez, Costa Rica (1800-1850): El legado colonial y la génesis del capitalismo (San José, 1991); Bradford Burns, Patriarch and Folk (Cambridge, Mass., 1991); R. L. Woodward, Rafael Carrera and the Emergence of the Republic of Guatemala (Athens, Ga., 1993); Héctor Lindo-Fuentes, Weak Foundations: The Economy of El Salvador in the Nineteenth Century(Berkeley, 1990); Ramiro Colindres O. and Oscar A. Valladares., Breve historia de Honduras: 1821-1876 (Tegucigalpa, 1989); Pablo Yankelevich, Honduras(México, 1988), which covers from the late 18th to the mid-20th century; and C. A. Araúz and Patricia Pizzurno Gelós, El Panamá colombiano, 1821-1903(Panamá, 1993). McCreery's Rural Guatemala, 1760-1940(Stanford, 1994) is a major work on Guatemala, as is Julio Castellanos Cambranes, Café y campesinos en Guatemala, 1853-1897 (Guatemala, 1985). Aldo Lauria's forthcoming An Agrarian Republic: Land, Commercial Agriculture, and the Politics of Peasants in El Salvador, 1780-1929 promises to be a similarly important for El Salvador. C. L. Fallas Monge, El movimiento obrero en Costa Rica, 1830-1902 (San José, 1983), is a thorough study of the foundations of labor organization in 19th-century Costa Rica. See also Mario Oliva Medina, Artesanos y obreros costarricenses, 1880-1914 (San José, 1985); and Vladimir de la Cruz, et al., Las Instituciones costarricenses del siglo XIX: Ensayos sobre la historia del desarrollo institucional de Costa Rica (San José, 1985). Michael Riekenberg, Zum Wandel von Herrschaft und Mentalität in Guatemala: ein Beitrag zur Sozialgeschichte Lateinamerikas (Köln, 1990), focusses on the 19th century in applying the theories of German sociologist Norbert Elias to Guatemala, emphasizing the role of mentalité as an agent of social discipline.

Studies of Francisco Morazán and the Central American federation dominate much of the historiography of the early years of independence. Andrés Townsend Ezcurra, Las Provincias Unidas de Centroamérica: Fundación de la República (2d ed., San José, 1973), details the events surrounding the declaration of independence and establishment of the republic. After Karnes, Failure of Union(2d ed., Tempe, Az., 1975), the most useful work on the attempted union is Alberto Herrarte, La unión de Centroamérica (2d ed., Guatemala, 1964). Also useful is Herrarte's brief summary, El federalismo en Centroamérica (San José, 1972); P. J. Chamorro y Zelaya, Historia de la federación de la América Central, 1823-1840 (Madrid, 1951); Rodrigo Facio, Trayectoria y crisis de la federación centroamericana (San José, 1949) and La federación de Centroamérica: Sus antecedentes, su vida y su disolución (San José, 1960); J. T. Calderón, El ejército federal de la República de Centroamérica (San Salvador, 1922); and Enrique Ortiz Colindres, La República Federal de Centroamérica a la luz del derecho internacional (San Salvador, 1963).

Nineteenth-century biographies of Morazán, notably Ramón Rosa, Historia de Francisco Morazán (Tegucigalpa, 1971); Lorenzo Montúfar, Morazán (San José, 1970); José Beteta, Morazán y la federación (Guatemala, 1888); and Eduardo Martínez López, Biografía del General Francisco Morazán(Tegucigalpa, 1931), firmly established the Liberal mythology around Morazán, a mythology which has died only slowly. A large number of 20th-century biographies have added relatively little to what those studies tell us. Exceptions include Miguel R. Ortega, Morazán: Laurel sin ocaso (3 vols., Tegucigalpa, 1988-92); J. A. Zúñiga Huete, Morazán, un representativo de la democracia americana (México, 1947); and Ricardo Dueñas, Biografía del General Francisco Morazán (San Salvador, 1962). The standard work in English is the brief work of R. S. Chamberlain, Francisco Morazán, Champion of Central American Federation(Miami, 1950). Three comparative studies, all with rather low scholarly standards, are Carlos Ferro, San Martín y Morazán (Tegucigalpa, 1971), favorable toward the Central American; and Clemente Marroquín Rojas, Francisco Morazán y Rafael Carrera (Guatemala, 1965), and Antonio Morales Baños, Morazán y Carrera o Liberales y Conservadores, 1821-1842(Guatemala, 1985), the latter two both attacking the Morazán myth. See also W. J. Griffith (ed.), "The Personal Archive of Francisco Morazán," Philological and Documentary Studies, Vol. 2, No. 6 (New Orleans, 1977), pp. 197-286; R. L. Woodward, "The Liberal-Conservative Debate in the Central American Federation, 1823-1840," in Vincent Peloso and Barbara Tenenbaum, Liberals, Politics, and Power: State Formation in Nineteenth-Century Latin America (Athens, Ga., 1996); and Jorge Luján Muñoz, Los partidos políticos en Guatemala desde la Independencia hasta el fin de la Federación (Guatemala, 1989).

Other biographical studies have offered greater enlightenment on the federation period. Treatment of Arce by Rolando Velásquez, Carácter, fisionomía y acciones de don Manuel José Arce (San Salvador, 1949), provides basic data, but Philip Flemion, "States Rights and Partisan Politics: Manuel José Arce and the Struggle for Central American Union," Hispanic American Historical Review 53 (1973), pp. 600-618, is more objective and offers a guide to additional sources. Adam Szazdi provides excellent insights into the period in his account of a foreign military adventurer, Nicolás Raoul y la República Federal de Centro-América(Madrid, 1958). Antonio Batres Jáuregui presents a brief but balanced view of El Dr. Mariano Gálvez y su época(2d ed., Guatemala, 1957), but J. L. Arriola offers greater depth in his Gálvez en la encrucijada(México, 1961). J. A. Domínguez Sosa, Las tribus nonualcas y su caudillo Anastasio Aquino(San José, 1984) is a well-documented study of the leader of the 1830s Indian uprising in El Salvador. John D. Browning, Vida e ideología de Antonio José de Irisarri (Guatemala, 1986) details the life and thought of an important Guatemalan writer and diplomat of the early 19th century. C. M. Obregón, Carrillo: Una época y un hombre, 1835-1842 (San José, 1989) describes the administration of Costa Rican caudillo Braulio Carrillo, while Alberto Sáenz Maroto, Braulio Carrillo, reformador agrícola de Costa Rica (San José, 1987) emphasizes his social and agrarian policies.

In addition to Arce's Memoria (4th ed., San Salvador, 1959), there are several useful memoirs of the period, notably the Liberal Memorias del Benemérito General Francisco Morazán (Paris, 1870), and Carlos Meléndez Ch. (comp.), Escritos del General Francisco Morazán (Tegucigalpa, 1996); Memorias del General Miguel García Granados (2 vols., Guatemala, 1893); and the Conservative Manuel Montúfar y Coronado, Memorias para la revolución de Centro América(Jalapa, México, 1832). The most useful contemporary accounts, however, are those of Alejandro Marure, Bosquejo histórico de las revoluciones de Centro América desde 1811 hasta 1834 (unfinished, Guatemala, 1837), and his sketchy chronology, Efemérides de los hechos notables acaecidos en la república de Centro-América desde 1821 hasta 1842 (Guatemala, 1844). Carlos Meléndez has compiled the Mensajes presidenciales, 1824-1906 (3 vols., San José, 1981) for Costa Rica; and J. F. Sáenz Carbonell has written the Historia diplomática de Costa Rica (1821-1910) (San José, 1995). Other helpful accounts of the early years of independence are J. A. Cevallos, Recuerdos salvadoreños (2d ed., San Salvador, 1964); Francisco Ortega, Nicaragua en los primeros años de su emancipación política (Paris, 1894); Rómulo Durón y Gamero, Historia de Honduras (Tegucigalpa, 1956), which covers only the 1820s, and Rodolfo Cerdas Cruz, Formación del estado en Costa Rica (2d ed., San José, 1978).

The Conservative years were largely neglected by the Liberal historians, but there has recently been renewed interest in the period. In addition to Woodward's Rafael Carrera (Athens, Ga., 1993), Douglass Sullivan-González, Piety, Power, and Politics: Religion and Nation-Formation in Guatemala, 1821-1871 (Pittsburgh, 1998), has concentrated on the Guatemalan Church in those years, and David Chandler, Juan José de Aycinena, idealista conservador de la Guatemala del siglo XIX (Antigua Guatemala, 1988) has elucidated the career of a leading member of the conservative elite. Lowell Gudmundson and Héctor Lindo-Fuentes, Central America, 1821-1871: Liberalism before Liberal Reform(Tuscaloosa, 1995), point to liberal tendencies even before the political dominance of the Liberals in the latter part of the century. On the church, see also Volume 2 of Luis Diez de Arriba, Historia de la Iglesia Católica en Guatemala (Guatemala, 1989). Rolando Sierra Fonseca, has recently made two important contributions to the ecclesiastical history of Honduras: Iglesia y liberalismo en Honduras en el siglo XIX(Tegucigalpa, 1993), and Fuentes y bibliografía para el estudio de la historia de la Iglesia de Honduras (Obispado Choluteca, 1993), an unannotated bibliography of more than 1600 items on Honduran church history. For El Salvador see Marcos R. Salinas, Relaciones entre Iglesia y Estado en la República de El Salvador, 1821-1871 (San Salvador, 1992). Several older, Guatemalan works provide detail and insight on the period, notably Pedro Tobar Cruz, Los montañeses (2 vols., Guatemala, 1959-71); Luis Beltranena Sinibaldi, Fundación de la República de Guatemala (Guatemala, 1971); Enrique del Cid Fernández, Origen, trama y desarrollo del movimiento que proclamó vitalicia la presidencia del General Rafael Carrera (Guatemala, 1966); and Ramón Salazar, Tiempo viejo, recuerdos de mi juventud (2d ed., Guatemala, 1957). Antonio Batres Jáuregui, José Batres Montúfar: Su tiempo y sus obras (Guatemala, 1910) and José Arzú, Pepe Batres íntimo: Su familia, su correspondencia, sus papeles(Guatemala, 1940), describe a key figure in the Carrera administration.

José Reina Valenzuela, José Trinidad Cabañas (Tegucigalpa, 1984), is a eulogistic treatment of the leading Morazanista in mid-19th-century Honduras. Franco Cerutti, Los Jesuitas en Nicaragua en el siglo XIX (San José, 1984), has dealt with an important aspect of Conservative rule in Nicaragua as well as ecclesiastical history. Patricia Vega, De la imprenta al periódico: Los inicios de la comunicación impresa en Costa Rica, 1821-1850 (San José, 1995), documents the history of the press in the early 19th century.

Historians--especially Nicaraguans, Costa Ricans, and North Americans--have paid inordinate attention to the William Walker filibustering episode. W. O. Scroggs, Filibusters and Financiers(N.Y., 1916), remains one of the best works on this topic, but Alejandro Bolaños Geyer, William Walker, the Gray-Eyed Man of Destiny (5 vols., Lake Saint Louis, Mo., 1988-91), provides the greatest detail on Walker. In his El filibustero Clinton Rollins (Managua, 1976), Bolaños exposes Rollins as a purely fictional creation of journalist H. C. Parkhurst. Among the enormous volume of other works on the life and times of Walker, Albert Carr, The World and William Walker (N.Y., 1963); Frederick Rosengarten, Freebooters Must Die (Wayne, Pa., 1976); R. E. May, The Southern Dream of a Caribbean Empire, 1854-1861 (2d ed., Athens, Ga., 1989); and C. H. Brown, Agents of Manifest Destiny, the Life and Times of the Filibusters (Chapel Hill, 1980), are the most useful. Among contemporary accounts, in addition to Walker's own The War in Nicaragua (Mobile & N.Y., 1860), the most revealing are W. V. Wells, Walker's Expedition to Nicaragua (N.Y., 1856); Peter Stout, Nicaragua, Past, Present and Future (Philadelphia, 1859); and Charles Doubleday, Reminiscences of the Filibuster War in Nicaragua (N.Y., 1886).

Works treating other aspects of foreign penetration form an important body of literature on 19th-century Central America. Central American relations with Great Britain, in a variety of contexts, are explained and analyzed in Mary Williams, Anglo-American Isthmian Diplomacy(Washington, 1916); Mario Rodríguez, A Palmerstonian Diplomat (Tucson, 1964); W. J. Griffith, Empires in the Wilderness (Chapel Hill, 1965); in two works by Robert Naylor, La influencia británica en el comercio centroamericano durante las primeras décadas de la independencia, 1821-1851 (Antigua Guatemala, 1988), and Penny-Ante Imperialism (Rutherford N.J., 1989); and Dozier, Nicaragua's Mosquito Shore(Tuscaloosa, 1985). A large collection of documents on the Mosquito Coast is Eleonore von Oertzen, et al. (eds.), The Nicaraguan Mosquitia in Historical Documents, 1844-1927: The Dynamics of Ethnic and Regional History (Berlin, 1990). Virgilio Rodríguez Beteta provides an unsympathetic Central American view of the British role in La política inglesa en Centro América durante el siglo XIX (Guatemala, 1963), while Andrés Vega Bolaños focuses on the British threats from Belize in 1840-42 in Los atentos del superintendente de Belice (Managua, 1971). Wayne Clegern, British Honduras, Colonial Dead End, 1859-1900 (Baton Rouge, 1967), focuses on the decline of Belize and the transfer of economic interests there from British to United States hegemony. Clegern also edited an enlightening 1887 memorandum of Alfred Maudslay to Lord Salisbury, Maudslay's Central America: A Strategic View in 1887 (New Orleans, 1962). Pablo Levy, Notas geográficas y económicas sobre la República de Nicaragua (2d ed., Managua, 1976), in a marvelous description of that country around 1870, reflects the substantial foreign interest there. Lester Langley, Struggle for the American Mediterranean: United States-European Rivalry in the Gulf-Caribbean, 1776-1904 (Athens, Ga., 1976), is an excellent overview. C. M. Obregón, El Río San Juan en la lucha de las potencias, 1821-1860 (San José, 1993), provides a Costa Rican perspective of the early struggle for a canal route through Nicaragua. Thomas Schoonover, The United States in Central America, 1860-1911: Episodes of Social Imperialism and Imperial Rivalry in the World System (Durham, N.C., 1991), offers a series of very interesting case examples. Schoonover also provides an excellent overview of German economic interests in Germany in Central America, Competitive Imperialism, 1821-1929 (Tuscaloosa, Alabama, 1998); and, with Ebba Schoonover, "Statistics for an Understanding of Foreign Intrusions into Central America from the 1820s to 1930," Anuario de Estudios Centroamericanos15:1(1989), pp. 93-118, and 16:1 (1990), pp. 135-56, a useful guide to statistical materials on 19th-century Central American trade. Watt Stewart, Keith and Costa Rica (Albuquerque, 1964), tells the story of the founder of the banana trade and beginnings of the United Fruit Company, and Mario Argueta has written a brief book on one of the giants of the banana industry, Bananos y política: Samuel Zemurray y la Cuyamel Fruit Company en Honduras (Tegucigalpa, 1989).

Interest in an interoceanic route was, of course, closely related to much of the foreign activity, especially in Nicaragua and Panama. Thomas Schoonover, "Imperialism in Middle America: United States, Britain, Germany, and France Compete for Transit Rights and Trade, 1820s-1920s," in Eagle Against Empire(Aix-en-Provence, 1983), 41-57, is an excellent overview. David Folkman, The Nicaragua Route (Salt Lake City, 1972), and J. H. Kemble, The Panama Route, 1848-1869 (Berkeley, 1943, reprinted, Columbia, S.C., 1990), are two excellent surveys of the efforts during the mid-19th century. Cyril Allen, France in Central America (N.Y., 1966), details the interesting career of French canal agent Felix Belly. For the French connection see James Skinner, France and Panama: The Unknown Years, 18941908 (N.Y., 1988). Special aspects of the story are dealt with ably in Ricardo Jinesta, El Canal de Nicaragua y los intereses de Costa Rica en la magna obra (San José, 1964), and J. L. Schott, Rails Across Panama: The Story of the Building of the Panama Railroad, 1849-1855 (N.Y., 1967). For an excellent study of elite attitudes in 19th-century Panama City, see Alfredo Figeroa Navarro, Dominio y sociedad en el Panama colombiano, 1821-1903 (Panama, 1978). A survey of Panama's 19th-century history is Alex Pérez-Venero, Before the Five Frontiers: Panama from 1821-1903 (N.Y., 1978). Another is Catalina Arrocha Graell, Historia de la independencia de Panamá: Sus antecedentes y sus causas, 1821-1903 (Panamá, 1953). Easily the best work on the building of the canal is David McCullough, Path Between the Seas: The Creation of the Panama Canal, 1870-1914(N.Y., 1977). Gerstle Mack, The Land Divided (N.Y., 1944), remains one of the more thorough works covering isthmian canal projects.

A number of historians have occupied themselves with the Liberal Reform. Among the best books on the political development of Central America in this period and its relationship to the export of coffee is Robert Williams, Sates and Social Evolution (Chapel Hill, 1994). Jeffrey Paige, Coffee and Power: Revolution and the Rise of Democracy in Central America(Cambridge, Mass., 1997), offers another interpretation that concentrates more on the 20th century. Central American interpretations related to the rise of the coffee industry are found in Héctor Pérez Brignoli and Mario Samper K. (eds.), Tierra, café y sociedad: Ensayos sobre la historia agraria centroamericana (San José, 1994). Wayne Clegern, Origins of Liberal Dictatorship in Central America: Guatemala, 1865-1873 (Boulder, 1994), offers a unique introduction to the period as he analyzes the transition from Conservative to Liberal rule in Guatemala. Fernando González Davison, El régimen liberal en Guatemala, 1871-1944 (Guatemala, 1987), offers a convenient overview of the period. Deborah Yashar, Demanding Democracy: Reform and Reaction in Costa Rica and Guatemala, 1870s-1950s (Stanford, 1997), is a perceptive comparison of the two most influential states in the Liberal Reform and its effects well into the 20th century. Among several studies of Gerardo Barrios, especially notable is Italo López Vallecillos, Gerardo Barrios y su tiempo (2 vols., San Salvador, 1965). Rodolfo Cardenal, El poder eclesiástico en El Salvador, 1871-1931 (San Salvador, 1980), discusses Liberal policy toward the Church in El Salvador, while Rafael Guidos Véjar, El ascenso del militarismo en El Salvador (San Salvador, 1980), documents the military from 1871 to 1935. The traditional history of the Guatemalan Liberal Revolution is Mariano Zeceña, La revolución de 1871 y sus caudillos (Guatemala, 1898), but more recently J. M. García Laguardia, La reforma liberal(Guatemala, 1972), has provided an excellent description and analysis of the Guatemalan political experience. See also his El pensamiento liberal de Guatemala: Antología (San José, 1977). D. J. McCreery, Development and the State in Reforma Guatemala (Athens, Ohio, 1983), superbly describes the economic development philosophy and process under Justo Rufino Barrios, while H. J. Miller, La iglesia y el estado en Guatemala en el tiempo de Justo Rufino Barrios (Guatemala, 1976), details Barrios' anticlerical policies. In addition to several Guatemalan biographies of Barrios in Spanish, there is Paul Burgess, Justo Rufino Barrios (N.Y., 1926) in English. Roberto Díaz Castillo, comp., Legislación económica de Guatemala durante la reforma liberal(Guatemala, 1973), catalogues the economic legislation of the Barrios regime. Richard N. Adams, Ethnicidad en el ejército de la Guatemala liberal (1870-1915) (Guatemala, 1995), perceptively suggests hypotheses for the history of the Guatemalan army.

Guillermo Molina Chocano, Estado liberal y desarrollo capitalista en Honduras (3d ed., Tegucigalpa, 1985) surveys the development of the liberal state in Honduras. José Reina Valenzuela and Mario Argueta, Marco Aurelio Soto, Reforma liberal de 1876 (Tegucigalpa, 1978), relates the biography of Honduras' major Liberal caudillo. R. H. Valle and Juan Valladares R., gathered together Ramón Rosa's principal writings in Oro de Honduras (2 vols., Tegucigalpa, 1948-54). Kenneth Finney, In Quest of El Dorado: Precious Metal Mining and the Modernization of Honduras, 1880-1900 (N.Y., 1987), offers insight into the Liberal economic policy in Honduras. See also Mario Posas and Rafael del Cid, La construcción del sector público y del estado nacional en Honduras, 1876-1979(San José, 1981). J. L. Velázquez P., La formación del Estado en Nicaragua, 1860-1930 (Managua, 1992), is useful for the period in Nicaragua, but see also Charles Stansifer, "José Santos Zelaya: A New Look at Nicaragua's Liberal Dictatorship," Revista Interamericana 7 (Fall 1977), 468-85; and for a Conservative critique, J. J. Morales, De la historia de Nicaragua de 1889-1913(Granada, 1963), of which only Part I, covering 1889-1909, was published. Manuel Castrillo Gámez, Reseña histórica de Nicaragua . . . desde el año 1887 hasta fines de 1895 (Managua, 1963), provides much data on Zelaya's arrival to power. Orlando Salazar Mora, El apogeo de la República Liberal (1870-1914)(San José, 1990), is a major work on this period in Costa Rica. Edwin Solís and Carlos González, El ejército en Costa Rica: Poder político, poder militar, 1821-1890 (San Pedro de Montes de Oca, C. R., 1992), examines the growth of the Costa Rican army, accompanying the rise of coffee and the liberal state in the latter part of the century. C. A. Vargas Arias, El Liberalismo, la Iglesia y el Estado en Costa Rica (San José, 1991), is a careful study of church-state relations in late 19th-century Costa Rica. Mario Samper K., Generations of Settlers: Rural Households and Markets on the Costa Rican Frontier, 1850-1935 (Boulder, 1990), is a model of research, showing how merchant capital promoted and exploited small agricultural producers in an outlying region of the Central Valley of Costa Rica during this period. Jacqueline West de Cóchez has edited the writings of a noted Panamanian Liberal, Pablo Arosemena, Estudios (Panamá, 1982).
 

F. The Twentieth Century
 

The Liberal ascendancy over most of Central America continued in the early 20th century, the dictatorships of Estrada Cabrera and Zelaya being especially noticeable. Neither has received adequate historical treatment to date. See the previous section for works on Zelaya. Among the more useful works on the Estrada period in Guatemala are the firsthand accounts of Adrián Vidaurre, Los últimos treinta años de la vida política de Guatemala (La Habana, 1921); Carlos Wyld Ospina, El autócrata: Ensayo político-social (Guatemala, 1929); Rafael Arévalo Martínez, Ecce Pericles: La tiranía de Manuel Estrada Cabrera en Guatemala (3d ed., Guatemala, 1983); and J. R. Gramajo, Las revoluciones exteriores contra el expresidente Estrada Cabrera (2 vols., Mazatenango, 1937-43). Oscar G. Peláez Almengor, La Nueva Guatemala de la Asunción y los terremotos de 1917-18 (Guatemala, 1994), relates the major earthquakes of 1917-18 to the fall of Estrada. Miguel Angel Asturias' Nobel Prize-winning novel, El señor presidente (México, 1946), with many later editions, including an English translation, The President (Prospect Heights, Ill., 1997), also offers much insight into the Estrada period. Jean Piel has written a superb regional study of the period in El departamento del Quiché bajo la dictadura liberal (1880-1920)(Guatemala, 1995). Carlos Cuadra Pasos, Historia de medio siglo (2d ed., Managua, 1964), surveys Nicaragua in the first third of the century. Jan Suter, Prosperität un Krise in einer Kaffeerepublik: Modernisierung, sozialer Wandel und politischer Umbruch in El Salvador, 1910-1945 (Frankfurt am Main, 1996), is a scholarly, detailed description and analysis of Salvadoran economic, political, and social change in the early 20th century. W. S. Stokes, Honduras: An Area Study in Government (Madison, 1950), still has utility for the early 20th century. A useful reference for the period 1900-1925 in Honduras is Víctor Cáceres Lara, Gobernantes de Honduras en el siglo 20: De Terencio Sierra a Vicente Tosta(Tegucigalpa, 1992). N. E. Alvarado, La revolución de 19 (Tegucigalpa, 1967), provides detail on Honduran politics of 1919 and after. Mario Trujillo Bolio, Historia de los trabajadores en el capitalismo nicaragüense, 1850-1950 (México, 1992), is an attempt to write the history of Nicaraguan workers during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Jeff Gould, To Lead as Equals: Rural Protest and Political Consciousness in Chinandega, Nicaragua, 1912-1979 (Chapel Hill, 1990), is a splendid regional study on the growth of peasant resistance to the establishment in Nicaragua, as is Charles Hale, Resistance and Contradiction: Miskitu Indians and the Nicaraguan State, 1894-1987 (Stanford, 1994), an anthropological study of the Caribbean shore. For Costa Rica, Marc Edelman, The Logic of the Latifundio: The Large Estates of Northwestern Costa Rica since the Late Nineteenth Century (Stanford, 1992), documents the social history of agrarian change in 20th-century Guanacaste.Eugenio Rodríguez Vega, Los días de Don Ricardo (San José, 1971), provides insight into Costa Rican development during the first half of the century in his review of the life and work of Ricardo Jiménez, while Hugo Murillo Jiménez, Tinoco y los Estados Unidos(San José, 1981), details the events surrounding the regime of Federico Tinoco, 1917-19. An excellent work on the decline and abolition of the Costa Rican army in the 20th century is Mercedes Muñoz Guillén, El Estado y la abolición del ejército, 1914-1949 (San José, 1990). Jeffrey Casey has documented the rise of the Costa Rican banana port, Limón, 1880-1940 (San José, 1979), but more recently Aviva Chomsky has provided a vivid picture of the sociopolitical situation on the Costa Rican Atlantic coast with her West Indian Workers and the United Fruit Company in Costa Rica, 1870-1940 (Baton Rouge, 1996). Marina Volio, Jorge Volio y el Partido Reformista (San José, 1974), studies one of Costa Rica's most important political reformers.

There is a considerable volume of polemical unionist literature in the early 20th century, the most important of which are the works of Salvador Mendieta, La enfermedad de Centro América (3 vols., Barcelona, 1910-34) and Alrededor del problema unionista de Centro America.

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