Everything Everywhere Daily: History, Science, Geography & More - A Brief History of Central America

Starting point is 00:00:00 Located between Mexico and Columbia in a strategic area connecting the Atlantic and Pacific oceans is the region we call Central America. The countries that make up Central America were mostly former Spanish colonies, but unlike other Spanish colonies to the north and the south, Central America wound up as a series of small countries rather than one big one. But why? Learn more about the history of Central America and how the current borders came to be on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily. What if your perceptions about the past were wrong? ThruLine is a podcast that takes you back in time to uncover the parts of the story that may have gone unnoticed.

Starting point is 00:00:53 It effectively turned day into night and how it shaped the world now. Time travel with us every week on the ThruLine podcast from NPR. In a previous episode, I asked the question, why weren't all of the former British colonies in the Caribbean one single country? They have a similar history, are in the same geographic area, speak the same language, and have similar cultures. Yet, instead of one single country, they wound up as nine separate, very small countries. In this episode, I want to address the same question, but this time in Central America. Central America is a collection of seven small countries. They are Belize, Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador, Nicaragua, Costa Rica, and Panama. They are as small as the countries of

Starting point is 00:01:46 in the Caribbean, but they are much smaller than the other former Spanish colonies such as Argentina, Peru, Colombia, and Mexico. So why isn't there just one country between Mexico and South America rather than seven, especially considering that, again, they are all very similar geographically, culturally, and linguistically. In this episode, I want to discuss the history of the region as a whole, given the time constraints of this podcast, giving each individual country its due simply is impossible. That will have to wait for future episodes. Pre-Columbian Central America was arguably the most advanced region of the new world.

Starting point is 00:02:25 The earliest known civilization in Mesoamerica were the Olmecs. The Olmec civilization existed from about 1600 BC to the year 400. We don't know nearly as much about the Olmex as we do about the subsequent civilizations that arose in the region. The heart of the Olmec civilization was actually slightly north of the countries of Central-Ex. Central America in Mexico, but their influence extended south in what is today Belize, Guatemala, and Honduras. The Olmecs are best known for their distinctive stone head carvings which they left behind, and the Olmec civilization will be the subject of a future episode. Following the Olmecs were the Maya. I've previously done an entire episode on the Maya civilization, so I'm not going to go into

Starting point is 00:03:07 too much detail here, but the Maya were an extremely sophisticated civilization with advanced mathematics, astronomy, and architecture. They inhabited the regions of Mexico, Guatemala, Belize, Honduras, and El Salvador. The Maya rose around the year 250, and the height of classical Mayan civilization existed through the year 200, and a post-classical period continued until the year 1,200. The Maya were never a single political entity, but rather were a collection of cities and villages. The Maya civilization collapsed by the year 1200 when most major Mayan cities were abandoned. The cause of the collapse isn't known or agreed upon by scholars, but by the time the Spanish arrived, the great Mayan cities were empty and overgrown by forests.

Starting point is 00:03:53 Several indigenous groups, including the Pipple in El Salvador, the Lenka in Honduras, and the Chorotega in Nicaragua and Costa Rica all lived south of the Maya. The tectonic change in the region came with the arrival of the Spanish. The first contact with Europeans occurred on July 30, 1502, during Christopher Columbus's fourth and last voyage. He and his crew arrived on the shores of Honduras. On this voyage, which took place 10 years after his first arrival in the New World, Columbus was still looking for a route to Asia. The conquest and colonization of Central America was a process that took place over several decades in the first half of the 16th century. In 1506, Juan de Solis and Vicente

Starting point is 00:04:37 Yannes-Penzan explored the coast of Central America. In 1513, Vasco de Belbo, across the isthm of Panama and became the first European to see the Pacific Ocean from the New World, claiming the entire ocean for Spain. In 1521, the viceroy of New Spain was established, which included everything from Costa Rica up through Mexico and much of what is today the United States. Even though Spain claimed it, large parts of this territory were still unexplored. In 1523, Pedro de Alvarado, a lieutenant of Hernan Cortez, led an expedition from Mexico to to Guatemala, where he began the conquest of the Maya, and in 1524, Francisco de Cordoba explored and began the conquest of Nicaragua. Central America was never as important as some of Spain's

Starting point is 00:05:25 other possessions in the Americas. Their primary concern at this point was silver and gold, and there just wasn't much of it there. However, over time, Spanish rule in the new world became more structured, as they gained greater control over all the territory that they had claimed. In 1543, they established the Real Audiencia of Santiago de Guatemala, an administrative court that oversaw most of what we know today as Central America. The Audiencia was a court that heard cases for the entire region. At the start of the 17th century, Spain established secondary administrative units across all their colonies. In 1609, the captaincy general of Guatemala was created. The captaincy general was a title granted to the person who served.

Starting point is 00:06:09 as both the governor and president of the Audiencia. They were given a great deal of autonomy to deal with threats, in particular military threats from pirates. The captaincy general of Guatemala was the administrative unit that governed pretty much all of Central America, save for Panama, for over 200 years. And here I need to split Central America into three parts, separating Panama and Belize, because they had very separate histories. Panama was part of the Viceroy of New Granada, which was established in 1717 and included modern-day Panama, Colombia, Venezuela, and Ecuador. Belize came about from a treaty that the Spanish signed with the British in 1783. At the Treaty of Paris, where the British finally recognized American

Starting point is 00:06:56 independence, several other separate treaties were signed between the major European colonial powers. The modern-day country of Belize was a Spanish possession, but in the 18th century, the British had set up communities there, along with communities along the Caribbean coast of Guatemala and Nicaragua, known as the Mosquito Coast. This wasn't British territory, so the British mostly kept quiet about it as to not antagonize the Spanish who surrounded them. According to the 1783 Treaty of Paris, these settlements were supposed to be evacuated, but the residents didn't want to go. So at the Convention of London in 1786, Britain agreed to abandon their settlements along the mosquito coast, in exchange for logging rights in what we know today as Belize.

Starting point is 00:07:44 In 1787, they created the British settlements on the Bay of Honduras, which was formerly changed to the Crown Colony of British Honduras in 1862. But back to the Captaincy General of Guatemala. In the early 19th century, the Spanish colonies in the New World were all undergoing revolution and declaring themselves independent. Panama became part of the newly independent nation of Grand Colombia in 1819. In 1821, the provinces of the Captaincy General of Guatemala signed the active independence of Central America, which formally dissolved their allegiance to Spain.

Starting point is 00:08:21 While it dissolved their loyalty to Spain, it didn't necessarily put anything else in its place. In 1822, the provinces voted five to one to join the newly independent Mexican Empire. One of the former provinces of the captaincy general in favor was Chiapas, which until this point had never been a part of Mexico, and El Salvador was the one province voting against it. The union with Mexico was to be very short-lived. In 1823, the very next year, the Central American provinces elected to leave Mexico, with only Chiapas choosing to remain, where it remains to this day. On July 1, 1823, the province has established their own country known as the Federal Republic of Central America.

Starting point is 00:09:07 So to the question I asked at the very beginning of the episode, why aren't the countries of Central America all one country? The answer is they all actually were at one point. The Federal Republic of Central America never got off to a good start, and those problems plagued it throughout its entire existence. The Federal Republic of Central America had a constitution that was based on the United States and other federal republics. The country's initial capital was Guatemala City, which was also the largest city in the country. Initially, it didn't have a single ruler. The legislature appointed a triumvirate, and each member rotated executive authority monthly. The first triumvirate was held by the faction known as the Liberals.

Starting point is 00:09:51 The new country's biggest problem was extreme political polarization and ideological divisions. The primary divisions were between liberals who wanted a decentralized government, separation of church and state, and the extension of voting rights, and conservatives who wanted centralized government, close ties with the Catholic Church, and limited voting rights. In September, just months after the country was formed, there was a military uprising in Guatemala City

Starting point is 00:10:17 because the country could not pay its soldiers. The conservatives used this crisis as an excuse to get the triumvirate to resign and have a conservative triumvirate appointed, led by Manuel Jose Arse, one of the leaders of the independence movement against Spain. an armed revolt soon sprang up in Nicaragua, which was put down by the central government without firing a shot. In 1825, the country finally got around to electing its first president, but even that was messed up.

Starting point is 00:10:45 They had an electoral college, and the candidate with the most votes was the conservative, Jose Cecilio de Valier. However, he received exactly half the votes, and according to the Constitution, it required a majority of the votes to win. So the election went to the legislature, which selected Manuel Jose Arce as president. Arce's election angered the conservatives because he was a liberal, but he also angered the liberals when he made promises to the conservatives in the legislature to get elected and then appointed several conservatives to his cabinet. In 1826, a civil war broke out. Conservatives won the governorship of Guatemala, causing liberals to flee to El Salvador.

Starting point is 00:11:26 El Salvador then invaded Guatemala, and the federal army was sent to Honduras. tourists to deal with a liberal governor who opposed Arce. In 1829, the civil war ended with the liberals taking Guatemala City and Arce fleeing to Mexico. Costa Rica left the Federation that year, but then came back in 1831. In 1830, the liberal Francisco Morazan became president. Morazan's presidency was plagued with conflict and strife. He moved the capital of the country to San Salvador because Guatemala City had become very conservative, and he felt it wasn't open to being a capital city anymore. In 1833, another presidential election took place and Morazan lost. However, because his opponent, a conservative, died before taking the oath of office, Morazan actually won because,

Starting point is 00:12:14 according to the Constitution, he was the runner-up in the election. The confusion in the 1833 election called for an election in 1835, which this time Morazan actually won. However, nothing went right for the government. In 1837, a charismatic, illiterate pig farmer named Raphael Carrera came to power in Guatemala. Carrera gave moving speeches that mobilized both the local Catholic and indigenous peoples. By 1838, the Central American experiment was all but over. On April 30th, 1838, Nicaragua announced its independence from the Federal Republic of Central America. Honduras did the same thing on October 26th, as did Costa Rica on November 2nd.

Starting point is 00:12:56 On February 2nd, 1839, everyone in the government resigned with no one to replace them. On April 17th, Guatemalan President Rafael Carrera formally dissolved the Federal Republic of Central America and declared Guatemala to be independent. El Salvador was the last country in the Federation to declare itself independent in January 1841. Panama, if you remember back to my episode on the Panama Canal, became independent from Columbia in 2003, after serious pressure from the United States and the supportive independence groups there because they wanted to build a canal. Belize was the last country to become independent in Central America. It finally achieved independence from Great Britain in 1973.

Starting point is 00:13:41 Ever since the dissolution of the Federal Republic of Central America, there have been calls for reunification. The idea pops up every few years in Central America, but no serious action is ever taken. The story of Central America doesn't come anywhere close to ending with the independence of all the constituent countries. Each country followed sometimes very different paths, which led them to be the nations that they are today. The executive producer of Everything Everywhere Daily is Charles Daniel. The associate producers are Ben Long and Cameron Kiefer. Today's review comes via email from 11-year-old Persephone in Surrey, England. She writes, Dear Gary, my dad and I love everything everywhere daily.

Starting point is 00:14:24 I start secondary school in September, and we're trying to make sure we can get some episodes in every day on the way to school. We hope to be part of the Completionist Club soon. We drove around Namibia at Easter. You were the fourth person on our trip. We love Namibia, and we can see why you did, too. I use your little bits of information every day at school. It's my dad's 50th birthday on the 5th of June, and he would love it if you would read this on that day. We would love an episode about Greek mythology, especially Persephone. I would love an episode. episode about Henry Tudor's Wives or musical theater or the life of Alexander Hamilton. Please say happy birthday to Chris. This podcast deserves five stars. Well, thank you very much,

Starting point is 00:15:05 Persephone. First of all, let me wish your father a very happy 50th birthday. He clearly has good taste in podcasts, naming children, and selecting holiday destinations. As for your episode suggestions, I've been working on some episodes about the mythology of ancient cultures, which may touch on the Greek goddess, Persephone. I've already done an episode on the wives of Henry the 8th a while back, and episodes about Alexander Hamilton and musical theater are already on the list of future episodes. Remember, if you leave a review or send me a boostogram, you too can have it read on the show.

Everything Everywhere Daily: History, Science, Geography & More - A Brief History of Central America

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