Middle America: A Culture History of Heartland and Frontiers

Add Mary Helms’ Middle America to the increasing genre of scholarship dedicated to an uncommonly difficult goal: that of synthesizing several thousand years of complex and perplexing human activity in a culturally diverse and vibrant area. The result is admirable. Dr. Helms divides the history of Middle America into three chronological periods: the first traces the first arrivals of man in the region through the evolution of the great civilizations and terminates with the arrival of the Spanish. The synthesis of this period derives almost exclusively from archeological explorations and insights consequently focusing heavily upon the heartland of Mesoamerica. The second part of the book covers the establishment of New Spain until independence in the nineteenth century. Here the author draws widely upon the literature of ethnohistory and colonial history, and, to her credit, much attention is paid to continental processes and policies which directly influenced the government of the New World. The final section follows the emergence of the nation-state in Mexico and in the Central American republics. The emphasis in this account of the last century and a half of Middle American history is clearly political (notwithstanding the title), the author’s self-avowed intention being to delineate the problems of “nation-building.” Overall, the book reveals strengths worth exploring, namely its ability to draw widely from bodies of literature in archeology, ethnohistory, colonial history, and cultural anthropology, and in such a way that the adherents of each will find interesting. A work of such ambitious scope should serve well to introduce the student to this fascinating area.