The Historiography of Modern Central America Since 1960 Open Access

About 25 years ago William Griffith reviewed the historiography of Central America since 1830¹ and noted the tendency of much of the writing on Central American history to be characterized by high passion. “Most modern works on political and military subjects,” wrote Griffith, “are dominated by the spirit of passion perhaps more thoroughly than were the events which they record.” Yet Griffith observed also that a smaller number of histories had “begun to deal with less transient, more broadly significant phenomena in Central America and to link them with similar currents elsewhere in the world.”² These two characteristics remain prominent in Central American historiography, but although the recent revolutions have heightened the passionate quality of much writing on the region, for the quarter-century as a whole it is noteworthy that the balance has shifted to professional, dispassionate analysis of more broadly significant trends in Central America’s past and their relation to the rest of the world. Indeed, the professionalization of the writing of Central American history during the past 25 years is perhaps the most obvious observation one can make about the diverse and numerous publications of this period.

It is true that not a year goes by but that there are a number of passionate biographies or period accounts in the old style, more often than not by amateur historians eulogizing an ancestor or promoting a special political or economic interest. Although sometimes appalling in their historical judgment, or lack thereof, even these works have made a contribution in filling gaps in the factual chronology of Central American history. Until very recently, Central American historians were primarily concerned with simply trying to establish the factual structure of the region’s history. Destruction of archives and libraries, and an almost total absence of classification of what documentation does exist for the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, have made that job far more difficult than in other areas of Latin America.

The growth of serious, professional historical research on Central America, however, produced an explosion of publications, especially since 1970, even before Central America emerged as a major crisis area. The political crises have limited and restrained research, but not precluded it altogether. Even in Guatemala, El Salvador, and Nicaragua there have been notable works published despite the less-than-satisfactory conditions for research and writing, although more often historians of those countries have found it more convenient to publish abroad—in Costa Rica, Mexico, North America, or Europe. This article highlights recent developments rather than offering a comprehensive compilation of the work of the last quarter-century. A more detailed bibliographical essay appears in the second edition of my general history of Central America.³ Further references may he found in specialized bibliographies and the Handbook of Latin American Studies:⁴

Background and General Reference

Even though historical writing about the nineteenth and twentieth centuries is of primary concern here, the most impressive recent historical publications on Central America have unquestionably been on the colonial era. More ample and well-ordered documentation helps to explain this phenomenon, but the heavy colonial burden of modern Central America makes that work of considerable value in providing insight and understanding of realities in modern Central American development. The monumental works of Murdo MacLeod,⁵ William Sherman,⁶ George Lovell,⁷ Christopher Lutz,⁸ Norberto de Castro y Tosi,⁹ Carmelo Sáenz de Santa María,¹⁰ Germán Romero Vargas,¹¹ Francisco de Solano,¹² Carlos Meléndez,¹³ André Saint-Lu,¹⁴ Juan Carlos Solórzano,¹⁵ and Inge Langenberg,¹⁶ especially, fall into this category, but also important have been those of Troy S. Floyd,¹⁷ William Sorsby,¹⁸ Manuel Rubio Sánchez,¹⁹ Ligia Estrada Molina,²⁰ Marco Antonio Fallas,²¹ Miles Wortman,²² and Geoffrey Cabat.²³

The extended essay of the Guatemalan historian Severo Martínez Pe láez, La patria del criollo, has been an especially influential, if controversial, work. Based on surprisingly limited research in colonial sources, its interpretation of the mentality of the Guatemalan elite has served as a stimulus for considerable reinterpretation of nineteenth-century social and political history, and even for understanding the modern Central American elite.²⁴ Martínez and André Saint-Lu²⁵ (who pursues the same theme less pretentiously) have provided thought-provoking analyses of colonial social structure which enable historians to understand better the mentality of the ruling classes after independence. These works remind us of the deep roots of conservatism and the powerful legacy of feudal tradition in modern Central America.

There has been relatively little attention paid to Central American historiography in any formal sense. Beyond the brief comments of Mario Rodríguez and Murdo MacLeod in the Handbook of Latin American Studies, it is hard to find any systematic, general treatment of Central American historiography, although the substantial corpus of historical literature now demands such a study. Several chapters in the recently published Research Guide to Central America and the Caribbean, however, do provide historiographical guidance, most especially those of David McCreery on Guatemala, Kenneth Finney on Honduras, Derek Kerr on El Salvador, Charles Stansifer and Richard Millett on Nicaragua, and Stansifer and John Bell on Costa Rica. These articles, and some additional topical essays, focus on research needs, but in the process comment on the existing historiography.²⁶ Jorge Eduardo Arellano has kept track of Nicaraguan historiography over the past two decades in a series of useful, but sometimes obscurely published, guides to Nicaraguan bibliography.²⁷ Mario Argueta has done much the same for Honduras, and written a useful historiographical essay on that country.²⁸ For Belize, Peter Ashdown has written a brief but biting critique of traditional Belizean history, rejecting the glorification of the creole past and calling for reevaluation.²⁹ There are a few other topical works. Franklin D. Parker has given us a very nice anthology of important travel accounts and includes a topical index to their content, as well as a bibliography of the principal nineteenth-century travel accounts of Central America.³⁰ Ligia Estrada Molina has called attention to the considerable historical writing of Teodoro Picado, following his controversial Costa Bican presidency (1944-48).³¹

Intellectual history in general has lagged considerably behind other areas of Latin America. Constantino Lascaris’s Historia de las ideas en Centroamérica³² is not so much a history of ideas as it is a review of Central American history through the early nineteenth century from the perspective of how it reflected the ideas of contemporaries, but it is a useful and creative volume that bears on the historiography of the region. Arellano has produced a fine history of the University at León.³³ On Guatemalan education, Carlos González Orellana’s Historia de la educación en Guatemala³⁴ is a welcome contribution that is surprisingly comprehensive from pre-Columbian times to the 1960s. Otto Olivera has published a useful, if less than comprehensive, overview of nineteenth-century Guatemalan periodicals with emphasis on literary content and analysis.³⁵

Similarly, there are relatively few good reference works on the region, although certainly there has been some progress over the last few decades. Scarecrow’s Historical Dictionary series is of uneven quality, but certainly useful.³⁶ Biographical directories are primitive or nonexistent. The Diccionario general de Guatemala, a labor of love of the late Carlos C. Haeussler Yela, and limited to 200 copies, contains much useful information but is often inaccurate and almost always incomplete in its entries.³⁷ Yet there is not even anything of this sort for the other Central American states. Franklin D. Parker’s Central American Republics³⁸ contained a wealth of information on many aspects of Central American history not found elsewhere and remains a valuable reference tool.

The number of serious scholarly journals within Central America publishing historical articles is not great, but several have been important. Costa Rica leads the way with Estudios Sociales Centroamericanos (San José: Confederación Universitaria Centroamericana, 1971-), Revista de Historia (Heredia: Universidad Nacional, 1975-), and the Anuario de Estudios Centroamericanos (Universidad de Costa Rica, 1974-). The Revista del Pensamiento Centroamericano (Managua, 1960-85) has published many historical monographs since its inception. In its preoccupation with opposing the Sandinista regime, it has degenerated somewhat into polemics in recent years, causing it also to move its publication site to San José in 1986, but it remains a potentially important journal. El Salvador’s Estudios Centroamericanos (San Salvador: Universidad Centroamericana, 1946-) remains a remarkably independent chronicle of the political and economic history of modern El Salvador, of which there is no real counterpart in other states. By avoiding polemics and for the most part recent history, the Anales de la Academia de Geografía e Historia (Guatemala: Academia de Geografía e Historia de Guatemala, 1924-) and Mesoamérica (Antigua: Centro de Investigaciones Regionales de Mesoamérica, 1980-) continue to be major publishers of high quality historical articles in Guatemala. In Honduras the Revista de Geografía e Historia (Tegucigalpa, 1904-) has appeared irregularly, but some excellent historical work has appeared in Economía Política (Tegucigalpa, 1962) and other somewhat sporadically appearing academic journals in that country. In Belize, the Journal of Belizean Affairs (1973-) and Belizean Studies (formerly National Studies) (1973-) have struggled for existence, while publishing some fine historical work.

Few historians have been ambitious enough to attempt general histories of the whole region. In English, Mario Rodríguez wrote a brief survey of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries in the context of the 1960s,³⁹ and my own modest effort has been relatively free of competition during the past decade.⁴⁰ In Spanish, a useful, if sketchy, economic history of the isthmus by Héctor Pérez Brignoli and Ciro F. S. Cardoso appeared in 1977, and more recently Pérez has published an excellent brief overview of Central American history.⁴¹ By far the most important general history of Central America published during the last 25 years, however, is the erudite narrative history of Ernesto Chinchilla Aguilar.⁴² The first two volumes, respectively, concentrate on the pre-Columbian and colonial periods, with volume III dealing with the national period. This work essentially replaces the century-old Bancroft volumes⁴³ and the early twentieth-century treatment of Antonio Batres Jáuregui⁴⁴ as the basic regional history, loaded with data in traditional style, the culmination of a lifetime of research and writing on Central American history by a leading Guatemalan scholar.

National Histories and Special Topics

Histories of individual Central American states constituted a notable advance during the past three decades, although we are still waiting for definitive general histories of all of them. There have been a number of national histories published that have some utility, however.

Perhaps the most obvious advancement has been made in Belizean history, since virtually nothing had been done before 1960. David Waddell published the first adequate history of Belize in 1961,⁴⁵ with its focus on contemporary political parties and major issues facing the colony. It paid considerable attention to diplomatic history, but much of that was superseded by R. A. Humphrey’s definitive Diplomatic History of British Honduras, 1638-1901.⁴⁶ Since then, Belizean historians have begun to go beyond the sovereignty dispute with Guatemala and investigate the economic and social roots of Central America’s newest independent state. Narda Dobson’s general history of Belize is especially useful for the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.⁴⁷ Although it is thin in some places, reflecting inadequate research, it represented a major step forward in the recording of the tiny country’s history. Three excellent period works have added greatly to the understanding of Belizean national development. Nigel O. Bolland illuminated the early history of the colony to the 1870s, emphasizing its economic dependence on European markets and the colonial nature of the country.⁴⁸ Wayne Clegern documented the economic and political decline following completion of the Panama railroad, as well as the serious boundary difficulties with Guatemala and Mexico.⁴⁹ And Cedric H. Grant’s Making of Modern Belize is an impressive socioeconomic and political study of the emergence of the Belizean nation since about 1930.⁵⁰

A number of broad works reflect the remarkable development of historical investigation and writing at the University of Costa Rica. Carlos Melendez has synthesized the history of that country,⁵¹ while a new edition of the Biesanzes’ Costa Rican Life appeared in 1979.⁵² The most useful recent general work on Costa Rica is Carolyn Hall’s Costa Rica: A Geographical Interpretation in Historical Perspective,⁵³ which concentrates on the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, but has solid coverage of the colonial period as well. In 1971, Oscar Aguilar Bulgarelli and a number of other prominent Costa Rican historians made a commendable contribution to the national historiography of that country with a collection of essays on a wide variety of social, economic, political, and cultural topics over the past 150 years of Costa Rican history.⁵⁴ Alberto Sáenz Maroto, Historia agrícola de Costa Rica⁵⁵ is a major reference source of detail on the history of Costa Rican agriculture from the colonial era to the present. The social history of Costa Rica was greatly advanced by the major genealogical study of Costa Rican political leaders by Samuel Stone,⁵⁶ while the neglected history of blacks on the coastal region was advanced in a series of articles by Carlos Meléndez and Quince Duncan, commendably supplemented by the dissertation and articles of Michael Olien.⁵⁷ Richard Salisbury has reported and analyzed the remarkable diplomatic history of Costa Rica, especially in its relations with the other Central American states in the early twentieth century.⁵⁸

Alastair White offered a brief overview of modern Salvadoran history when virtually none was available, but his work is primarily useful for its description of El Salvador in the 1960s.⁵⁹ That work has largely been superseded by Philip Russell’s excellent synthesis.⁶⁰ Italo López Vallecillo has written an informative history of journalism in El Salvador.⁶¹ David Luna’s Manual de historia económica⁶² is a useful reference, but David G. Browning’s superb history of land tenure and its consequences in El Salvador is the closest thing to a comprehensive socioeconomic history of the country and, I believe, the finest work on Salvadoran history yet written.⁶³ Also essential, however, is Mario Flores Macal’s fine work on the social and economic structure of that country.⁶⁴

The long-neglected history of Honduras has been considerably advanced by José Guevara-Escudero’s dissertation on its nineteenth-century economic history, while Mario Argueta and Edgardo Quiñónez have produced a much-needed general overview.⁶⁵ A highly useful and well-conceived work on modern Honduras is Mario Posas and Rafael del Cid, La construcción del sector público y del estado nacional de Honduras, 1876-1979,⁶⁶ in which the authors provide a more detailed description than found elsewhere of the rise of agrarian capitalism and foreign domination of the Honduran state bureaucracy between 1876 and 1948, followed by discussion of the capitalist expansion and growth of the role of the state from 1948 through 1972, and the militarization of the state that has occurred since 1972.

The need for a Nicaraguan national history is especially great, but until one appears, David Radell’s Historical Geography is a very useful survey of that state’s history.⁶⁷ A powerful and influential history of the country by Jaime Wheelock, Imperialismo y dictadura, has combined dependency theory with a strong attachment to native Nicaraguan characteristics, and has become the basic text for Sandinista interpretations of Nicaraguan history.⁶⁸

For Guatemala, there have been several general histories, none of which is altogether satisfactory. Clearly the best is James Handy’s Gift of the Devil,⁶⁹ although it is primarily an account of Guatemala since 1945. A provocative, dependency-theory approach, emphasizing the unjust class structure of the country, is found in the brief work of Carlos Guzmán Böekler and Jean-Loup Herbert.⁷⁰ Clemente Marroquín Rojas’s Historia de Guatemala,⁷¹ more passionate than scholarly, is reflective of the nationalism of the midtwentieth century and suggests some interesting hypotheses for Guatemalan history, while Peter Calvert’s recent effort in Westview’s Nations of Contemporary Latin America series⁷² offers little beyond what Chester Lloyd Jones told us in Guatemala, Past and Present nearly a half-century ago.

The development of topical histories has progressed notably in recent years. The history of mining in nineteenth-century Central America remained almost wholly unexplored until Carlos Araya’s two articles on early independent Costa Rica, which illustrated mining’s relation to accumulation of capital by the ruling class, and helped to explain Costa Rica’s ability to develop coffee earlier than the other states of the isthmus. Another Araya article compares Costa Rican mining to that in Honduras and Nicaragua.⁷³ Two works on coinage are especially notable. Arturo Castillo Flores’s Historia de la moneda de Honduras⁷⁴ is an excellent history of Honduran coinage, but also contains much on financial development of the country in a thoroughly illustrated volume. For Guatemala, Kurt Prober’s profusely illustrated work provides excellent coverage of coinage from colonial times to modern, as well as other economic information.⁷⁵ Social history, however, has been the fastest growing area of Central American history, and the work of other social scientists has been especially influential here. Throughout the period under consideration, Edelberto Torres Rivas has provided much of the inspiration for serious research in social history.⁷⁶ Similarly, Mario Monteforte Toledo’s major socioeconomic study of Central American dependency has been highly influential.⁷⁷

The considerable progress in the demographic history of the colonial period⁷⁶ has not been matched for the national period, and work on the nineteenth century, by Héctor Pérez and others, has barely begun.⁷⁹ A conference on this topic in Costa Rica in 1973 produced a volume of articles by German Romero Vargas, Severo Martínez Peláez, José Luis Vega, and others, but most of the work dealt with the colonial period.⁸⁰ An excellent collection of essays on both colonial and modern highland Guatemalan demography was edited by Robert M. Carmack, John Early, and Christopher Lutz.⁸¹ A beginning of sorts has also been made in studying the history of women in Central America with the publication of a few items that mainly emphasize women’s role in revolution, but the quality of this work has not yet achieved a very high level.⁸²

The history of labor in Central America has only begun to be told, but some promising research has taken place under difficult conditions. Vladimir de la Cruz offers a brief introductory outline of origins of the labor union movement in Central America, especially Nicaragua, Honduras, and Costa Rica.⁸³ Slightly more comprehensive on Honduras is Víctor Meza’s Historia del movimiento obrero hondureño,⁸⁴ but Mario Posas’s series of monographs has extended Honduran labor history to greater depths.⁸⁵ Aristides Augusto Larín’s fine review of Salvadoran labor history, 1918-67, also includes a useful analysis of Salvadoran land tenure problems from the colonial period through the midtwentieth century.⁸⁶ For Costa Rica, Carlos Luis Fallas Monge has dealt ably with the nineteenth century,⁸⁷ followed by Vladimir de la Cruz on the period from 1870 to 1930, in which he details the development of the Costa Rican labor movement and early conflicts involving railroads and the United Fruit Company.⁸⁸ To some early work done on the Guatemalan labor movement in the 1950s has been added Antonio Obando Sánchez’s Memorias on the twentieth-century development of the labor movement in that country.⁸⁹ A major advance in the history of Guatemalan rural labor systems is being made by David McCreery.⁹⁰

Independence and State Building

Some of the most exciting recent research has been done on the turbulent period of national independence and the ill-fated United Provinces of Central America. While a number of Marxist and other scholars have argued that incipient and potential revolts from Indian and mestizo peasants have been a reality in Central American history since the eighteenth century,⁹¹ Jorge Luján Muñoz, in a perceptive interpretation of the independence period providing a general overview of the political situation, economic system, and social structure in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, argues persuasively that Indian revolts of the period had little or nothing to do with the movement for independence in the kingdom’s capital.⁹²

Undoubtedly the most important work, however, on the independence period is Mario Rodríguez, The Cádiz Experiment in Central America, 1808-1826.⁹³ More than simply a study of the Cádiz government’s and constitution’s immediate impact in Central America, Rodríguez has written a major work on its influence all across Latin America, which explains much of the origin of nineteenth-century liberalism and the conflicts that scarred the isthmus for much of the remainder of the century and beyond. It is a work that goes considerably beyond Jorge Mario García Laguardia’s very fine, but more narrow, monograph showing Guatemala’s reaction to the call for reform in 1808.⁹⁴ These works complement the earlier excellent biography of José Cecilio del Valle by Louis E. Bumgartner that described his role in bringing the Enlightenment to Central American politics and institutions.⁹⁵

A number of articles have brought some clarity to the confused events surrounding independence from Spain and Mexico and the establishment of the first Central American republic. Nettie Lee Benson and Charles R. Berry detail the backgrounds and origins of the Central American representatives in the Mexican Congress of the Iturbide period, suggesting the kind of data that can be compiled on the leading political individuals and families.⁹⁶ Hernán G. Peralta’s work on Costa Rica during the Iturbide period is thoroughly researched and provides a good indication of the popularity of monarchy among many Latin Americans at the time of independence.⁹⁷ The role of the first Central American Constituent Congress is dealt with in detail by Andrés Townsend Ezcurra, Las Provincias Unidas de Centroamérica, is a substantial amplification of his 1958 book of the same title.⁹⁸ Philip Flemion has written a valuable revisionist article on Manuel José Arce that presents him as a sincere nationalist rather than a betrayer of Liberalism as he has so often been portrayed in Central American works.⁹⁹ And Mauricio Domínguez’s article on the controversial question of the Salvadoran bishopric sheds further light on one of the most important issues in the period.¹⁰⁰

A collection of articles on Central American independence in a Nicaraguan anthology commemorating the sesquicentennial of Central American independence contains mostly reprints of earlier works, but includes four new articles. Especially valuable among these is Germán Romero’s discussion of the Nicaraguan elite in the eighteenth century.¹⁰¹ Noteworthy, too, is Chester Zelaya Goodman’s critical analysis of Nicaraguan institutional and political development in the independence period.¹⁰² Much more detailed are the first two volumes in José Coronel Urtecho’s projected history of independent Nicaragua. Subsequent volumes were never published, but these first two provide immense detail on the first years of independence (1820s), emphasizing economic and social factors, and providing a good historiographical survey.¹⁰³ Rafael Obregón Loria wrote a synthesis of the Central American independence movement, with special emphasis on Costa Rica,¹⁰⁴ and useful accounts of individual states in the nineteenth century are headed by that of José Luis Vega Carballos on the formation of the Costa Rican state.¹⁰³ Rodolfo Cerdas Cruz has written the major Marxist interpretation of the early independence period of Costa Rican history.¹⁰⁶ Cerdas discusses several competing theories of Costa Rican state development, favoring that of class struggle; his study runs from the colonial period through the end of the Braulio Carrillo dictatorship of the 1830s.

The era of independence has continued to inspire biographers of the principal actors, some of which advance our knowledge of the period significantly. Miguel Ángel Durón’s work on José Matías Delgado, for example, although undocumented, is well organized, informative, and objective.¹⁰⁷ It is surpassed, however, by Rodolfo Barón Castro’s perceptive, prize-winning work on Delgado, based on research in Spanish archives, which makes clear the Spanish encouragement of localism on the eve of independence, helping to foster the regional fragmentation of the subsequent Central American union.¹⁰⁸ Chester Zelaya’s biographical study of Rafael Francisco Osejo, an influential Nicaraguan lawyer, educator, and politician in Costa Rica in the early nineteenth century is particularly well done.¹⁰⁹ A biography of Osejo’s rival in Costa Rican early national development, José Santos Lombardo, was written by Oscar Aguilar Bulgarelli.¹¹⁰ José Reina Valenzuela provides a biography of the important Honduran savant and leader in the early independence period, Dionsio de Herrera,¹¹¹ as does Rómulo Durón for Joaquín Rivera.¹¹² Rivera was a Honduran Liberal unionist, but also a defender of the Indians. A useful biography of a Salvadoran Liberal priest, who played an active and important role in the early nineteenth century and eventually codified the laws of El Salvador and Costa Rica, is Jorge Lardé y Larín’s Isidro Menéndez.¹¹³

The federation attempt also attracted a few noteworthy writings. Robert S. Smith documented the financial mismanagement of the federation, but refuted arguments that the British loan was a major burden on the republic, since none of it was repaid during that period. Smith, an economist, believed noneconomic difficulties may have been more important for failure of federation than economic problems.¹¹⁴ A new edition of Thomas L. Karnes’s Failure of Union appeared in 1976, updating the story of the repeated attempts to restore the Central American union, skillfully weaving together threads of international, regional, and domestic policy. Karnes saw the failure as resulting from an inability to create successful representative government in each of the Central American states, extreme nationalism, and Costa Rican isolationism based upon a feeling of superiority. He regarded economic factors as less important, but was pessimistic about the future of Central American union.¹¹⁵

The critical years presided over by Mariano Gálvez were the subject of a number of important studies. Jorge Luis Arriola’s biography of the Guatemalan Liberal governor of the 1830s praises him for his idealistic belief in political freedom and social progress and reproduces many documents of the period.¹¹⁶ Miriam Williford’s dissertation on the Gálvez reforms produced several perceptive articles on the nature of the early Guatemalan liberalism that provide insight into the controversial period.¹¹⁷ Mario Rodríguez’s penetrating analysis of the Livingston Codes emphasizes the role of José Francisco Barrundia in those reforms and the extent to which Anglo-American institutions had impressed the Liberals.¹¹⁸ This theme is developed to much greater length by William J. Griffith in his Empires in the Wilderness, a meticulous study of British efforts to establish a colony on the eastern coast of Central America, providing much insight into the whole question of British commercial and territorial imperialism in early nineteenth-century Central America.¹¹⁹

I have dealt with internal aspects of the Guatemalan economy in a study of the Consulado de Comercio, which survived in Guatemala until 1871.¹²⁰ A major reference work on the church compiled by Agustín Estrada Monroy is useful for this period, as well as the colonial era, since it extends through the administration of Archbishop Francisco de Paula García Peláez.¹²¹ Craig Dozier’s account of the Mosquito Shore elaborates in a broader context on Griffith’s story of British colonization, and shows how the United States continued that development in Nicaragua well into the present century.¹²² The British involvement in Central American history is further elucidated by Mario Rodríguez in his classic biography of Frederick Chatfield, detailing the career of Britain’s ubiquitous consul in Central America from 1834 to 1852, who often pursued British interests more aggressively than London wished.¹²³ In addition, Robert Naylor has contributed to understanding the economic role of Great Britain in Central America during the first half of the nineteenth century in a pair of articles outlining British commercial activities on the Caribbean shore.¹²⁴ British approaches to this activity are presented by R. A. Humphreys¹²⁵ and David Waddell.¹²⁶

The first 50 years of independence in Central America have been reviewed by me in The Cambridge History of Latin America, challenging many of the traditional accounts by Liberal historians.¹²⁷ Supporting the interpretation proposed by E. Bradford Burns in his Poverty of Progress,¹²⁸ I explore Conservative as well as Liberal development plans, and describe the violent peasant uprisings that occurred against the Liberal reforms. Clemente Marroquín Rojas’s Francisco Morazán y Rafael Carrera,¹²⁹ although bombastic and unscholarly, had already suggested a part of this approach in its revisionist interpretation of Morazán and Carrera, rejecting Liberal glorification of Morazán and beginning with the re-evaluation of Carrera which has so long been needed in Guatemalan historiography. More learned and convincing is Luis Beltranena Sinibaldi’s strong defense of the nineteenth-century Conservatives and of Carrera, in particular.¹³⁰ Very useful for its factual detail, if not its relative lack of interpretation, is Pedro Tobar Cruz, Los montañeses,¹³¹ but even more thorough is the unpublished dissertation of Hazel Ingersol.¹³² Pedro Joaquin Chamorro’s Fruto Chamorro is a thorough study of the founder of the Nicaraguan Conservative party.¹³³ Favorable to Chamorro, the work is thoroughly researched, although undocumented except with bibliographies for each chapter.

The Anglo-American rivalry for an interoceanic route and the William Walker episode have continued to attract historical writings at all levels. Several Central and North American authors have reevaluated Walker’s career,¹³⁴ but except for Albert Chrr’s interesting attempt at psychohistory,¹³⁵ they add little to what is not found in Scroggs’s early work.¹³⁶ There are aspects of the Anglo-American rivalry over the interoceanic route that have stimulated important historical research. Charles Stansifer’s definitive study of E. G. Squier, the controversial U.S. envoy to Central America, is one example.¹³⁷ Several works on Manifest Destiny in Central America have also deepened our understanding of the role played by the United States in the period before the U.S. Civil War.¹³⁸ Other important works on the effort to develop an interoceanic route that have extended the story beyond the diplomatic and military history to discuss social and economic change include Joseph L. Schott’s Rails Across Panama,¹³⁹ and David Folkman’s The Nicaragua Route.¹⁴⁰ An interesting work on nineteenth-century French interest in the isthmus is Cyril Allen’s work on Félix Belly and the repeated, successful U.S. efforts to frustrate his efforts.¹⁴¹

The years following the Walker episode had been almost entirely neglected before 1960, but several works have begun to reconstruct that important period that preceded the Fiberal Reforma. The impact of the cholera epidemic brought back to Costa Rica by troops in the Nicaragua campaign has been described by Germán Tjarks and others.¹⁴² A similar study is needed for Guatemala. Pedro J. Cuadra Chamorro has given us a careful study of the role of Gerardo Barrios and his unionist effort of 1863, blaming correctly Guatemala’s strong antiunionist sentiment under Carrera for the failure of the movement.¹⁴³ Italo López Vallecillos’s full-scale biography of Barrios and his times, however, is the most complete work on that period in El Salvador.¹⁴⁴ A provocative essay by José Abdulio Cordero explains Costa Rica’s emerging nationalism in terms of its relative isolation and autonomy during the colonial period, its movement for independence, and its development of a national educational system.¹⁴⁵ And Samuel Stone’s careful and well-documented study of coffee production in Costa Rica from the 1840s on reveals the importance of the colonial elite in this activity.¹⁴⁶ Carlos Meléndez’s fine work on Montealegre reveals the significant role of this English-trained physician who presided over Costa Rica following the fall of Juan Rafael Mora, in that country’s transition from conservatism to liberalism.¹⁴⁷ For Guatemala, Wayne Clegern has concisely, but perceptively, identified the transitional quality of the Vicente Cerna regime between the reactionary conservatism of Carrera and the radical liberalism of Justo Rufino Barrios.¹⁴³ Nicaragua’s delayed Conservative years are reflected in Franco Cerruti’s detailed study of the Jesuits in nineteenth-century Nicaragua.¹⁴⁹

Jorge Mario García Laguardia provides a competent synthesis and documentary study of the Reforma in Guatemala.¹⁵⁰ Also useful is his anthology, with a long analytical introduction, of the principal Liberal writings of the era.¹⁵¹ Rather belated publication of an earlier doctoral dissertation by Thomas Herrick¹⁵² provides us with one of the most thorough accounts of the economic and political sequence of events in the Barrios administration. More interpretive and getting at the heart of the Liberal development philosophy, however, is David McCreery’s study of Barrios’s Development Ministry.¹⁵³ Hubert Miller reveals the importance of positivism to Guatemalan educational reform in the Barrios period,¹⁵⁴ but the most thorough study of positivism in Central America is Jesús Amurrio’s El positivismo en Guatemala.¹⁵⁵ Miller has further given us a thorough examination of church-state relations in the Guatemalan Reforma,¹⁵⁶ but a number of Central Americans have also examined the church in Liberal Central America: Rodolfo Cardenal provides an outline of twentieth-century Honduran church history, emphasizing the entry of foreign clergy and capital and the decline in ecclesiastical influence in Honduran society.¹⁵⁷ More substantial is Cardenal’s ecclesiastical history of El Salvador from 1871 to 1931, a balanced history of church-state relations that emphasizes the anticlericalism of Salvadoran Liberals, followed by the alliance of the coffee elite with a servile clergy.¹⁵⁸ Jorge Eduardo Arellano has briefly surveyed the history of the Nicaraguan church, while Ricardo Blanco Segura has written a number of useful anecdotal works on the history of the church in Costa Rica.¹⁵⁹

Manuel Castrillo Gámez, Reseña histórica de Nicaragua,¹⁶⁰ despite the title, covers only 1887-95, a critical period in Nicaraguan history, documenting in considerable detail the transition from Nicaraguan enlightened conservatism to the new liberalism of J. S. Zelaya. This well-documented and objective contribution to Central American historiography pays considerable attention to the question of the incorporation of Mosquitia into Nicaragua during this period. On this question, there is also an excellent article by Gary M. Ross.¹⁶¹ Very useful, too, is Pedro Joaquín Chamorro’s Enrique Guzmán y su tiempo,¹⁶² concerning a Liberal figure who became a Conservative opponent of Zelaya. Chamorro’s account and accompanying documents offer some valuable insights on the period. And Charles Stansifer has written a fine review of the Zelaya era, presenting a more sympathetic view than many North Americans have formerly given of him.¹⁶³

The long Guatemalan Liberal dictatorship of Manuel Estrada Cabrera has not yet been adequately studied, but José Lizardo Díaz’s account of the 1906 revolution, although unseholarly and uneven in quality, contains much of value for any such study, including many official documents, telegrams, and other sources, and the memoirs of Dr. Víctor Manuel Calderón, a participant in the 1906 conflict.¹⁶⁴ Similarly, Néstor Enrique Alvarado provides a detailed and revealing account of the Honduran Revolution of 1919.¹⁶⁵ A very useful biography of one of Costa Rica’s key figures in the early twentieth century is Eugenio Rodríguez Vega’s work on Ricardo Jiménez Oreamuno.¹⁶⁶ Similarly valuable is Oscar R. Aguilar Bulgarelli’s article on Alfredo González Flores,¹⁶⁷ a splendid analysis of President González’s controversial administration (1914-17) and the military coup of Federico Tinoco. On Tinoco, however, the most important recent work is that of Hugo Murillo,¹⁶⁸ useful for showing the relationship with the United States in the Tinoco revolution.

If the political history of the Liberal era remains as yet imperfectly told, the last quarter century has produced some impressive advances in research on economic and social development. Lowell Gudmundson has done especially important work on the socioeconomic history of independent Costa Rica, revising the myth of Costa Rican egalitarianism.¹⁶⁹ Carolyn Hall’s Oxford dissertation tells the story of the remarkable growth of coffee under both Conservative and Liberal regimes in Costa Rica; she followed that up with a comprehensive description of a single coffee estate.¹⁷⁰ In addition, Mario Samper Kutchbaeh has provided a detailed social history of coffee in Costa Rica.¹⁷¹ Julio Castellanos Cambranes¹⁷² and David McCreery¹⁷³ provide much new data on the nature of the coffee elite and their influence in nineteenth-century Guatemala. Their strong interpretive statements go well beyond the valuable accumulation of data in Manuel Rubio Sánchez’s massive study on the production and commerce in coffee.¹⁷⁴ Ciro Cardoso also pursued the topic both in Costa Rica and in Central America generally, and his “Historia económica del café en Centroamérica: Siglo XIX, estudio comparativo” provides a good introduction as well as preliminary comparative focus on geography, factors of production, labor, capital, and coffee technology for Costa Rica, Guatemala, and El Salvador.¹⁷⁵ On a related topic, Manuel A. Solís shows the importance of the sugar industry in development of agroexport dependence and heavy involvement of foreigners in that transition in Costa Rica.¹⁷⁶ Jeffrey Casey Gaspar has done some careful and informative studies on agroexport development on Costa Rica’s Caribbean lowlands, in which he discusses social as well as economic history in well-documented accounts.¹⁷⁷ E. Bradford Burns has again illustrated how valuable travel accounts can be to the historian as he documents the decline in standards of living for most Salvadorans in the face of rising agroexports between 1858 and 1931.¹⁷⁸ And McCreery has recently made a further important contribution to the social history of the Liberal period in a splendid article on prostitution in Guatemala City.¹⁷⁹

Thomas Schoonover has done pioneering work on the foreign trade of the isthmus with Europe and the United States in the nineteenth century, his research in European archives beginning to hear fruit.¹⁸⁰ Watt Stewart’s biography of Minor Cooper Keith is the classic and vigorous account of a major U.S. business figure and one of the founders of the banana and railway empire that became United Fruit.¹⁸¹ Thomas Karnes, in his study of the Standard Fruit and Steamship Company,¹⁸² has written a fine history of the other major fruit company in the twentieth century, while Frank Ellis has provided a new and perceptive assessment of the banana enclave in Central America.¹⁸³ Victor Bulmer-Thomas and Héctor Pérez Brignoli, in a pair of articles in the Journal of Latin American Studies, provide both informative and interpretive overviews of Central America’s economic history in the midtwentieth century.¹⁸⁴

Studies dealing with the role of foreign national groups are only beginning to become a major part of the historical literature of Central America, and the need for such studies remains very great. Julio Castellanos Cambranes has begun to evaluate the impact of the Germans in Guatemala.¹⁸⁵ Another valuable contribution in this direction is C. Harvey Gardiner’s “The Japanese and Central America,” covering Japanese interest and activity on the isthmus from 1908 to about 1970, noting especially early Japanese interests in El Salvador.¹⁸⁶ The account of Jacobo Schifter et al. on the Jews in Costa Rica, although not strictly a foreign national group, nevertheless makes a valuable contribution to the social and ethnic literature of the region.¹⁸⁷

Historiography of the Contemporary Crises

The challenge to Liberal rule which has extended over almost the entire twentieth century and taken many forms occupies much of the writing on this century, and a useful place to start is the anthology edited by Steve Ropp and Jim Morris. With chapters by Julio Castellanos, Steve Gorman, Tommie Sue Montgomery, and Morris, it offers diverse interpretations of the historical paths leading to the present crises.¹⁸⁸

Italo López Vallecillos gives us a superb overview of this trajectory in El Salvador in a recent article in ECA, in which he analyzes the economic system of that country and how the elite managed various crises until the present breakdown.¹⁸⁹ His central hypothesis—that the ruling class had two leading sectors: the traditional agroexporters and a more modern industrial and financial group—is sound and helps to explain the division within the elite along economic lines. Another excellent overview of the period in that country, from a socialist perspective, is Mario Salazar Valientes chapter in Pablo González Casanova’s fine collaborative history of twentieth-century Latin America.¹⁹⁰ A number of works have illuminated specific events or periods in Salvadoran twentieth-century history. Matilde Elena López evaluates sympathetically the role of Alberto Masferrer, El Salvadors leading intellectual of the 1920s, and places him as a precursor to the 1932 peasant revolt.¹⁹¹ More comprehensive is her biography accompanying Masferrer’s Obras escogidas.¹⁹² There is a useful Marxist interpretation, collaboratively written, of the impact of the Great Depression on El Salvador, indicating with statistical evidence the problems of coffee dependency and the social discontent that led to the 1932 revolt.¹⁹³ On the ’32 revolt, Thomas F. Anderson’s Matanza is dispassionate and thorough, and a very revealing account of the harsh reaction of the Salvadoran military and elite against this peasant uprising.¹⁹⁴ Yet more detail and insight into that event can be found in Roque Dalton’s autobiographical biography of Miguel Mármol.¹⁹⁵ This valuable memoir of the period helps us understand the early development of the Salvadoran Communist party. On the leader of that revolt, Jorge Arias Gómez’s biography of Farabundo Martí is largely objective if sympathetic.¹⁹⁶

A strong case, within a Marxist conceptual framework, is made for 1932 as the watershed of modern Salvadoran history by Ana Evelyn Jacir Siman. She notes the expansion of banking and the development of cotton exports as especially important in stimulating economic growth, but a growth that brought adverse social conditions. She argues that the government’s promotion of industrialization put private profit above social gain and failed to solve the structural problems of the country.¹⁹⁷ These are arguments for which Robert G. Williams has provided considerable evidence throughout Central America in the cotton and beef industries since World War II, as lie describes the process by which export agriculture has placed great pressure on the rural population, often driving them to violence and support of revolutionary groups.¹⁹⁸ Another Salvadoran, Vinicio González, explains the 1932 Salvadoran rebellion in terms of local political conditions, agrarian labor, and the intervention of external forces such as the 1929 international depression and the Communist party, as he focuses on it and one other of the most overt expressions of rural proletarian revolt in the midtwentieth century.¹⁹⁹ Rafael Guidos Véjar has written an excellent account of the growth of the military in El Salvador following the Great Depression, especially under the dictatorship of Maximiliano Hernández Martínez.²⁰⁰ Francisco Morán provides a concise, detailed account of the overthrow of Hernández, making a good case for this event as the end of the Liberal era and the beginning of constitutional, political, and social crises which are still in progress in El Salvador.²⁰¹

Several political scientists in the United States have argued that El Salvador moved toward more democratic government between 1944 and 1972.²⁰² Stephen A. Webre’s excellent study on the rise of Duarte and the Christian Democrats to some degree supports this concept, although with less enthusiasm than some of the earlier political scientists. Webre suggests clearly the reluctance of the power structure to share real authority with the Christian Democrats or any other popular party.²⁰³ Many have attributed great importance to El Salvador’s 1969 war with Honduras as a catalyst for internal revolt in El Salvador. Thomas Anderson’s War of the Dispossessed²⁰⁴ suggests as much, although he concentrates principally on the war itself. Much more analytical is William H. Durham’s Scarcity and Survival in Central America. Although Durham is more concerned with the origins of that war than with the subsequent political disorders in El Salvador, his emphasis on the relationship between population and the availability of land, and not just Salvadoran emigration to Honduras, reinforces Browning’s argument of land tenure as the key to El Salvador’s socioeconomic problems.²⁰⁵ Among the more detailed accounts of the war from the viewpoint of the Salvadoran military is Col. Manuel Molina’s two-volume defense of the army. More than a simple military history, Molina argues passionately that the war was a reflection of Salvadoran unity, discipline, and national patriotism. The work reflects little understanding of or sympathy with class structure or struggle, but is useful for its military mirror of the Liberal tradition in Central America.²⁰⁶

The Salvadoran historian Italo López Vallecillos offers one of the best analyses of the decade between the “Football War” and the 1979 coup. López studies the relationship between a weak social system and the pattern of repression and subversion—in the confrontation between the dominant and the dominated classes—and sees this as a fundamental key to understanding the military coup of October 15, 1979.²⁰⁷ William Leo-Grande and Carla Anne Robbins pursue the same theme in Foreign Affairs with a well-reasoned argument that social and economic imbalances in El Salvador after the 1969 war increased political tensions because an entrenched oligarchy prevented the military governments of the 1970s from instituting reforms until 1980. They maintain that only leftist participation in the government can now halt the civil war.²⁰⁸

The contemporary situation in El Salvador has prompted considerable analysis of Salvadoran history, especially by Salvadorans. These long-term analyses of the background to the present crises have been neatly summarized in an article by Richard Lapper and Hazel Johnson, in which the authors maintain that since the decline of indigo and rise of coffee in the late nineteenth century the Salvadoran elite, represented by the “14 families,” has dominated the economy, and that since 1932 the military have ruled, crushing all movements for popular reform.²⁰⁹ Thomas Anderson has also written several overview articles on modern Salvadoran history, including a lengthy chapter in his Politics in Central America²¹⁰ and a briefer survey in Robert Wesson’s Hoover Institution volume on Communism in Central America.²¹¹ While Anderson avoids theoretical approaches altogether, his work is useful for its compilation of the basic political chronology. The contemporary crises in El Salvador are dealt with in a number of mostly nonhistorical works, but those of Tommie Sue Montgomery²¹² and Enrique Baloyra²¹³ are positive contributions, as is James Dunkerly’s Long War.²¹¹ An article by Gabriel Zaid provides great insight and descriptive information on organization and events in El Salvador in the 1970s and early 1980s.²¹⁵ Zaid includes some genealogical data of the most powerful Salvadoran families that is unique in the historiography of the country, and notes the close kinship and educational relationships among leaders of all factions in the Salvadoran conflict. It is especially valuable for understanding the complexity of the Salvadoran left.

Nearly everyone who has studied modern El Salvador agrees that the military and their abuses of power are a large part of the problem. Richard Millett has given us long-term insight into this question in an article on “The Politics of Violence” in Guatemala and El Salvador, while suggesting that those governments did make some effort to alleviate economic and social problems in the 1970s.²¹⁶ The background to the present active role of the United States in the Central American militaries is found in Don Etchision’s The United States and Militarism in Central America, a scholarly account of the role of the armed forces in the politics of each Central American state during the Kennedy, Johnson, and Nixon years.²¹⁷

U.S. occupation and the Somoza dynasty dominate most of Nicaragua’s twentieth-century history before the Sandinista victory of 1979. Neill Macaulay’s The Sandino Affair has become the standard biography of Augusto C. Sandino, notwithstanding a great deal of more recent writing since the Sandinista Revolution,²¹⁸ but the work that has been most important in resurrecting the heroic Sandino is Gregorio Selser’s Sandino, general de hombres libres.²¹⁹ Presenting him as an idealist and anti-imperialist, Selser includes long excerpts from Sandino’s letters and other writings. The work deals more broadly than its title suggests with U.S. policy in the region in the 1920s and 1930s and with the assassination of Sandino. It was undoubtedly highly influential to Carlos Fonseca Amador, founder of the modern Sandinista movement, and contributed to his development of an ideology that rested heavily on Sandino. Since the revolution, a flood of writing on Sandino has appeared in Managua, but Fonseca’s strongly Marxist interpretation, critical of earlier writing, appeared in Casa de las Américas (Havana) in 1974 and presented the concept he had been developing throughout the 1960s.²²⁰ Much more substantial is Sergio Ramírez’s El pensamiento vivo de Sandino,²²¹ and his biographical studies of Sandino.²²² Representative of the many other studies of Sandino’s life and writings that have appeared since the revolution is the work of Gustavo Alemán Bolaños²²³ and Ternot MacRenato,²²⁴ while for understanding the ideological roots of the revolution the work of Donald C. Hodges²²⁵ is especially valuable. A more or less official history of the revolutionary process is Humberto Ortega’s 50 años de lucha sandinista.²²⁶ A more general effort to explain Nicaraguan history from 1855 to 1979 in the light of the Sandinista Revolution is a review of the past century by Claribel Alegría and D. J. Flakoll that emphasizes U.S. interventionism, the heroic Sandino, and the dictatorial Somoza dynasty. This work includes much new material from difficult-to-locate published sources.²²⁷

Among a number of works on the Somoza era, Richard Millett’s fine Guardians of the Dynasty has been the most influential and represents one of the most important contributions to twentieth-century Central American historiography.²²⁸ Millett lays much of the blame for the Somoza dynasty on the United States but, more importantly, provides a well-researched account of the Nicaraguan National Guard: his is one of the few works that deal scientifically with the history of military institutions on the isthmus. More emotional, but an important document of the period, is the severe indictment of the Somozas by the Conservative editor of La Prensa, Pedro Joaquín Chamorro, whose assassination in 1978 became the catalyst for massive popular uprising.²²⁹ He describes in detail the Guardia Nacional and their practices on political prisoners, blaming the United States for the Somoza dynasty and for the decay of the Nicaraguan morality. Another, rather unique, anti-Somoza period piece is the 1961 article of Ignacio Briones Torres, which emphasized the role of the Communist party as an important ally of the Somoza regime.²³⁰ Two personal memoirs published during the 1960s are also important contributions to understanding the Somoza years and especially the role of the Conservative party during the first half of the twentieth century. Carlos Cuadra Pasos’s Historia de medio siglo,²³¹ originally published in weekly serial form in 1950, is an autobiographical account of a Conservative party lawyer in Nicaragua, and is an important chronicle of Nicaraguan history during the first third of the twentieth century. It is perceptive, relatively objective, and provides valuable insight into the Conservative party as well as into Nicaraguan relations with the United States. And publication of the Opera bufa of Joaquín Zavala Urtecho provides a fresh look at Zavala’s mid-1930s cartoons and articles satirizing Nicaraguan politicians and politics.²³²

There has been a flood of works seeking to interpret the Sandinista Revolution itself, but most of them fall outside the scope of a discussion of historical writing. John Booth²³³ and David Nolan²³⁴ give objective treatment to the revolution and its ideology respectively, while Thomas Walker’s two volumes of edited essays²³⁵ and George Black,²³⁶ Henri Weber,²³⁷ and Carlos M. Vilas²³⁸ offer sympathetic views of the Sandinistas. Critical and negative accounts of the revolution are offered by Humberto Belli²³⁹ and Shirley Christian,²⁴⁰ while Forrest Colbourn points to practical problems in the agrarian reform program of Sandinista Nicaragua.²⁴¹

The last Liberal dictatorship in Guatemala has been described in substantial detail by Kenneth Grieb. While not totally sympathetic to Ubico, Grieb’s emphasis on Ubico’s economic and political success does tend to play down the repressive and brutal aspects of the regime. His emphasis on close relations with the United States is not misplaced, but he does tend to underestimate Ubico’s close ties to German interests, both within and beyond Guatemala, before 1941.²⁴² Now somewhat dated, but still one of the most useful works for understanding the nature of midtwentieth-century Guatemala is Nathan Whetten’s sociological and descriptive Guatemala, the Land and the People.²⁴³ Emphasizing rural life, with much attention to the Indian, Whetten’s work is indispensable to study of the revolutionary period. Richard Adams’s outstanding collection of essays on Guatemalan institutions and characteristics, Crucifixion by Power, continues to be essential reading for understanding modern Guatemala.²⁴⁴ Also useful, if not very well documented, is Edelberto Torres Rivas’s synthesis of midtwentieth-century Guatemala.²⁴⁵ The Guatemalan Revolution has attracted increased attention, although limitations on sources still restrict research.²⁴⁶ Several works have confirmed the U.S. complicity in the 1954 overthrow of the Arbenz government.²⁴⁷ James Handy’s general work, mentioned above, focuses especially on the revolution and since, based largely on his University of Toronto dissertation. It follows up the excellent article of Robert Wasserstrom which argues that Arbenz’s land reform was cautious mainly because his government perceived the Indian problem as the result of feudal traditions rather than of agroexport commercial agriculture.²⁴⁸ Equally important has been the work of anthropologist Carol Smith in understanding the structure of Guatemalan Indian community life and its relation to changing economic and political patterns in the country.²⁴⁹

José Luis Vega Carballo provides excellent analysis of social and political trends in midtwentieth-century Costa Rica in a fine synthetic article on political power and democracy.²⁵⁰ A perceptive Marxist approach to the same topic is that of Rodolfo Cerdas Cruz.²⁵¹ Another informative political survey from a Marxist perspective is Jorge Mario Salazar Mora’s study of reformism in Costa Rica from 1914 through 1958, concerned principally with politics from Calderón Guardia through Figueres.²⁵² Salazar argues that none of these movements were radical and that they did little for the rural poor, whose condition has continued to worsen in the twentieth century. The 1948 civil war continues to attract considerable attention, but John P. Bell’s Crisis in Costa Rica remains the authoritative work on that major event.²⁵³ More recently, a detailed biography of Figueres by Charles Ameringer is both sympathetic and critical.²⁵⁴ An excellent monograph on the public career of Rodrigo Facio, major political figure, economist of the 1948 Revolution, rector of the Universidad de Costa Rica, and historian has been written by Raúl Hess E.²⁵⁵ The important role of the reform-minded archbishop, Víctor Manuel Sanabria, is described by Ricardo Blanco Segura.²⁵⁶ There has also been significant advancement on the institutional history of modern Costa Rica. Excellent examples are Mario Carvajal Herrera’s analysis of Costa Rica’s meaningful elections between 1953 and 1970,²⁵⁷ Mark Rosenberg’s work on the social security system,²⁵⁸ and Mitchell A. Seligson’s Peasants of Costa Rica and the Development of Agrarian Capitalism.²⁵⁹ As early as 1961, James Busey, in his study of the Costa Rican presidency, had shown that Costa Rica was not a democratic utopia, but that significant progress had been made toward fair elections and peaceful political transitions.²⁶⁰

One of the best analyses on recent Honduran history is Guillermo Molina Chocano’s study of the period from 1925 to 1973.²⁶¹ James Morris’s little book focusing on political and military history of Honduras in the twentieth century is a useful synthesis, but the need remains for a more comprehensive volume.²⁶² Stefán Baciu provides a favorable biography of Ramón Villeda Morales, the Liberal party leader of the early 1960s.²⁶³ On the military, the most important work is that of Steve C. Ropp, which provides a penetrating analysis of the Honduran military in the 1950s and 1960s, as well as a good review of background from the nineteenth century forward. The strong U.S. role in the modern Honduran army began well before the present North American adventurism there and helps to explain much of Honduras’ military and political development.²⁶⁴

A final area of major scholarly attention, as well as of much popular writing, is U.S. policy toward Central America. While a detailed examination of the topic is outside the scope of this article, the heavy-handed U.S. role in twentieth-century Central America precludes ignoring it altogether. Dana Munro’s two volumes on Caribbean policy contain much data and insight, reflecting that diplomat-historian’s experience and research in the area and a generally positive assessment of the U.S. role.²⁶⁵ Lester Langley has provided a well-balanced survey of twentieth-century U.S.-Central American relations,²⁶⁶ as well as a popular critique of the results of U.S. policy among the Central American people.²⁶⁷ William Kamman’s appraisal of the U.S. involvement in the Sandino affair is sound and complements Macaulay’s volume well.²⁶⁸ Among the more popular North American historical analyses of contemporary Central American policy is Walter LaFeber’s Inevitable Revolutions. Despite a reluctance to consult Central American sources, LaFeber’s analysis of U.S. policy in Central America is generally sound, and he correctly relates many of the region’s socioeconomic problems to that policy.²⁶⁹ The extent of U.S. investment and other involvement is also suggested in an unscholarly but useful volume by Tom Barry et ah, entitled Dollars and Dictators.²⁷⁰

Kenneth Grieb has given evidence of long-term North American interest in El Salvador in his article on “The U. S. and the Rise of General Maximiliano Hernández Martínez.”²⁷¹ More recently, following the 1979 events in El Salvador and Nicaragua, Richard Millett provided a useful political survey, stressing the active role the United States must play in the development of the region. Millett argued that the unwillingness of the United States to do so represents a type of paralysis.²⁷² This was, of course, essentially a critique of the Carter administration’s policy, and Millett, unlike Howard Wiarda in his “Origins of the Crisis in Central America,” has not generally been supportive of Ronald Reagan’s more active Central American policy. Wiarda’s article appears as the introduction to an anthology of thoughtful articles on Central America by politically moderate analysts, published by the American Enterprise Institute.²⁷³ Among the most persuasive critics of U. S. policy in Central America has been William Leo-Grande, who outlined his views in 1981 in an article entitled “A Splendid Little War: Drawing the Line in El Salvador.”²⁷⁴ A particularly careful and thoughtful review of the evolution of U. S. policy in El Salvador has been written by John Booth.²⁷⁵

Clearly, on modern Central America as on other areas of Latin America, there has been an enormous increase in the volume of historical writing during the past two decades. Moreover, it is obvious that there has also been a qualitative improvement. Both within Central America and abroad more professional research, broader perspectives, new methodologies, and comparative judgment have characterized much of the work done on the region. Research centers, both within and outside of university structures, have emerged in every Central American state and have contributed to an outpouring of historical writing of almost every variety. It is unquestionably true, as Eric Van Young has recently observed regarding Anglophone scholarship on Mexico and Central America in the Age of Revolution, that work on Latin America has been inferior in quality to that done on the United States and Europe.²⁷⁶ I would add that the general level of work on Central American history, notwithstanding some very fine studies, is not as high for the modern as that for much of the rest of Latin America. Nor is it as high as for the colonial period in Central America. The explanations for this phenomenon are not difficult to find. Historical source materials for the nineteenth and twentieth centuries have not been well preserved, catalogued, or made available to scholars. A quarter-century ago, even the bare factual history of much of the region was obscure. There are still areas where historical research must be dedicated primarily to simply finding out what happened. But we have also reached a stage in Central American historiography where historians are asking more from their data than simple chronology. Social and economic questions have concerned more historians than have political issues, although much of the work done is characterized by its global approach. As in other areas, much excellent historical publication has been done by scholars from disciplines other than history: political scientists, anthropologists, sociologists, and geographers being especially notable. Models for research established in other parts of the world are slowly being applied to Central America, although more of this should be done. Especially for twentieth-century studies, history has truly become interdisciplinary. Monographic research has amplified our understanding of critical periods, and biographical studies have gone beyond the heroes to begin to look into the lives of secondary figures.

Most historical work on modern Central America in the last quarter-century dealt with single states. There has been a strong reluctance by historians and most other social scientists to deal with the whole region or even to make comparisons of one state to another. Research costs in time and money are undoubtedly a factor here, but the recent work of Robert Williams on export agriculture in post-World War II Central America shows the enormous value of the regional approach. Let us hope that the increase in a wide variety of topical histories of individual states will facilitate more regional history in the future. There is much to do, but the progress has been notable.

Author notes