The Central American legacy of unity and diversity presents historians with a serious challenge; should an analysis of the region be based on the individual peculiarities of its five national states or on Central America’s common heritage? Traces of a common history invite us to make generalizations about the region, even to posit the idea of a Central American nation. After all, the five states once formed a single nation (1821-39). This legacy of a unified Central America has created instances of profound overlapping among national histories within the larger regional context. However, since the formation of the five republies in the nineteenth century, the nations of the isthmus have evolved individually, each developing its own unique political and social institutions.
Pérez-Brignoli’s excellent book attempts to capture both the peculiarities and the commonalities of the Central American republics by employing a comparative approach. He argues that “[t]he history of the region ought to be the result of a comparison of processes that sets forth as much the points of convergence as the peculiarities of each individual state ” (xiv). The author claims that the comparative approach also offers the best vantage point for studying the role of international factors in the development of Central America. He points out that in such a divided, poor, and marginal region the relative weight of foreign forces has always been greater than in the large countries of South America. This weakness has made the isthmus a pawn. “In the giant chess game of shipping lanes, naval power, and military might, Central America has always been perceived geopolitically, its significance as purely strategic” (p. 7).
The author offers a succinct and masterful comparative overview of the region’s history from the sixteenth century to the present, beginning with human and cultural geography in the first chapter and ending with the present Central American crisis in the last. In a systematic, lucid style he deals with the major themes of the region’s history—colonial heritage, independence, unity and diversity, development of the export economy, foreign intervention, and political instability. The book’s greatest strength is that it interprets through an analytical framework the often confusing and chaotic events of Central America’s history.
The power of the author’s approach is reflected in his treatment of the current crisis. The root cause of the crisis is not only the inability of the political system to address the region’s growing economic and social problems but also Central America’s legacy of union and diversity. “The common character of the crisis phenomenon among all five Central American countries leads us to suspect that internal social and political factors are only aggravating circumstances and not causes” (p. 153). The author argues that in sociopolitical terms the crisis represents the bankruptcy of the Liberal order in the region. The turmoil of the last decade was the by-product of a search for a new political model to replace the old.
Pérez-Brignoli hopes the new order that rises out of the ashes of the old will be based on strategies of coexistence that are more equitable for everyone. But in his epilog he is pessimistic. Independence, the Liberal reforms, and U.S. influence did not succeed in forging a new collaboration and consensus to replace the crumbling colonial paternalism. Control was imposed exclusively by exploitation, violence, and terror. This harsh sentence of the past still weighs heavily on the people of Central America.
