Central America is the region of land south of Mexico and north of Colombia and the rest of the South American continent. There are currently seven countries in the region, three of which have straight Spanish names, one has an (apparently) half Spanish/half native name, two have mostly direct Amerindian names, and one has an African name.
The member countries: Guatemala, Honduras, Belize, El Salvador, Nicaragua, Costa Rica, and Panama.
Etymological notes: Guatemala and Panama are the only two countries that have unadulterated Amerindian names, even if their original exact meanings might be lost. Belize is believed to be derived from the garifuna population--folks descended from slave-ship mutineers from the old Kingdom of Kongo (there's a "Belize" in Angola). Nicaragua, while disputed, the main guess of the name's origin is that the main city in the region, Nicauro, was coupled by the Spanish overlords with the word "agua" (for "water") since the region has Central America's two larges lakes, so..."Nicar-" and "agua", half Amerindian, half Spanish. Honduras ("the depths"), El Salvador ("the savior"), and Costa Rica ("rich coast") are all direct Spanish words.
Name histories, obviously, mean a lot to me.
Brief historical background: without going all the way back, modern Central America has it's origins in the Enlightenment and Napoleon. Mostly Napoleon.
The Spanish had broken their American holdings into different departments, so-to-say. One was the Alta-California holdings (the US land holdings in CA, NV, and AZ); another was New Spain (mostly Mexico and Texas areas); another the Guatemala Captaincy (I fixed the traditional spelling so it looked better--this was the central American region); and then the various Southern American departments.
Napoleon, partnered up with Spain, invaded Portugal in 1807. Then Spain turned on France and started fighting them, finally pushing them out in 1814. During those seven years, revolution talk was growing in the American colonies, causing the Spanish to try and re-organize and crackdown on their wards. This ultimately caused the final souring of the relationship between the natives and colonists, and the Spanish crown.
When Napoleon invaded the Iberian Peninsula the Portuguese royal family fled Lisbon one day before Napoleon took the city for Rio de Janeiro. They ruled from Brazil for fifteen years. Another consequence of Spain deciding to fight France was that Spanish control over their colonies was thrown for a loop. Different juntas tried holding control. Royalists fought with liberation minded intellectuals. Armies were raised. Intelligent students of Enlightenment writers decided now was their time. One by one liberators like Simon Bolivar and Hildago led revolutions against their Spanish overlords.
By 1821, most of the countries that comprise today's Central America were free and independent. Belize won out a little later, and Panama was taken by Bolivar's Venezuelan Kingdom in northern South America, but Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador, Costa Rica and Nicaragua all claim 1821 as their year of independence. (Nevermind that some joined the Mexican Kingdom after independence, but hey...no Spaniards.)
Since then, there has been many different eras of military stewardship, civil wars, coups, ethnic cleansing, duly elected governments being toppled by the US for commercial purposes, and popular populist governments being thwarted and intimidated by US interests.
This leads us to today. Most of these countries are relatively safe to visit as pale-skinned tourists. There are rules, of course, designed to keep you safer. Those are boring, should be obvious, and printed in many places. Costa Rica is the most Americanized, which meant it was a place we'd avoid. Lots of white people slurping expensive booze at the beach? Sorry, Costa Rica, that's where we live now. Just give us a thatched palm roof covering a dirt floor in the mountains and we'll be happy.
Umm...what else...
Of the three great civilizations of Mesoamerica, the Inca (Peru), the Maya (Central America), and the Aztec (Mexico), the Maya are generally reputed as the most artistic, literary, and scientific of the three, and many of the indigenous ethnic groups in Central America have their historical ties to the various tribes that make up the Maya.
The height of the Mayan civilization occurred and was done with almost 500 years before the Spanish ever showed up. There was still a Mayan representation for the Spaniards to crush, but it was a shell of it's former self.
I guess that wasn't so brief.
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