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South America Placemat
Central America
Placemat




CALENDAR

Spanish Living Language Calendars
Spanish Living Language Calendars



BOOKS ABOUT
CENTRAL AMERICA

Central America Map
Central
America Map


Let's Go Central America
Let's Go
Central America

Caribbean Travel & Life Magazine
Caribbean Travel
& Life Magazine


Central America: A Nation Divided
Central America:
A Nation Divided


Time Among the Maya: Travels in Belize, Guatemala, and Mexico
Time Among
the Maya: Travels in Belize, Guatemala,
and Mexico


El Salvador: The Land
El Salvador:
The Land


Nicaragua
Nicaragua


Honduras
Honduras
(Cultures of
the World)


Lonely Planet Costa Rica
Lonely Planet:
Costa Rica


Getting to Know Panama
Getting to Know Panama

Geography: Realms, Regions and Concepts
Geography: Realms, Regions and Concepts



Teacher's Best - The Creative Process


Central America Poster Map, History, 1986
for social studies classrooms and homeschoolers


geography > Central America > CENTRAL AMERICA HISTORY MAP < social studies < maps


Central America History Poster Map, 1986
Central America Map Poster, History 1986

Archeological Map of Middle America, Land of the Feathered Serpent, Print
Archeological Map
of Middle America,
Land of the Feathered Serpent Poster

Central America Map Poster, 1986 Political
Central America Map Poster, 1986 Political

The 1986 Central America Past and Present map features:
• A geographical and historical overview
• Early trade routes, commodities traded, and historical sites
• Map of the conquest and colonization of the region
• A Time of Independence map showing the region in colonial times from 1821-1900
• The Prelude to Change map (1900-1945) showing the products of the region, migration routes, and shipping routes
• A present day map featuring the variety of resources of the region including banana and fruit, cacao, coffee, corn, cattle, fish, tobacco, oil, and more
• Illustrations of historical figures, artifacts, and wildlife

* Lesson plan idea - have your students update the information and latest statistics concerning Central America; discuss the political, economic, and environmental situations that are current for the region. • maps


GEOGRAPHIC AND HISTORICAL -
The narrow arc of land that sweeps from the base of the Yucatan Peninsula to South America forms a corridor between continents and a convenient crossing between two great oceans. Otherwise, Central Ameica defies simple definition.

Forces of nature long ago divided it into simmering lowlands and cool mountain uplands punctuated with towering volcanoes. Tropical rains, generally falling between may and October, have created a mantle of vegetation that ranges from mangrove swamps to pine groves, from savanna to rain forest.

Central America is also a mosaic of peoples: Indians with languages and customs recalling pre-Columbian ancestors, descendants of Spanish conquistadores, and immigrants from Europe and elsewhere. Black, heirs of those who worke the plantations, labored in industry, or sought refuge here from slavery, have added their cultural stamp, as have the mestizos, those of mixed Indian and Spanish ancestry.

The modern history of the land began with the epic confrontation of cultures that came in the wake of Columbus; the region has since been plagued with cultural, economic, and political conflict.

Indians often till plots of depleted soil beside huge holdings that trace to the Spanish hacienda or English plantation. Lack of a cohesive system of transportation long retarded interregional trade and resource development. As a result, Central America follows the best of two opposing economic pulses, one oriented to its internal needs, the other to the outside world. Superimposed on this patchwork of peoples and customs lie remnant boundaries of a long and tangled political history – from the Spanish subdivision of the conquered land to later movements of nationalism, regional competition, and momentous episodes of foreign intervention.

However Central America is defined, few could deny that it is one of the most complex regions on Earth, and one ever in the process of disquieting change.

1 - BEFORE 1500 - PRE-COLUMBIAN GLORY -
WITH AGRICULTURE firmly established by A.D. 1, various cultures rose, flourished, and declined in Central America over the next 15 centuries.

In the north the Lowland Maya created one of Mesoamerica's most brilliant civilizations. Their city-states, centered on Tikal, Copan and other dazzling capitals, served as seats of dynasties and settings for monumental works of art and architecture.

Among the farming villages southeast of Mesoamerican frontier, powerful tribal leaders gradually rose to power. Archaeological remains from Honduras through Panama provide glimpses of separate but similar chiefdoms sustained by farming, fishing and hunting. By 500, a far-reaching trade in shell, feathers, salt, and other resources had fostered a burgeoning of both population and prosperity–and the rise of superb craftsmanship, one of Central America's hallmarks. Jadeite and other semiprecious stones were carved into mythical birds and animals. Gold and gold-alloy jewelry became another medium of sacred art and a symbol of status among the nobility, as did masterpieces of polychrome pottery in distinctive styles and shapes.

2 - 1500-1821 - CONQUESTS AND COLONIES -
SPAIN IN 1500, vibrant with religious zeal and political unity after the expulsion of the last of its Moorish invaders, turned eagerly to the New World in quest of gold, souls, and land.

Two decades later, mainland footholds–by Cortes in Mexico and Balboa in Panama – followed earlier Spanish forays along the coast. Each served as a base for waves of conquest concentrated on the vast land in between. From the north Alvarado cut a bloody swath through highland Guatemala, defeating he Quiche Maya chieftain Tecum near present-day Quezaltenango and effectively ending resistance. Cordoba and others moved north from Panama, and by mid-century subjugation was complete.

In late colonial times, Spanish administrative boundaries divided by the conquered land between the Captaincy Genreal of Guatemala–itself part of the Viceroyalty of New Spain– and Viceroyalty of New Granada. The division underlay the basic cultural and historical contrast that still obtains between Panama and the rest of Central America.

While Spanish towns, missions, mines, and haciendas grew rich in the most populous areas of the interior, the English and their black slaves established centers for logwood and other exports along desolate stretches of the east coast.

3 - 1821-1900 - TIME OF INDEPENDENCE -
POLITICAL INDEPENDENCE crept quietly into Central America in 1821, transforming colonial provices into five fledgling nations–Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvvador, Nicaragua, and Costa Rica. (Chiapas, formerly part of Guatemala, joined Mexico.) The five formed a feeration in 1823 but fragemented amid civil wars that pitted Honduran Francisco Morazan, laeding light of unification, against Jose Rafael Carrera, the Guatemalan separatist. Later Carrera set the boundaris of Belize, which became the colony of British Honduras in 1862.

Central Americ's true revolution lay not in politics but in coffee. Introduced from Cuba in the 1700s, the crop thrived on the volcanic slopes and became the region's primary export. Bananas later took hold in the coastal lowlands. Largely under foreign control, the legendary plantations stereotyped the whole area, giving rise to its most disparaging political epithet–“banana republic.”

In the mid-1800s the California gold rush stimulated the search for a crossing between oceans. Precursor of the great canal, the Panama Railroad was completed in 1855.

4 - 1900-1945 - PRELUDE TO CHANGE -
COLOSSAL GAPS between rich and poor, an outdated economic structure, and politics plagued by petty competition, corruption, and pervasive foreign interests sowed the seeds of social discord in Central America. The last battlefield effort to unify the nations had died with Guatemala's liberal President Justo Rufino Barrios in 1885.

Malaria, yellow fever, and inadequate equipment doomed French efforts to complete an interoceanic canal in Panama begun in 1881. The United States, recognizing its strategic importance, manipulated Panama's independence from Colombia in 1903, solved the problems of epidemic and engineering, and completed the canal a decade later. Panama grated the U.S. jurisdiction over the Canal Zone.

Prior to World War II the U.S. increased dollar investments–mainly in bananas–and intervened militarily to protect capital and bolster friendly governments. These forces vied with opposing social or nationalistic movements as extolled in the poetry of Ruben Dario and others. Sporadic revolts, such as that lead by Augusto Cesar Sandino in Nicaragua, though short-lived and followed by repression, often provided martyrs for the cause of social justice.

5 - 1945-PRESENT - UPHEAVAL UNCERTAINTY -
COMPLETION in the 1970s of the Pan American Highway–except for the section in Panama's Darien Gap–provided a reliable land link between Central American nations Since then, interregional and international air service has helped solve shortcomings in communication. Yet differing national profiles and problems prevail.

Efforts to stabilize theregional economy led to the establishment of the Central American common Market in 1960. But within the decade it crumbled, following the border conflict between Hondurs and El Salvador. In 1977 the United States acknowlegd Panama's right to sovereignty and eventual ownership of the canal. Two years later Nicaragua's Sandinista revolution overthrew the corrupt Somoza regime. Politicians in El salvador and Guatemala compete with powerful military factions or with opponents on the philosophical right or left. Violence in much of the region ranges from clandestine death squads to outright civil war, the upheavals have fostered vast movements of refugees seeking sanctuary in Mexico or the United States. Today Central America, a land of global strategic import, remains one of diversity and unfathomable destiny.


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