18 - Central America

Summary

There is abundant literature on Central America since 1930. See Edelberto Torres Rivas and Maria Eugenia Gallardo, Para entender Centroamérica: Resumen bibliográfico (San José, C.R., 1985), and Kenneth Grieb, Central America in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries: An Annotated Bibliography (Boston, 1988). An analysis of what has been written in the last twenty-five years, however, reveals that 80 percent of all Spanish texts about Central America in general or any of the countries in particular have been written since 1979. Similarly, what has been written in English consists, in essence, of a literature of ‘the crisis’. Nevertheless, both before and after 1979, important works were published which are fundamental to an understanding of Central American history.

There are few works which treat the Central American region as a whole and which at the same time respect national features and local peculiarities. Franklin Parker, The Central American Republics (London, 1964), contains an analysis of and useful information about the economy, society and institutions of each country, covering the period up to 1960. More comprehensive and underlining regional homogeneity is Ralph Lee Woodward, Jr., Central America: A Nation Divided, 2nd ed. (New York, 1985), which also contains an exhaustive ‘Selective Guide to the Literature on Central America.’ The two-volume text by Mario Monteforte Toledo, Centra América: Subdesarrollo y dependencia (Mexico, D.F., 1972) is important for the quantitative information it contains. Also important because they contain interpretive propositions for the entire region are Edelberto Torres-Rivas, Interpretación del desarrollo social centroamericano (San José, C.R., 1971), one of the first works to treat the region as a whole; and Héctor Pérez Brignoli, Breve historia de Centroamérica (Madrid, 1986).