CENTRAL
AMERICA
Central America stretches from the steamy jungles of Guatemala
down the long volcanic spine that divides the isthmus to the narrow
neck of Panama.
Of the area's 21 million people perhaps half are Indians. The
remainder are 'ladinos', or mixed bloods and 'creoles', white
descendents of the original Spanish colonizers. There are also
small numbers of blacks and more recent European immigrants,
The region is notable for its almost feudal class system, passed
down from the Spanish 'conquistadores'.
At first, Indians were used as slave labour on large plantations.
Later they were tied into the 'economienda' system - a kind of
debt peonage that obligated them to work a portion of each month
for one of the large estate owners.
Whites and ladinos exploited the Indian peasantry mercilessly,
believing them servile and content in their misery. Hundreds of
thousands of Indians died from harsh working conditions and from
the ravages of European diseases.
With Independence from Spain in 1821 the area soon fragmented
into the six countries that remain today. Agricultural exports
quickly grew in importance - first coffee, then bananas and by
the 1940s cotton, sugar and beef. Those five crops make up more
than half the region's exports. The best arable land is still
controlled by a tiny minority and literacy and nutrition are the
lowest in the Americas.
A wealthy elite, mostly white, condones heavy-handed repression
in most countries in order to keep the lid on a potential social
explosion.
Despite this, campesino, church and trade union opposition to
military rule is increasing. The 1979 defeat of the Somoza dynasty
in Nicaragua is seen optimistically in neighbouring countries
as a sign that successful change is possible. |
new
internationalist 99
