Following their independence from Spain in 1821, Central Americans sought
to form a regional entity out of their separate formerly colonial units but failed
to do so. After the breakup of the union in 1838, the five countries of Costa
Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, and Nicaragua became recognized
members of the international community, embarking on the formation of their
respective states and maintaining their positions in the international system. As
small countries, they have been severely constrained by their proximity to the
United States, which -- from the mid nineteenth century forward -- has main-
tained a strategic interest in the region that is surpassed in importance only by
its own territorial defense. Opportunities for these small countries are also
greatly constrained by international markets and by their own weak capacities.

As industrialization speeded up in Europe and America in the last half of the
nineteenth century, these agricultural countries adopted a model of export-led
agricultural economies based on coffee and/or bananas in order to compete in
the changing world market. That shift led to land enclosures and to a trade-off
of domestic use agriculture for production for export. In politics, the liberal
reforms were carried out by dictators who drew some legitimacy from elections
in which very small minorities of the population participated. At the same time,
there was governmental institutional growth both in civilian executive agencies
and in the creation of military training centers.

Growing phenomenally after the Civil War, the United States strove at the
end of the nineteenth and the beginning of the twentieth century to gain a
hegemonic position in the Western Hemisphere. Cooperating with the Latin

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