Central American Independence
The Captaincy General of Guatemala declared independence from Spain on 15 September 1821, in a document signed at Guatemala City by an assembly of officials, clergy and merchants, with almost no fighting anywhere in the territory. The region — modern Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras, Nicaragua and Costa Rica — had been peripheral to the wars that convulsed Mexico and South America. Independence arrived as a consequence of events elsewhere: the liberal revolution in Spain in 1820, and above all Agustín de Iturbide's Plan of Iguala, which had detached Mexico and which conservative Central American elites read as the safer option. The Act of Independence itself is explicit that it was proclaimed partly to prevent the people from proclaiming it themselves. Within months the provinces were annexed to Iturbide's Mexican Empire, in January 1822, over the objections of San Salvador, which resisted militarily and was occupied. When Iturbide fell in 1823, a congress at Guatemala City declared the United Provinces of Central America independent of Spain, Mexico and any other power, and adopted a federal constitution the following year abolishing slavery. The federation lasted about fifteen years. It was destroyed by the conflict between liberals, who wanted secular reform and free trade, and conservatives allied with the Church, by regional resentment of Guatemalan dominance, and by a cholera epidemic that Rafael Carrera's peasant revolt blamed on liberal doctors. It dissolved between 1838 and 1841 into five separate states. Chiapas stayed with Mexico. Panama, which had been part of New Granada rather than Guatemala, followed a separate path. The federation's flag, its blue and white bands, survives in every one of the five national flags. Attempts at reunion were made repeatedly through the nineteenth century and all failed.
- Year: 1821 CE
- Category: Political
