Oxford History of Central America (2020).

Study Questions for Chasteen, Blood and Fire (2016) compared with essays assigned from the
Oxford History of Central America (2020). These will be posted on the Moodle site for H204
Prof. Dario A. Euraque
Chapter 1

1. Can you describe contrasts among various Latin American countries and especially the
   countries in Central America? Be specific.
2. How is it possible to combine them in a single historical narrative? Is this the case for
   Central America?
3. What kinds of changes have characterized the region in recent decades in Latin America
   and the Caribbean? Compare to Central America.
4. How has thinking on Latin America evolved in the United States? Compare Mexico,
   Cuba and the countries of Central America.
   Chapter 2
5. Can you characterize various indigenous societies of America? How did their ways of life
   affect the Encounter and create the current diversity in national populations?
6. What formative historical experience did the Spanish and the Portuguese share before the
   Encounter?
7. Can you compare the initial colonization of Brazil and Mexico and the larger imperial
   projects of Portugal and Spain?
8. How did Africans come to play an important part in the colonization of America? Did
   this happen in Central America?
9. Overall, how was it possible for small Spanish and Portuguese contingents to lay
   effective claim to American empires in the 1500s? Was this the case in Central America?
   Chapter 3
10. How were Spanish America and Brazil organized in economic terms? Can you compare
    the parts played by silver in Spanish America and sugar in Brazil and Central America?
11. How did the Iberian colonizers hold sway over sprawling -American territories? Was this
    different in Central America?
12. What does the term “hegemony” mean in the study of colonial Latin America? Discuss it
    in relation to the caste system in general and in Central America?
13. Why is transculturation an important concept in Latin American history?
14. Can you differentiate the core areas of colonization from the fringe areas? How did they
    contrast? Was Central America a core area? Why? Why not?
    Chapter 4
15. How did Europe’s Napoleonic wars set the stage for independence in Spanish America
    and Brazil? What happened in Central America?
16. Can you contrast events in fringe colonies like Venezuela and Argentina with those in
    core areas like Lima and Mexico City when compared to Central America?
17. What was the role played in America, overall, by liberal ideas derived from the French
    Revolution and specifically in Central America?
18. What was the role played by nativist appeals to the equality of all “Americanos” in Latin
    America in general and specifically in Central America?
19. Can you broadly contrast the process of independence in Brazil, the large countries in
    Latin America, the Caribbean and in Central America?
    Chapter 5
20. What difficulties did newly independent Latin American countries face in the 1830s and
    1840s? Compare with each of the countries of Central America.
21. Why did the first generation of liberals fail to achieve their goals, » leading to a
    conservative reaction at mid-century? Compare with each of the countries in Central
    America.
22. How does caudillo leadership account for turbulence in early republican Spanish
    America? Who were the main caudillos in Guatemala and Honduras?
23. Can you contrast the picture in early independent Brazil, which remained a monarchy
    with the situation in Central America?
24. What social, economic, and cultural patterns showed continuity with colonial days,
    despite political changes in Central America?
    Chapter 6
25. How did Progress become a hegemonic idea in Latin America, and what was the
    consequence compared to Central America?
26. Can you describe specific elements of the mid-nineteenth-century transportation
    revolution in the large countries of Latin America, the Caribbean and Central America?
27. How did the transportation revolution alter Latin America’s economic prospects and its
    political balance of power within Central America?
28. How do Mexico’s Reforma of the 1850s and its aftermath embody themes of a liberal
    comeback throughout the region and how was that process different from the Central
    American countries?
29. What did Progress mean to Latin American women of various social descriptions? What
    did progress mean to the Indigenous people and those of African descent in Central
    America?
    Chapter 7
30. How did the great export boom transform Latin America, and how did it not transform it
    compared to Central America?
31. What sorts of commodities did Latin America export, and how were they produced? How
    did new immigration from Europe alter the demographic picture? Compare to Central
    America?
32. What sorts of governments arose to oversee the neocolonial order in Latin America? In
    the countries of Central America?
33. How did nineteenth-century scientific racism function, basically, to up-date the caste
    system? What about specifically in the countries of Central America?
34. How did Britain, France, and the United States help define the region’s neocolonial
    experience?
35. How did nationalist politics engage broad enthusiasm throughout Latin America after
    1929? Particularly, what was the new nationalist ideology of race, and how was it
    embodied in the arts in Central America?
36. Why did Import Substitution Industrialization (ISI) play such a central role in nationalist
    economic thinking in South America and not so much in Central America?
    Chapter 8
37. Why did nationalists often appear as revolutionaries? Was nationalism left or right on the
    political spectrum in Central America?
38. What characterized the political style of leaders like Cárdenas, Vargas, and later, Perón?
    Were there similar figures in Central America? Explain.
39. How did the 1930s depression and World War II affect the relationship between Latin
    America and the United States in general and in Central America?
    Chapter 9
40. How did Latin American relations with the United States change after World War Two?
    Was this similar or different with respect to relations with Central American countries?
41. In particular, what high hopes of Latin American nationalists were disappointed in a
    postwar world? Was this the case in Central America? Explain.
42. In what ways does the 1954 US intervention in Guatemala exemplify patterns of the
    emerging Cold War in Latin America? What is to be learned by comparison with Bolivia
    and more importantly the other countries in Central America?
43. What things made a Marxist view of history persuasive to many Latin Americans in the
    1950s and 1960s, and possibly especially in Central America?
44. Did the triumph of the Cuban Revolution in 1959 present a plausible model for would-be
    guerrillas around the region, and especially in certain countries in Central America?
    Explain.
    Chapter 10
45. How did the Cold War context define US-Latin American relations from the 1950s
    through the 1980s in Latin America in general and in Central America in particular?
46. Can you trace the emergence of the anticommunist alliance between the US armed forces
    and Latin American armed forces? Was this similar in Central America? In degree or in
    substance?
47. Meanwhile, what happened to elected governments, for example, in Brazil and Chile
    when compared to countries in Central America?
48. Can you define guerrilla warfare, foco, proxy force, junta, and dirty war in general in
    Latin America, Cuba and in the countries of Central America?
49. What other countries of Latin America became Cold War battlefields in Central
    America? Why?
    Chapter 11
50. What is neo-liberalism, and how does it relate to the old liberalism in Central America?
51. How did neoliberalism gain such wide acceptance after the Cold War in Central
    America?
52. How have Latin American economies evolved in the new era of globalization in general
    and in countries in Central America?
53. What new challenges do Latin American countries face in the early twenty-first century?
    What challenges are specific to countries in Central America?
54. What characterized the “new left turn” presidents of the early twenty-first century and
    how did this affect countries in Central America?

Compare and contrast the ideas from the Central American readings attached, and with what Chasteen said in the book Blood and Fire.