The Central American Common Market

Abstract

The Central American Republics of Costa Rica, Nicaragua, El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras have a tradition of union, both of the political and economic kind. Ruled as one territory by Spain under the Audiencia de Guatemala in the colonial epoch, they continued as one nation for the first twenty-one years of independence (1821–42). There followed a century of attempts at political (and sometimes economic) union among sub-groups of the five republics (Karnes, 1961), before the final, successful movement towards economic integration began in the 1950s.