Federal Republic of Central America - Later Attempts at A Federal Union of Central American States

Later Attempts At A Federal Union of Central American States

Various attempts were made to reunite Central America in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, but none succeeded for any length of time:

  • The first attempt was in 1842 by former President Francisco Morazán, who became involved in a struggle for control over Costa Rica. After taking control over the capital, Morazán announced he would create a large army to re-create the Federal Republic. Popular feeling rapidly turned against him and a sudden revolt resulted in his arrest and execution by firing squad in September of that year.
  • A second attempt was made in October 1852 when El Salvador, Honduras and Nicaragua created a Federation of Central America (Federación de Centro América). The union lasted less than a month.
  • Guatemalan President General Justo Rufino Barrios attempted to reunite the nation by force of arms in the 1880s but he died in battle near the town of Chalchuapa, El Salvador.
  • A third union of Honduras, Nicaragua, and El Salvador as the Greater Republic of Central America or "República Mayor de Centroamérica" lasted from 1896 to 1898.
  • The latest attempt occurred between June 1921 and January 1922 when El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras and Costa Rica formed a (second) Federation of Central America. The treaty establishing this federation was signed at San José, Costa Rica on January 19, 1921. The treaty stipulated for the future creation of one state of all the four signatories, under one constitution. This second Federation was nearly moribund from the start, having only a Provisional Federal Council made up of delegates from each state.

Despite the failure of a lasting political union, the sense of shared history and the hope for eventual reunification persist in the nations formerly in the union. In 1856–1857 the region successfully established a military coalition to repel an invasion by U.S. adventurer William Walker. Today, all five nations fly flags that retain the old federal motif of two outer blue bands bounding an inner white stripe. (Costa Rica modified its flag significantly in 1848 by darkening the blue and adding a double-wide inner red band, in honor of the French tricolor.) The short-lived sixth state of Los Altos was forcibly annexed by Guatemala's President General Rafael Carrera except the Chiapas section, which was annexed by Mexico.

Current flags
Guatemala El Salvador Honduras Nicaragua Costa Rica

Read more about this topic:  Federal Republic Of Central America

Famous quotes containing the words attempts, federal, union, central, american and/or states:

    “Bankruptcy is a sacred state, a condition beyond conditions, as theologians might say, and attempts to investigate it are necessarily obscene, like spiritualism. One knows only that he has passed into it and lives beyond us, in a condition not ours.”
    —John Updike (b. 1932)

    “There are always those who are willing to surrender local self-government and turn over their affairs to some national authority in exchange for a payment of money out of the Federal Treasury. Whenever they find some abuse needs correction in their neighborhood, instead of applying the remedy themselves they seek to have a tribunal sent on from Washington to discharge their duties for them, regardless of the fact that in accepting such supervision they are bartering away their freedom.”
    —Calvin Coolidge (1872–1933)

    “What should concern Massachusetts is not the Nebraska Bill, nor the Fugitive Slave Bill, but her own slaveholding and servility. Let the State dissolve her union with the slaveholder.... Let each inhabitant of the State dissolve his union with her, as long as she delays to do her duty.”
    —Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)

    “For us necessity is not as of old an image without us, with whom we can do warfare; it is a magic web woven through and through us, like that magnetic system of which modern science speaks, penetrating us with a network subtler than our subtlest nerves, yet bearing in it the central forces of the world.”
    —Walter Pater (1839–1894)

    “There is nothing the matter with Americans except their ideals. The real American is all right; it is the ideal American who is all wrong.”
    —Gilbert Keith Chesterton (1874–1936)

    “My opinion is that the Northern states will manage somehow to muddle through.”
    —John Bright (1811–1889)