ABSTRACT
There are few regions of the world where physical geography has influenced so markedly the political destiny of nations and states as in Central America. Its isthmian configuration bestowed upon it a potential for interoceanic communication which in turn has fostered for centuries the ambition of empires and enterprises alike in their struggle to control a passageway across this ‘thin waist of the Americas’. This struggle has expressed itself in long cycles of rivalry between the hegemonic powers for the control of an interoceanic route across the Central American isthmus.
