ABSTRACT
As the table shows, Central America consists of one very large country, Mexico, with some 75 per cent of the total land area and nearly 80 per cent of the total population; and six much smaller countries, Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador, Nicaragua, Costa Rica and Panama, which form a long and mostly narrow strip of land separating the Caribbean Sea from the Pacific Ocean. (An eighth country, Belize, is treated as part of the *Caribbean region.)
Mexico shares a long northern frontier, approximately 3,000 km in length, with the United States, to which, following the Mexican War of 1847-8, it lost a very considerable amount of territory, consisting of the present American states of Texas, New Mexico, Arizona and California. These all still contain very sizeable and steadily increasing Central American *ethnic minorities.
