ABSTRACT
Central America lies so close to the United States that from Miami or Houston one can fly to Managua or Guatemala City more quickly than to Chicago or Boston. The region's five countries – Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras, Nicaragua, and Costa Rica, each profoundly shaped by proximity and trade with the United States, had roughly 20 million people in 1975 and attracted little of the world's attention, but that soon changed. This chapter explains regime changes in the region–whether arising from revolutionary impulses or those managed by elites to prevent revolution. Central America's revolutions, regime changes, economic development strategies, evolving classes, social problems, and persistent poverty in recent decades all reveal the impact of the global upon the local. The waning of frontline US attention as geopolitical winds changed did not eliminate Central America's endemic poverty, its problems with development strategies and political order, its constant need to adjust to evolving global forces, or pressures from the United States.
