Central American History

Resources in this category:

Ancient Aztec, Olmec, and Mesoamerica - by History Link 101
http://www.historylink101.com/1/aztec/ancient_aztec.htm

Information on these ancient civilizations, compiled by an American world history teacher. Includes images, maps, and information on daily life and art. Useful for general interest, teachers and students.

Central America: Legacies of Rebellion
http://www.bbc.co.uk/worldservice/specials/1731_centralameri...

At this site, you can find both text and audio content from a four-part series originally broadcast on the BBC World Service. The series follows reporter Mike Lanchin, a former BBC correspondent, back to Central America, where he lived and reported during the region’s war-torn years of the 1980s and early 1990s. The segments reveal the background of rebellion and civil war in Honduras, El Salvador, Nicaragua, and Costa Rica, and reflect on how the legacy of those conflicts continues to affect Central America.

Environmental History of Latin America
http://www.stanford.edu/group/LAEH/index.html

An extensive bibliography of resources on the environmental history of Latin America, including Central America, the Caribbean and Mesoamerica. Provided by researchers at Stanford University.

Maya Art & Books
http://www.maya-art-books.org/

The goal of this website "is to facilitate academic access to scholarly information about Maya daily life 1000 years ago in Guatemala, Belize, Mexico, and Honduras. We aspire to fulfill this challenge through utilizing the potential of extensive photographic recording of the facts and artifacts of ancient civilizations of pre-Columbian Mesoamerica."

Mesoweb: An Exploration of Mesoamerican Cultures
http://www.mesoweb.com/

Links and articles devoted to ancient Mesoamerica and its cultures: the Olmec, Maya, Teotihuacano, Zapotec, Mixtec, Toltec, Aztec and others. "We reserve the word Mayan for the language and the word Maya for the people and their culture, ancient and modern." Hosts the Pre-Columbian Art Research Institute. Also has some information about Peru, an encyclopedia of Mesoamerica, and a number of multimedia video exhibits.

Mystery of the Maya
http://www.civilization.ca/civil/maya/mminteng.html

"Deep within the jungles of Mexico and Guatemala and extending into the limestone shelf of the Yucatán peninsula lie the fabled temples and palaces of the Maya. While Europe still slumbered in the midst of the Dark Ages, these innovative people had charted the heavens, evolved the only true writing system native to the Americas and were masters of mathematics and calendrics. Without advantage of metal tools, beasts of burden or even the wheel they were able to construct vast cities with an astonishing degree of architectural perfection and variety. Their legacy in stone, which has survived in a spectacular fashion at places such as Palenque, Tikal, Tulum, Chichén Itzá, Copán and Uxmal, lives on as do the seven million descendants of the classic Maya civilization."

The Negroponte File
http://www2.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB151/

This site contains recently de-classified documents from John Negroponte’s tenure as Ambassador to Honduras in the 1980s, an era of Central American civil wars and controversial U.S. foreign policy in the region. Negroponte is currently the U.S. ambassador to Iraq. Documents and site are maintained by the National Security Archive at George Washington University.

Quetzalcoatl - the Man, the Myth, the Legend
http://weber.ucsd.edu/~anthclub/quetzalcoatl/quetzal.htm#hom...

A wealth of information about the Aztec and Mesoamerican deity of Quetzalcoatl. Includes the background history, chronology, and cosmology surrounding the legend of Quetzalcoatl. A list of bibliographical references is provided.

Realms of the Sacred: Early Written Records of Mesoamerica
http://www.lib.uci.edu/libraries/exhibits/meso/sacred.html

This site contains pictures and descriptive explanations of codices from the major ancient Mesoamerican civilizations. Analysis focuses on texts from the Maya, Aztec, and Mixtec civilizations, with additional information on architecture, culture, landscape, and learning. There is also some treatment of codices from the colonial era. This is an online library exhibit from the University of California-Irvine.

The National Security Archive Latin America Projects
http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/latin_america/

This amazing site is an online repository for recently de-classified U.S. government documents. This collection contains 20th century documents pertaining to U.S. foreign policy and intervention throughout Latin America during periods of unrest, revolution, and war. The countries covered are Chile, Mexico, Nicaragua, El Salvador, Honduras, Cuba and Guatemala. From the National Security Archive at George Washington University.

Timeline: El Salvador
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/1220818.stm

A chronology of El Salvador's history, along with related news reports, provided by the BBC News.

World History Archives: Central America
http://www.hartford-hwp.com/archives/47/index.html

This website has "documents to support the study of world history from a working-class and non-Eurocentric perspective." Most of the documents are news articles gathered from Associated Press, Reuters, InterPress Services, and various left-wing news publications, and can be browsed by topic or geographic area.