Why Visit Central America

Central America is not a region typically visited by tourists.

Compared to North and South America, Central America has a low profile, yet it often appears in news reports involving coups, drug trafficking, gangs, and disasters. Opening a map, Central America is a narrow and fragmented territory, densely packed with seven small countries. Within this not-so-large region, Central America blends heterogeneous cultures such as Mayan, Spanish, and Caribbean.

Even for Americans, it is a distant and unfamiliar territory. In US news, Central America frequently involves immigration issues. Among the illegal immigrant population in the United States, people from Central America account for a considerable proportion. It is estimated that there may be over 2 million illegal immigrants from Central America, accounting for more than one-fifth of all illegal immigrants. Their numbers are vast, and they are accustomed to organizing based on family and hometown ties, often pushing them to the forefront of public opinion. Republican conservatives frequently emphasize that gang organizations from Central America have infiltrated the United States; using this as a pretext, some politicians even stigmatize all Central Americans, and indeed the entire Latin American community, as gang members and drug traffickers.

What exactly is Central America like? With this curiosity, I have traveled to this region multiple times over the past few years to personally explore the unique charm of this land.

Traveling to Central America is not easy. The first obstacle is psychological; checking various violent crime rankings, locations in Central America frequently top the lists, so going to such a region inevitably requires overcoming fear. Secondly, for Chinese citizens, visas for Central American countries are also a major hassle, mainly stemming from the political wrestling between mainland China and the other side of the strait. Small Central American countries often vacillate between the Republic of China (Taiwan) and the People’s Republic of China. Third, tourism infrastructure in most parts of Central America is relatively poor, and travel is not easy, especially without proficiency in Spanish. For these reasons, doing thorough research before heading to Central America became an essential task.

What is Central America

Which places actually count as Central America? In Chinese, “中美洲” generally corresponds to the English “Central America,” which is a geographical concept. At the same time, there is a culturally significant Central America, known in English as “Mesoamerica.”

Geographical Central America

Geographical Central America refers to the land located between North America and South America. Although we now consider the Panama Canal as the boundary between North and South, such a division is actually imaginary. Central America is a transitional zone connecting North and South America, and its scope can be divided into three levels based on different standards:

Central America in the narrow sense: Usually refers to the four countries of Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador, and Nicaragua, which constitute the core region of Central America.

Central America in the general sense: In addition to the core four countries, this includes Costa Rica, Panama, and Belize. These seven countries usually constitute Central America in the modern geopolitical sense.

Central America in the broad sense: Based on cultural and historical reasons, some states in southern Mexico are occasionally included in the scope of Central America. Even the island nations of the Caribbean Sea are sometimes included.

Cultural Central America

Cultural Central America includes Mesoamerica. “Meso-” is a Greek root meaning “between.” Mesoamerica is a historical and archaeological concept, typically encompassing the region between southern Mexico and Nicaragua. This area gave birth to glorious American civilizations such as the Olmec, Maya, and Aztec. Mesoamerica shares common cultural characteristics, such as pyramid architecture, hieroglyphic writing and calendar systems, as well as similar agricultural and religious customs.

Due to the differing histories, politics, economies, and populations of the various countries, today’s Central America can no longer be generalized by the historical Mesoamerican civilizations.

A History of Fragmentation

The history of Central America is intricate; it has been a meeting point for the succession and evolution of different civilizations since ancient times. This land nurtured glorious ancient civilizations but also experienced multiple rises and falls, affected by natural disasters, climate change, and other unknown factors. This led to many cities and cultural centers being suddenly abandoned after centuries of prosperity, only to be redeveloped centuries later. Such cyclical rises and falls are extremely common in Central American history. For example, archaeologists often find that a site might have been built around 1000 BC, inhabited for a few hundred years, then suddenly abandoned, and subsequently reoccupied and developed by another civilization centuries later. This history repeats itself, showing that the evolution of civilization on this land was not a linear development but rather characterized by fractures and revivals.

After Columbus sailed to the Americas, the Spanish Empire began to establish colonial rule in the Americas, attempting to build a complete administrative system—New Spain. However, this process was not smooth in Central America because Central America was never a region of a single culture or unified regime, but rather composed of numerous different ethnic groups and civilizations. When the Spanish attempted to forcibly rule this land, they encountered fierce resistance from various local groups. Unlike the Inca Empire in South America and the Aztec Empire in North America, the political map of Central America was more dispersed, with Maya city-states, Aztec vassal states, and local noble forces each governing themselves. This made it impossible for the Spanish to completely control the region through a single decisive war. Therefore, Central America did not have legendary conquerors like Cortés and Pizarro.

Geography, Climate, and Population

If one carefully observes the geography and population distribution of Central America today, one will discover the diversity of this land—mountains, valleys, plateaus, active volcanoes, tropical rainforests, and coastal plains along two oceans. The terrain is intricate, with interwoven microclimates. This fragmented geography resulted in loose connections between different regions. Consequently, Central America did not integrate into a single political entity in history. Even after centuries of Spanish rule, effective communication between regions remained difficult, maintaining a high degree of regional cultural difference.

“West High, East Low” Population Density

Observing the population density map of Central America reveals an interesting phenomenon: although Central America is geographically a continuous landmass, the distribution of the population is extremely unbalanced. The population density on the west coast of Central America, the Pacific coast, is far higher than that on the east coast, the Caribbean coast.

Due to its higher elevation and relatively drier climate, the Pacific coast of Central America has been suitable for agricultural development since ancient times and was home to many ancient agricultural civilizations. During the Spanish colonial period, this became the main area for settlers to live and develop the economy. The level of urbanization is high, forming the densely populated pattern seen today. Many major cities are located here, including Guatemala City, San Salvador, Tegucigalpa, Managua, San José, and Panama City.

Conversely, the Caribbean coast is dominated by tropical rainforests; the terrain is low-lying and rugged, and the climate is hot and humid. This makes large-scale agriculture and urban development relatively difficult, so the population remains relatively sparse to this day. In some coastal zones, there are vast, almost uninhabited areas, especially around Cabo Gracias a Dios and the Mosquito Coast. The largest city in this region is San Pedro Sula in Honduras, which started with large banana plantations. Apart from that, there are no other large cities.

Mestizos and Garifuna

The differences in Central American countries and population density are accompanied by the distribution of different races. The people of Central America are not all the mixed-blood descendants of Indians and Europeans that many stereotype them to be; rather, it is a more complex mixture of mixed-race people, pure indigenous people, and Caribbean blacks.

In the more populous West, the main residents are Mestizos, the mixed-race descendants of indigenous people and Spanish colonizers. In addition, some areas still retain a large number of descendants of pure Spaniards, as well as indigenous groups that have not merged with Spanish culture. For example, the Maya descendants in Guatemala still speak Mayan languages and preserve many traditional cultures. The primary language of Mestizos is Spanish, inherited as the official language of the New Spain colony. Catholic missionaries contributed significantly to the popularization of Spanish.

In the sparsely populated East, the local racial composition is more diverse. In addition to the indigenous people of the rainforest, there are large groups with West African ancestry here, originating from the transatlantic slave trade. Black slaves were initially sold to the islands of the Caribbean Sea and subsequently trafficked to plantations along the Caribbean coast of Central America. They gradually mixed with local indigenous people, forming a unique ethnic group—the Garifuna. The Garifuna have their own language—Garifuna, which is an indigenous language. Since most Garifuna live in Spanish-speaking countries, most also speak Spanish.

In the next post, I will recount the situation in the various Central American countries: Central America Travelogue (Part 2): Islands on Land

Last modified on 2025-11-11