Central America is a subregion of the Americas. Its boundaries are defined as bordering Mexico to the north, Colombia to the south, the Caribbean Sea to the east, and the Pacific Ocean to the west. Central America usually consists of seven countries: Belize, Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua, and Panama. Within Central America is the Mesoamerican biodiversity hotspot, which extends from northern Guatemala to central Panama. Due to the presence of several active geologic faults and the Central America Volcanic Arc, there is a high amount of seismic activity in the region, such as volcanic eruptions and earthquakes which has resulted in death, injury, and property damage.
Honduras was inhabited by many indigenous peoples when the Spanish arrived in the 16th century. The western-central part of Honduras was inhabited by the Lencas, the central north coast by the Tol, the area east and west of Trujillo by the Pech, the Maya and Sumo. These autonomous groups maintained commercial relationships with each other and with other populations as distant as Panama and Mexico. Honduras has ruins of several cities dating from the Mesoamerican pre-classic period that show the pre-Columbian past of the country.
The Mosquito Coast is the area along the eastern coast of present-day Nicaragua and Honduras. It was named after the local Miskito Nation and was long dominated by British interests and known as the Mosquito Kingdom. From 1860 suzerainty of the area was transferred to Nicaragua with the name Mosquito Reserve, and in November 1894 the Mosquito Coast was militarily incorporated into Nicaragua. However, in 1960, the northern part was granted to Honduras by the International Court of Justice.
William Walker was an American physician, lawyer, journalist, and mercenary. In the era of the expansion of the United States, driven by the doctrine of "manifest destiny", Walker organized unauthorized military expeditions into Mexico and Central America with the intention of establishing private colonies. Such an enterprise was known at the time as "filibustering".
Alajuela is a province of Costa Rica. It is located in the north-central part of the country, bordering Nicaragua to the north. It also borders the provinces of Heredia to the east, San José to the south, Puntarenas to the southwest and Guanacaste to the west. As of 2011, the province had a population of 885,571. Alajuela is composed of 16 cantons, which are divided into 111 districts. It covers an area of 9,757.53 square kilometers.
In Geography, the Caribbean Basin is generally defined as the area running from Florida westward along the Gulf coast, then south along the Mexican coast through Central America and then eastward across the northern coast of South America. This region includes the islands of the archipelago of the West Indies. Bermuda is also included within the region even though it is in the west-central Atlantic, due to its common cultural history created by European colonization of the region, and in most of the region by the presence of a significant group of African descent.
Trujillo is a city, with a population of 20,780, and a municipality on the northern Caribbean coast of the Honduran department of Colón, of which the city is the capital.
Esparza is a canton in the Puntarenas province of Costa Rica. The head city is Esparza in Espíritu Santo district.
The Spanish conquest of the Chibchan nations refers to the conquest by the Spanish monarchy of the Chibcha language-speaking nations, mainly the Muisca and Tairona that inhabited present-day Colombia, beginning the Spanish colonization of the Americas.
The UNCAF Nations Cup 2009 was the tenth edition of the UNCAF Nations Cup, the biennial football (soccer) tournament for the CONCACAF-affiliated national teams of Central America. The first five places qualified for the 2009 CONCACAF Gold Cup. The event was going to take place in Panama City, Panama between January 22 and February 1, 2009, but the Panamanian FA announced that they would not host the event due to not having an adequate stadium available for the time period of the tournament. The alternative hosts were Honduras and Guatemala. Honduras submitted an official replacement bid on November 12, and after some consideration it was moved to Honduras. All games were played in Estadio Tiburcio Carías Andino in Tegucigalpa. The tournament was sponsored by Digicel. On 1 February 2009 Panama won the tournament, the first UNCAF Nations Cup win in the country's history.
Honduras has been inhabited by a number of indigenous peoples, the most powerful of which, until the ninth century CE, were the Maya. The western-central part of Honduras was inhabited by the Lenca while other indigenous peoples settled in the northeast and coastal regions. These peoples had their conflicts but maintained commercial relationships with each other and with other populations as distant as Panama and Mexico.
The western Caribbean zone is a region consisting of the Caribbean coasts of Central America and Colombia, from the Yucatán Peninsula in southern Mexico to the Caribbean region in northern Colombia, and the islands west of Jamaica are also included. The zone emerged in the late sixteenth century as the Spanish failed to completely conquer many sections of the coast, and northern European powers supported opposition to Spain, sometimes through alliances with local powers.
Tologalpa was part of the Province of Taguzgalpa, mentioned in Spanish records of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, as lying on the eastern side of Central America stretching from the San Juan River to the Coco River. Very little is known about this territory, however, as the Spanish had little contact with it, save for some unsuccessful attempts to evangelize it in the seventeenth century. It therefore remained under the control of Kingdom of Mosquitia until 1859.
The Miskito Sambu, also known simply as the Miskito, are an ethnic group of mixed cultural ancestry occupying a portion of the Caribbean coast of Central America known as the Mosquito Coast region. Although older records, beginning with Spanish documents of the early 18th century, refer to the group as "Mosquitos Zambos", modern ethnographic terminology uses the term Miskito.
Afro-Hondurans or Black Hondurans are Hondurans of Sub-Saharan African descent. Research by Henry Louis Gates and other sources regards their population to be around 1-2% as the official percentage, although the percentage of the actual number is as high as 10 percent. They descended from: enslaved Africans by the Spanish, as well as those who were enslaved from the West Indies and identify as Creole peoples, and the Garifuna who descend from exiled zambo Maroons from Saint Vincent. The Creole people were originally from Jamaica and other Caribbean islands, while the Garifuna people were originally from Saint Vincent and the Grenadines. Garifunas arrived in the late seventeen hundreds and the Creole peoples arrived during the eighteen hundreds. About 600,000 Hondurans are from Garífuna descent that are a mix of African and indigenous as of Afro Latin Americans. Honduras has one of the largest African community in Latin America.
Diego García de Paredes y Vargas was a maestre de campo and a Spanish conquistador who participated in, among other things, the Battle of Cajamarca. He also founded Trujillo, Venezuela in 1557.
First generation immigrants account for less than 1% of the population of Nicaragua, or about 50,000 people. Immigrants have come from neighboring countries, Europe, Asia and elsewhere. In the past there was also an intake of African slaves. These immigrants have combine with the established European settlers and indigenous Mestizos people to give Nicaragua a wide cultural mix. Immigration into Nicaragua has recently increased after a considerable drop in the decades between 1950 and 1980.
The Spanish conquest of Honduras was a 16th-century conflict during the Spanish colonization of the Americas in which the territory that now comprises the Republic of Honduras, one of the seven states of Central America, was incorporated into the Spanish Empire. In 1502, the territory was claimed for the king of Spain by Christopher Columbus on his fourth and final trip to the New World. The territory that now comprises Honduras was inhabited by a mix of indigenous peoples straddling a transitional cultural zone between Mesoamerica to the northwest, and the Intermediate Area to the southeast. Indigenous groups included Maya, Lenca, Pech, Miskitu, Mayangna (Sumu), Jicaque, Pipil and Chorotega. Two indigenous leaders are particularly notable for their resistance against the Spanish; the Maya leader Sicumba, and the Lenca ruler referred to as Lempira.
The Spanish conquest of Nicaragua was the campaign undertaken by the Spanish conquistadores against the natives of the territory now incorporated into the modern Central American republic of Nicaragua during the colonisation of the Americas. Before European contact in the early 16th century, Nicaragua was inhabited by a number of indigenous peoples. In the west, these included Mesoamerican groups such as the Chorotega, the Nicarao, and the Subtiaba. Other groups included the Matagalpa and the Tacacho.
