CENTRAL AMERICA, HISTORY OF

history of the area from prehistoric and pre-Columbian times to the present. Additional reading Ralph Lee Woodward, Jr., Central America: A Nation Divided, 2nd ed. (1985), is the standard English-language general history of Central America. Hctor Prez Brignoli, A Brief History of Central America (1989; originally published in Spanish, 1985), offers considerable political focus on the 20th century, from a Latin American perspective. Franklin D. Parker, The Central American Republics (1964, reprinted 1981), is still useful for its wealth of detail. Leslie Bethell (ed.), The Cambridge History of Latin America (1984 ), includes several perceptive chapters on Central American history from colonial times to the present.Sylvanus G. Morley and George W. Brainerd, The Ancient Maya, 4th ed. rev. by Robert J. Sharer (1983), is the standard history of the Maya. Doris Stone, Pre-Columbian Man Finds Central America: The Archaeological Bridge (1972), offers an excellent introduction to Central American archaeology, especially lower Central America. Frederick W. Lange and Doris Stone (eds.), The Archaeology of Lower Central America (1984), contains an anthology of carefully researched articles. William R. Fowler, Jr., The Cultural Evolution of Ancient Nahua Civilizations: The Pipil-Nicarao of Central America (1989), gives an excellent account of Nahautl influence along the Pacific coast.Murdo J. MacLeod, Spanish Central America: A Socioeconomic History, 15201720 (1973, reissued 1984), is a thorough and well-documented history of the Spanish conquest and the Habsburg period. William L. Sherman, Forced Native Labor in Sixteenth-Century Central America (1979), is an important scholarly work on early Spanish labour practices. Miles L. Wortman, Government and Society in Central America, 1680-1840 (1982), reviews the 18th-century history of the region and explains the impact of the Bourbon reforms on the region. Troy S. Floyd, The Anglo-Spanish Struggle for Mosquitia (1967), details the colonial rivalry for the eastern coast of Central America. Mario Rodrguez, The Cdiz Experiment in Central America, 1808 to 1826 (1978), superbly studies the independence period and the influence of the Spanish constitution of 1812 in Central America. Thomas L. Karnes, The Failure of Union: Central America, 18241975, rev. ed. (1976), describes the failure of the Central American federation and surveys attempts to revive it throughout the 19th and 20th centuries. E. Bradford Burns, The Poverty of Progress: Latin America in the Nineteenth Century (1980), an interpretive study, gives considerable attention to Central America and calls attention to the damage done to folk culture by the liberal economic policies of the 19th century. James Dunkerley, Power in the Isthmus (1988), offers a detailed political history of modern Central America, especially since 1920. Ralph Lee Woodward, Jr. (ed.), Central America: Historical Perspectives on the Contemporary Crises (1988), looks at the origins of present-day political problems. The economy The gross national product of Central America is small compared to more developed regions of the world. In the late 1980s it was, for example, on a par with that of Peru but only a fifth of that of Mexico. This suggests the small size of domestic markets in Central America and explains why the main economic focus over the years has been on producing commodities for export (or, in the case of Panama, providing international services). The performance of the Central American economies has closely mirrored that of the world, thanks to their export orientation. Thus, the overall trend of a 10-fold growth in real gross domestic product (GDP) between 1920 and 1990 has had imposed upon it the local impacts of the downturns of the Great Depression, World War II, and the 1980s, as well as the booms that followed both world wars and that of the 1970s. The first export staple was coffee, firmly established on a commercial basis in Costa Rica by 1830 and in El Salvador, Nicaragua, and Guatemala by 1860; bananas joined coffee in 1900, and for the next half-century the two dominated trade and investment. Governments acquiesced with the interests of both the highland coffee growers, mainly nationals well integrated into local politics, and the U.S.-owned banana companies in the coastal lowlands. Accordingly, the governments wielded relatively little power; in contrast, by 1929 two fruit companies (the United Fruit Company and the Standard Fruit and Steamship Company) controlled all banana exports and most banana production in the isthmus. The addition of cotton, sugar, and beef to the mixture of export staples after World War II helped reduce the exposure of national economies to adverse changes in the prices of coffee or bananas but did not lessen the overall dependence upon external commodity markets. The formation of the Central American Common Market (CACM) in 1960 gave a further impetus to economic diversification. By introducing import substitution policies and the manipulation of tariffs, national industries were encouraged to manufacture for the wider isthmian market. The enlarged market generated new employment, mainly in the towns, and helped encourage urban migration, and it created a new, if not very significant, regional trading pattern. In the 1970s government policies encouraged further diversification by promoting new exports. In addition, Panama's location at an international crossroads proved most useful in attracting offshore manufacturing and banking facilities. The effective demise of the CACM in 1980 (Panama and Belize, for different reasons, had never been members) reversed the limited progress made toward regional economic cooperation and helped highlight some of the national differences within the isthmus. National circumstances have provided further departures from regional compatibility. The differing degrees of dependency upon particular commodities, for example, have been an important discriminant; another has been the greater encouragement given to import substitution policies in foodstuffs during the 1930s and in manufactured goods in the 1960s by Costa Rica, El Salvador, and Guatemala. Also important in several countries has been the variety of oppressive military governments and of open wars, guerrilla activity, and counterinsurgency measures. These differences were compounded in the 1980s by changes in the terms of trade and the burden of huge external debts. The disbursed external debt of the isthmus rose fivefold in the 1970s and fivefold again in the '80s. The differing degrees of indebtedness and of ability to attract overseas assistance and investment helped widen the distinctions between the individual countries. By the end of the decade Nicaragua owed most, suffered the highest ratio of interest payments to export earnings, and was the least creditworthy. Panama and Costa Rica were more indebted, but payments due to service public debt were more onerous for Honduras and Guatemala. Overseas aid, which included military assistance, was made more readily available to Costa Rica, El Salvador, and Honduras but was essential to all. Per capita production in Central America grew between 1960 and 1980 but actually fell during the 1980s. It was the poor who suffered most from this reversal. At the beginning of the decade there were already great disparities between the incomes of the poor and the rest of society in Central American countries. Thus, the poorest 20 percent of the isthmian population had only 3 percent of the national product at their disposal, while the richest 20 percent had 56 percent of the national income. The economic crisis of the 1980s exaggerated these differences. The important roles foreign institutions and overseas markets have played in steering Central American economies in the past has meant that the growing influence assumed by the government of the United States and the various international financial agencies (notably the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank) over the direction of these nations' policies in the aftermath of the 1980s crisis was more readily accommodated than perhaps elsewhere in Latin America. The generally open, export-led nature of Central American economies has made them better able to adjust to the policies imposed by their modern creditors. These creditors, for example, have insisted on more effective and equable fiscal policies and a more efficient use of agricultural land, matters that were of relatively little concern to governments in earlier days. Agriculture Agriculture looms large in the lives of Central Americans. More than one-half of the people continue to live in the countryside, and many of those who live in towns continue to earn their livelihoods directly or indirectly from the land. The contribution agriculture makes to Central America's GDP (about 25 percent) is considerably higher than that of Latin America as a whole. About half the agricultural production of the isthmus is for export, a fraction that has held fairly steady since the 1920s; exports of unprocessed foodstuffs continue to provide more than one-half of isthmian trade. Five commodities dominate the commercial agricultural production of the isthmus: coffee, bananas, sugar, cotton, and beef. In the late 1980s about 13 percent of Central America was classified as arable, the same proportion as in Mexico or the Southern Cone countries of South America. A further 26 percent was in pasture, and about 35 percent was under forest. Almost one-fifth of the arable land was cultivated; the rest was in temporary meadows or left fallow. More than one-third of the cultivated land was irrigated. Coffee is the oldest and most valuable export staple; production is almost on a par with Colombia and contributes about a tenth of the world's total. During the 19th century the coffee growers created not only plantations (fincas) but also the other material facilities needed to market coffee overseas. They established national banking systems and financed many of the railways, ports, and other elements of a new outward-looking infrastructure and became the political elite of the isthmus. During the 20th century their political and economic power has continued. Most coffee is grown on the Pacific side of the isthmus. There, seasonal rains provide the moisture needed by the plant during the early part of the growing season, and the succeeding dry months allow the bean to ripen to perfection. Coffee is grown on shaded slopes between elevations of 1,000 and 5,600 feet, where the well-drained, volcanic soils are naturally fertile. Coffee picking makes large demands on temporary labour, and about a million pickers help bring in the harvest each year; government policies have helped ensure the requisite supply of cheap labour. Traditionally profits have been high, taxes on production low, and the rewards concentrated in a small number of hands: between 80 and 90 percent of production is controlled by the top 5 percent of growers. There are marked differences in coffee production costs and yields; yields on the Meseta Central in Costa Rica are the highest, and those on well-managed estates in El Salvador and Guatemala are six times what is typical of Honduras or Nicaragua. Bananas have flourished best in Central America in the tropical warmth and persistent moisture of the coastal lowlands of the Caribbean. The first commercial banana plantations were begun to help pay the construction costs of the Northern Railway, built to carry Costa Rican coffee to the Caribbean port of Limn. Today Caribbean banana plantations are most intensively developed in the lower river valleys of northern Honduras and neighbouring Guatemala. In the 1930s, when banana infestation devastated the southern Caribbean, new plantations were established on the Pacific coast of Costa Rica and in western Panama. Bananas, unlike coffee, are a perishable commodity, harvested throughout the year, and they need fast, frequent, and cheap shipping facilities for marketing. Thus, heavy capital investment in ports, railways, drainage, and the like was a prerequisite for success. Large numbers of permanent plantation labourers also had to be imported for the early Caribbean plantations, and housing and social services provided; most of the new workers were English-speaking West Indians. Major U.S. companies with the available capital and technology have dominated the banana economy from its beginning. Sugarcane was introduced to Central America by the Spanish soon after the conquest and was grown in the foothills behind the Pacific Coast from Guatemala to Nicaragua. It is still mainly grown there, taking advantage of a climate that is warm and moist during the growing season but dry just before harvest time. Sugarcane is raised on both conventional plantations and peasant plots. Central American sugar is sold chiefly in domestic markets. Large-scale cotton growing has been a feature of Central American agriculture only since the construction of roads along the Pacific littoral in the early 1950s opened up virgin land with rich alluvial and volcanic soils and a climate well suited to cotton. The international attack on malaria helped make these lands habitable, modern insecticides allowed man to harvest a crop, and the overseas demand for cotton attracted entrepreneurs and capital. The lakes region of Nicaragua, in particular, became a focus for large-scale mechanized cotton farms. Land was revalued and subsistence farmers dispossessed of land over which they had only traditional rights. The increased use of fertilizer, as soils needed replenishment, and insecticides, as immunities built up, emphasized the growing capital-intensive (and ecologically damaging) nature of the new machine-based agriculture. In contrast to coffee and banana growing, the demand for wage labour in cotton production was modest and seasonal. The cotton boom generally benefited those with access to capital, and it spawned cotton gins, vegetable oil factories, textile mills, and agricultural suppliers. The example of cotton led to a spread of modern agricultural practices with other crops, including rice and sugar, on the Pacific lowlands. The modernization of Central America's cattle ranching economy began in the late 1950s with the opening in Managua of the first beef-packing station approved by the U.S. Department of Agriculture; 20 years later there were more than two dozen such plants in Central America. It was a development promoted by U.S.-backed aid agencies and directed toward exploiting the huge demand for lower-grade beef in the United States. As with bananas, much of the private capital and expertise needed to introduce improved strains of cattle and grasses, to build efficient slaughterhouses, to provide refrigerated transport facilities, and to research the market was provided by U.S. corporations. The new cattle economy prospered on land not fertile enough for cotton, bringing large areas of Pacific Central America into the export economy for the first time, at the expense of exacerbating economic and social differences. Forests had to be cleared and subsistence farmers evicted to make way for beef cattle. The growth of towns has led to an increased production for local markets. Dairy farms and market gardens cater to the sophisticated demands of middle-class townspeople, and an increasing share of the everyday food staples grown in Central America on peasant smallholdings finds its way to urban markets. Although the majority of subsistence farmers now produce cash crops, the agricultural systems used are those that have provided a livelihood throughout the centuries. Thus, in the densely populated altiplano of western Guatemala, for example, virtually every cultivatable acre remains under corn (maize), the staff of life of the American Indians. The great variety of corn grown, sometimes planted with traditional beans and squash, and the tiny size of hand-tilled individual holdings, sometimes on quite steep slopes, creates a landscape very different from that of the plowed lands of commercial monoculture elsewhere in the isthmus. In drier, but equally densely populated, El Salvador sorghum is often grown with corn, partly to provide an insurance for the largely mestizo farmers against a poor corn harvest. Both sets of farmers, American Indian and mestizo, increasingly have come to supplement their incomes by looking for temporary work in the towns or in the coffee plantations, in the cane fields, or on the cotton farms. On the emptier Caribbean side of the isthmus different subsistence agricultural traditions survive; cassava is the main staple, supplemented by sorghum, plantains, and rice, and slash-and-burn agriculture persists in Pacific Panama, eastern Nicaragua, and central and southern Honduras. However, this extensive form of cultivation has become less sustainable as fallow periods are shortened in response to rising demographic pressures and the forest soils lose their ability to recuperate. Although rain forest covers much of the Caribbean lowland, forests have economic significance only in Belize and Honduras. Until about 1960 half the value of Belizean exports was supplied by the forests. Logwood and mahogany had drawn British timber companies to Belize (and the Mosquito Coast) in the 19th century, and during the 20th Caribbean pine became worth cutting. But changing taste, alternative cheaper sources, and poor management have restricted production. Central America's commercial timber now comes mainly from coniferous forests in interior Honduras and broad-leaved forests in Costa Rica. Fishing makes only a modest contribution to the Central American economy, although shellfish middens testify to its importance in pre-Columbian diets, and inshore fishing remains important for some coastal American Indians today. It is an underexploited resource except, perhaps, in Panama, where the completion of a new port and fishing terminal at Vacamonte in 1979 has turned fish, mainly shrimps, into an important export. Exports of fresh and frozen lobster and conch from Belize to the United States have been of local importance since 1960. The land Relief, drainage, and soils Widespread volcanic activity and the frequency of severe earthquakes testify to the tectonic instability of many parts of Central America. This instability is produced by the interactions between the four relatively small crustal plates that provide the tectonic setting of the region. The northeastern edge of the Cocos Plate runs parallel to the Pacific coast some 60 to 125 miles offshore. It abuts on the southwestern edge of the Caribbean Plate, whose northern edge is marked by three fault zones that extend across southern Guatemala to include the active Cayman trough in the Caribbean Sea. North of the Cocos Plate to the west and north of the Caribbean Plate to the east is the North American Plate, which is relatively stable and has allowed the steady accumulation of the limestones of the Yucatn Peninsula. The eastern edge of the Cocos Plate is in contact with the Panama block of the larger Nazca Plate. It is the interaction between the Caribbean and the Cocos plates that is the most important, since the Cocos Plate is moving northeastward relative to the Caribbean Plate at, by geologic standards, the lightning speed of 33 feet per century. The movement is accommodated by subduction of the Cocos Plate where it meets the Caribbean Plate along the line of the submarine Middle America Trench and by the breaking up of the Caribbean Plate into blocks ahead of the trench. Subduction of the Cocos Plate brings with it uplift of land beyond the front; more dramatically, this results in subterranean pressure being released, which reverberates as earthquakes and volcanic eruptions at the surface. Earthquakes in Central America have proved much more destructive of life and property than have volcanic outbursts, although the region is notorious in both respects. A small farm nestled in the rugged highlands of central Honduras. Four-fifths of Central America is hilly or mountainous, and areas of flatland away from the coasts are restricted. One familiar image of Central America is provided by the line of more than 40 volcanoes that tower above the Pacific coast for 900 miles from Tacan (13,428 feet) on the Guatemalan-Mexican border to Turrialba (10,955 feet) in Costa Rica. The summit of Tacan's neighbour Tajumulco (13,845 feet) is the highest point in Central America. In general the volcanic chain forms the watershed between the Caribbean and the Pacific. Those rivers draining eastward are longer than the westward-flowing streams and are well served with rainwater, but few are navigable far upstream. Although a quarter of the volcanoes are extinct and half are dormant, the remainder together provide the most active volcanic belt in the Americas. Fuego (12,346 feet), some 20 miles from Guatemala City, is one of the largest and has erupted four times since 1880. Other active volcanoes include Santa Mara in Guatemala, Izalco in El Salvador, Las Pilas-Cerro Negro and Concepcin in Nicaragua, and Pos and Iraz in Costa Rica. Lava flows have caused great damage by impounding rivers until they burst their banks, but volcanic dust has rejuvenated local soils downwind. As spectacular as the great cones are the cliff-rimmed lakes or calderassuch as Lake Atitln in Guatemala and Lake Ilopango in El Salvadorformed by volcanic collapse. The narrow Pacific plain (some 30 miles wide) southwest of the volcanoes is made of overlapping fans of river alluvium interspersed in El Salvador and Nicaragua by volcanic hills; the coastal sandbars and lagoons are broken only by the downfaulted Gulf of Fonseca. To the northeast of the volcanic axis at the point where Honduras, El Salvador, and Guatemala meet is the geologic heartland of Central America, the Chortis block, an area of Paleozoic metamorphic and igneous rocks overlain by moderately deformed Mesozoic and Cenozoic marine and continental sediments and by volcanic rocks. In the far north at the foot of the Yucatn Peninsula is the low, rolling karstic country of the Petn, broken by lake- and swamp-filled depressions (bajos) such as Lake Petn Itz in Guatemala. South of the Petn the landscape has been fashioned into a series of parallel, arcuate ranges and depressions trending east-west in western Guatemala and northeast-southwest in southern Belize, eastern Honduras, and Nicaragua, mirroring geologic structures of Cretaceous origin. The Cockscomb Range (3,675 feet high) of the Maya Mountains in Belize and the hills of the southern Petn are minor northern outposts of these ranges. There are three major mountain ranges in Guatemala: the high, flat plateau (llanos) of the Sierra los Cuchumatanes (9,800 feet) in the northwestern part of the country and in the east the broken lower Sierra de las Minas (10,200 feet) of Verapaz and the knife-edge ridges of the lower Sierra de Merendn. Guatemala's major river, the Motagua, occupies a structural depression between the last two ranges. Steep-sided river valleys and deep canyons make overland access difficult. The parallel ranges of Honduras and northern Nicaragua are broken by a number of small, alluvium-filled, fault-guided basins that run obliquely to the Caribbean coast, as do the rivers. In northern Honduras the crystalline bedrock impregnated with mineralized veins has weathered, producing a rugged landscape (with pockets of alluvial gold). In northeastern Honduras and Nicaragua east of Lakes Managua and Nicaragua the older rocks are buried under a thick covering of Tertiary volcanic material cut into by the numerous rivers that flow eastward across almost the full width of the isthmus. They have created a series of hilly basins separated by high ridges (3,300 to 6,600 feet) whose amplitude of relief declines eastward toward the Mosquito coastal plain. Here the rivers flow in shallow trenches, and their basins include a series of modest escarpments. This section of the Caribbean Plain is the most extensive of Central America's lowlands and is underlain by Pliocene marine gravels and sandy clays that unfortunately produce infertile lateritic soils. The Mosquito Coast is one of deltas, sandbars, and lagoons. Southward the highlands end abruptly where a major rift valley in Nicaragua separates them from the volcanoes farther to the southwest. This rift valley runs diagonally across the Central American isthmus from its submarine expression as the Gulf of Fonseca, widening inland, where it is partly flooded by the fresh water of Lakes Managua and Nicaragua, before continuing as the valley of the San Juan River. The San Juan is an exceptional river for Central America, having proved itself useful as a navigable routeway. It is about 125 miles from the point where the river drains Lake Nicaragua to the Caribbean Sea. The continental divide to the west of the lake is only 165 feet above the Pacific and only about 15 miles from the shore. These short distances and the low divide make the river-lake link an attractive route between the two oceans, and it was much used in the 19th century. It was indeed the route favoured by the first (1876) of the U.S. commissions investigating alternative transisthmian canal sites, a choice that ultimately fell to Panama. South of the rift, in Costa Rica, is a portion of Cretaceous oceanic crust overlain by later marine and volcanic rocks that suffered severe deformation during late Tertiary and early Quaternary times and subsequent volcanic activity. Overlooking the rift are the high, volcanic Cordillera Central and northern Cordillera de Talamanca, intercalated by highland basins. The major part of the Cordillera de Talamanca is a granitic intrusion that blocks off the southern end of the volcanic axis. This is the most massive of the Central American mountain ranges, with 10 peaks rising above 9,800 feet, which were sculpted by glaciers in Pleistocene times. Slopes are steep, road building expensive, and landslides easily provoked; it is a refuge for small Indian groups even to this day. The Pacific face of the Cordillera de Talamanca is a fault scarp that overlooks the structural basin of the General River and the low coast ranges beyond. Volcanism resumes in western Panama, where Bar (Chiriqu) Volcano (now inactive) reaches 11,401 feet, and highly dissected volcanic ranges declining in height form the spine of the country to beyond the Panama Canal. The mountainous Azuero Peninsula extends southward into the Pacific and separates the Gulf of Panama from that of Urab; rolling lowlands made fertile by ejecta from the nearby volcanoes lie between the Azuero Peninsula and the central cordillera of Panama to the north. Climate The climates of Central America are essentially tropical, tempered by proximity to the sea, by altitude, by latitude, and by local topography; in consequence, they may vary substantially over short distances. There is a net east-to-west flow of air across Central America, with pressure higher on the Caribbean side and lower on the Pacific side. The adjoining sea surfaces are warm, averaging about 81 F (27 C) throughout the year, and the Caribbean current in the east and the equatorial countercurrent in the Pacific carry their warmth northward beyond the isthmus. The atmosphere tends to be moisture-laden, but there is more rainfall to the south and the Caribbean side of the isthmus is wetter than the Pacific side. The effect of altitude on temperature has long been popularly recognized in Central America. The tierra caliente (hot land) is commonly defined as land below 3,300 feet in altitude, with mean annual temperatures exceeding 72 F (22 C); the tierra templada (temperate land) between 3,300 and 6,500 feet, with mean annual temperatures ranging between 60 and 72 F (16 and 22 C); the tierra fra (cold land) between 6,500 and 9,800 feet, with mean annual temperatures below 46 F (8 C); and the tierra helada (frozen land) above that. The relationship between altitude and temperature is not a linear one: the higher the altitude the more rapid the falloff in temperature as the absolute humidity declines. Probably the more important climatic contribution of altitude in Central America is made when topographic barriers athwart the airflow force humid air to rise, perhaps cooling it below its dew point, shrouding the land in cloud, and dousing the higher slopes with rain; as the air descends the leeward side, it brings warmer and drier weather. The seasonal movement of the sun means that the intertropical convergence zone (the ITCZ, marked by the axis of the equatorial low-pressure belt of the doldrums) is at its most northerly extent in late summer, when it lies to the north of Panama along approximately latitude 10 N in the east, veering northwestward in the vicinity of San Jos to bisect Lake Nicaragua and run along the crestline of the Pacific coastal ranges. It brings with it unstable weather marked by convectional rainfall, thunderstorms, and even hail in the Guatemalan highlands. To the south of the zone the surface winds are southwesterlies; to the north the trade winds blow from the east. The southern part of Central America is under the influence of the ITCZ for much of the year. Weak, ill-defined easterly waves in the flow of air on the north side of the ITCZ form over the Caribbean several times during a normal summer and move westward into Central America, bringing temporales, days with clouds and heavy rain. The distinction between a drier winter and a wetter summer is more marked in the north. Furthermore, the seasonal reversal of winds on the Pacific side means that they are frequently onshore in summer, causing wetter weather, and offshore in winter, bringing drier conditions. Central America, north of latitude 12 N, is occasionally visited in winter by the outer edges of cold polar air masses that bring frontal storms, high winds ( nortes), cool temperatures, and generally unsettled weather. Between May and November, and particularly from August to October, the Caribbean coast of northern Central America is exposed to the possibility of hurricane damage. Hurricanes generally increase in frequency northwestward. The tropical storms that form along the ITCZ off the Pacific coast are less numerous but are at their most frequent in September. The combination of maritime, orographic, seasonal, and latitudinal influences and diurnal fluctuations gives great local variety to the climates of Central America. Tropical wet climates characterize the Caribbean coastal plains and piedmont, the Petn, Darin, and the Pacific coast between and including the Osa and Azuero peninsulas. In these areas monthly temperatures exceed 64 F (18 C) throughout the year, rainfall exceeds about 80 inches (2,000 millimetres), and there is no seasonal drought. The wettest area is around San Juan del Norte (Greytown), Nicaragua, where the annual rainfall averages more than 236 inches (6,000 millimetres), with about 6 inches (150 millimetres) falling in the driest month (March) and 31 inches (800 millimetres) in the wettest (November). The sunnier months are the drier months; in April, for instance, Cristbal at the Caribbean end of the Panama Canal records three-fourths of the total sunshine possible, while in July and November clouds reduce the proportion to 38 percent. The lowlands fronting the Gulf of Panama, the Pacific half of Nicaragua including the lake basins, the Gulf of Fonseca, El Salvador, and the Pacific slopes of Guatemala are all within the tierra caliente but experience a distinct dry season of four to six months. Only about 15 percent of the rain on the Pacific coast falls between November and April, less than in each of the three wettest months (September, October, and June) individually. Annual rainfall on the Pacific coast ranges between 39 and 79 inches (1,000 and 2,000 millimetres). In highland Central America mean temperatures are lower; rainfall tends to be more intense than in the corresponding lowlands, and the rain shadow effect can be strong. The people Ethnic composition At least two-thirds of Central Americans are of mixed race. Census figures estimate that 60 percent are of mixed European and American Indian blood (called ladinos in Guatemala and mestizos elsewhere), 5 percent are of mixed European and black origin (mulattoes), and 1 percent are of mixed American Indian and black descent (zambos). A further 20 percent is pure American Indian, or Amerindian, as they are often called in Middle and South America. Some 12 percent claims white European ancestry, while the descendants of Chinese and East Indian indentured labourers and others make up about 2 percent. Seven out of every eight persons classed as American Indians live in Guatemala, making up about 55 percent of that country's total population. One-third of the remaining American Indians live in adjoining Honduras, and another one-fourth in El Salvador; elsewhere, only in relatively empty Belize are American Indians a significant element (10 percent) in the population. Almost all the American Indians in Guatemala belong to branches of the Mayan family. Linguistic evidence suggests that the Maya core area was near Huehuetenango in northwestern Guatemala and that the first of a number of migrations began some four and a half millennia ago, resulting in the many distinct Maya tribal groupings present in the isthmus today. The American Indians of northeastern Petn and northern Belize are members of the Yucatecan Maya (for example, the Itz and Mopan), most of whom live on the Yucatn Peninsula in neighbouring Mexico. The northwest highlands of Guatemala are home to the Mamean people, including the Mam proper, the Ixil, and, straddling the Mexican border, the Kanjobalan, Chuj, and Jacaltec. The largest concentration of American Indian language speakers is that of the Quichan peoples, who live in the midwestern highlands of Guatemala; they include the Quich proper, the Cakchiquel, and the Tzutujil. The eastern highlands of Guatemala house the Pokomam, with a Quichan language root, and include the Kekch of Verapaz and southern Belize; the Chort, who inhabit the area where Honduras, El Salvador, and Guatemala meet, share their linguistic roots with the American Indians of Tabasco in Mexico. Costa Rica is the only country with a majority of residents descended from white Europeans. That country had only a small American Indian population in the 16th century and was unattractive to Spanish conquistadores, but it has been more attractive to later European migrants than have the other countries. Blacks are proportionally higher in numbers in Belize (40 percent) and Panama (14 percent), where West Indians were imported in large numbers to help build the Panama Canal. Linguistic composition Spanish is the dominant language of Central America and the official language in six of the republics; English is the lingua franca of much of the Caribbean coast and the official language of Belize. Many of the American Indians are monolingual, some speak Spanish as a second language, and a considerable number speak more than one American Indian language. There has been an exchange of vocabularies among the languages. There are also various Cariban languages, with trans-Caribbean roots, spoken by the Black Caribs (morenos) and the small groups of Jicaque, Paya, Miskito, and Sumo of the Mosquito Coast and parts of Belize.