Territory, intermediate and local powers, before and after the Central American Independence

Abstract

In Central America as in many parts of Latin America, the first stage of the formation of national states, instituted after Independence, took place within the framework of a transition characterized by marked political permanence, which was intertwined with some republican, liberal and of old roots. Thus the former provinces of the Guatemalan audience were constituted in five States of the Federation of the United Provinces of Central America, with the projection of entering the order of nations as their Latin American peers. In this essay, this process is observed from the perspective of the overlapping of political-administrative and territorial elements that of the Old Regime and of the monarchical constitutionalism transited that of the Federal Republic in a few years of institutional anarchy and fragility. Such a process is examined here in three spaces: that of territorial redistribution, that of the operation of intermediate powers and that of local powers