Page:The republics of Latin America (IA republicsoflatin00jame).djvu/391

 CHAPTER XI

CENTRAL AMERICA AND PANAMA

The five republics of Central America, Guatemala, Salvador, Honduras, Nicaragua, and Costa Rica, all date their independence from September 15, 1821. On that date a meeting of high civil, ecclesiastical, and military officials, and representatives of the towns, called by the Governor-General, Gavino Gainza, declared the complete independence of the Captaincy-General of Guatemala from Spain. Up to that time the movement for independence, which had made such progress throughout most of the other Spanish possessions in America, had failed to strike root in the captaincy-general, though there had been unsuccessful revolts in Salvador and Nicaragua in 1811 and 1812. The final impetus for the declaration of independence in Central America was given by the success of Iturbide in Mexico with his Plan of Iguala of February 24, 1821. Indeed, on September 3, 1821, the province of Chiapas, one of the most important of the provinces of the captaincy-general, had declared her independence of Spain and accepted the Plan of Iguala, thus separating herself from Central America and linking her fortune with Mexico.

Coming as it did at the very close of the revolutionary movement in the Spanish possessions in America, the declaration of independence of Guatemala represented an achievement which was in little danger of being subverted by the Spanish government. But the dissensions and jealousies within and the political conditions of the country as a whole presented difficulties more formidable than external war in the way of orderly development. The leaders in the provincial capitals carried over from the 371