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 also including the islands west of Jamaica. The zone emerged in the late 16th 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.
Unsubdued indigenous inhabitants of the region included some Maya polities, and other chiefdoms and egalitarian societies, especially in Belize, eastern Honduras, Nicaragua, and Costa Rica. In addition, the region was the refuge of several groups of runaway slaves, who formed independent settlements or intermixed with the indigenous societies. The combination of unsubdued indigenous people, outlaws (pirates in this case), and an absence of outside control made it similar in some aspects to the American West or the Wild West, as the western half of North America is often called.
Its long engagement with the English-speaking Caribbean made it an ideal conduit for trade from both the English colonies of the Caribbean, especially Jamaica, but also North America, which had been trading in the zone since the 18th century at least. The relatively low population and strategic location attracted United States–based transportation companies to promote infrastructure projects from railroads to the Panama Canal in the zone, and conjointly with that to introduce large-scale fruit production toward the end of the 19th century, often bringing in labor from the English-speaking Caribbean to assist.
Unique elements of the region, relative to the population of Central America in general, are the high percentage of people of whole or partial African descent, and its cultural connections to English and the English-speaking Caribbean through language and religion.
Early Spanish settlement and conquest The first Spanish settlements on the mainland of South America were at Darien, where Spanish military activities were prominent in the first years of the 16th century.Carl Sauer, The Early Spanish Main (Berkeley, 1992), pp. 218–238 But, the Spanish abandoned their positions at Darien by 1520, leaving it, as well as the province of Veragua on the Caribbean coast of Panama, in the hands of the indigenous peoples. This situation continued well into the 18th century. The government's occasional licenses given to ambitious Spaniards to conquer or settle these regions never resulted in any significant or long-lasting occupation, nor did attempts of missionaries to convert the indigenous inhabitants result in change.
The Spanish founded towns along the coast of modern-day Venezuela and Colombia, notably, Santa Marta in 1525 and Cartagena. From these towns they expanded inland to the lands of the Muisca in the highlands. They were less successful on several parts of the coast, where unconquered pockets remained, notably at the Rio de la Hacha and the Gulf of Urabá.
Spanish successes in Central America took place mostly on the Pacific side of the isthmus, especially as the victorious Spanish and their Mexica and Tlaxcalan allies entered Guatemala in 1524 from the north. While the primary goal of the conquest was the Maya kingdoms of the Guatemala highlands, and the Pipil, Lenca, and other kingdoms of Honduras and Nicaragua, most of their success occurred on the Pacific side of the Isthmus. A moderately wealthy Spanish colony, called the "Kingdom of Guatemala", was founded on the mining economy of that region (Encompassing Chile, Belize, and El Salvador among others), while not as prosperous as those of Peru or Mexico in gold exports supported Spanish towns and settlements, often at former Maya, Lenca or Pipil towns.Linda Newson, "Labour in the Colonial Mining Industry of Honduras," The Americas 39/2 (1982): 185-203
Farther south, attempts to subjugate the territory of modern-day Costa Rica were failures, although they did manage to capture slaves for labor elsewhere in the isthmus and outside it. There were numerous entradas (invasions) authorized but all had to withdraw under stiff resistance. Towns that were founded in the 1560s were all destroyed by early 17th century attacks, especially led by the Talamacas, and as a result the Spanish only occupied the region around the town of Cartago and the Nicoya Peninsula.Juan Carlos Solórzano Fonseca, "Rebeliones y sublevaciónes de los indígneas contra la dominación española en las areas períferica de Costa Rica (de 1502 a 1710), Anuario de estudios centroamericanos 22/1 (1996): 125-147. Attempts to reduce the area through missionary activity, mostly under the guidance of the Franciscans, also failed to produce much fruit, and further hostilities in the 1760s and 1780s ended that period.Juan Carlos Solórzano Fonseca, "Indigenas insumisos, frailes y soldados: Talamanca y Guatuso, 1660-1821," Anuario de estudios centroamericanos 23/1-2 (1997): 143-97.
The Spanish founded some towns on the Caribbean side of Central America, most notably Puerto de Caballos, Trujillo, Gracias a Dios and Portobelo, as well as a significant inland town at San Pedro Sula. But they failed to conquer the provinces of Taguzgalpa and Tologalpa in today's northeast Honduras and western Nicaragua as well as much of the coast of Panama and Costa Rica which also lay beyond their control, save a few key towns. They established reasonable control of the coastal lowlands of northern Yucatán after 1540, but the interior of Yucatán remained independent under the Itza kingdom. The coastal regions on the south and southeast side of Yucatán, while nominally under Spanish control in the province of Verapaz, were ruled by missionaries and exercised considerable freedom of action under the Spanish administration.Lawrence Feldman, ed. and trans., Lost Shores, Forgotten Peoples: Spanish Explorations of the South East Maya Lowlands (Durham and London, 2000
For much of the 16th and early 17th centuries, the Spanish were content to allow the Caribbean side of Central America remain under loose control (as around the towns of Puerto Caballo, Trujillo or Portobello). They used the towns and the routes to them for transporting products of the Pacific side, including Peru to be shipped and exported to Spain.
The African runaways
By the mid-16th century, slaves working the transportation routes which carried silver from Peru to Panama and then across the isthmus to Nombre de Dios, and later Portobello, ran away and formed independent communities in the mountains north of the city. The Spanish called such runaway slave communities cimarrons. A large community with multiple settlements had developed there by 1550, initially headed by a king named Bayano whose headquarters was in Darien. After he was captured in 1558, other men succeeded him as leader.
Somewhat later, other groups formed especially drawing on the many slaves in Panama who were called up to carry silver across the isthmus of Panama from Panama to Nombre de Dios, the Atlantic port. By the 1560s there were two large communities, each with its own king, on both sides of the route.Criado de Castilla, "Summary Description," in Pérez de Zéleson, et al, eds, Costa Rica-Panama Arbitration: Documents 1: 183 In 1572 the Panama Cimarrons allied with the English privateer Sir Francis Drake to try to take Nombre de Dios. In 1582, the cimarrons agreed to accept Spanish authority in exchange for their permanent freedom.Ruth Pike, “Black Rebels: The Cimarrons of Sixteenth Century Panama,” The Americas 64 (2007): 243-66
Other cimmaron communities formed in Nicaragua and Honduras, especially slaves fleeing the mines and transportation corridors. Thomas Gage, the English bishop of Guatemala, noted several hundred escaped slaves in the early 1630s.Thomas Gage, The English-American, his Travail by Sea and Land; or a New Survey of the West-Indies (London: R. Cortes, 1648), pp. 128–129, 132–133.
English and Dutch challenges In the late 16th century, privateers, especially English ones, began to raid Spanish shipping in the Caribbean. Francis Drake, one of the more successful, allied with the Cimarrons of Panama in 1572 and, with their assistance, stormed the city of Panama. In the subsequent years, both Dutch and English privateers linked with cimarrons to attack the trading towns of the Caribbean coast. In 1630, the English Providence Island Company founded the Providence Island colony. They used it until the Spanish successfully counterattacked in 1641 to capture shipping and raid the coast of Honduras and Nicaragua.Karen O. Kupperman, Providence Island, 1630-1641: The Other Puritan Colony (Cambridge, 1993) Following the fall of Providence Island, the English transferred operations on the coast to Jamaica; many privateers began using the Cayman Islands as a forward base for attacks on the isthmus.
Pirate havens and illicit commerce
Pirates or buccaneers, some of whom were formerly privateers, took over much of activity of the earlier privateers, especially during the Golden Age of Piracy (1660–1720).Marcus Rediker, Villains of all Nations: Atlantic Pirates in the Golden Age (Boston: Beacon Press, 2004) Operating from bases within the Caribbean, such as Tortuga and later Jamaica and the Cayman Islands, pirates regularly raided Spanish possessions and shipping along the whole of the Western Caribbean. They frequently stopped to re-supply at such places as Rio de la Hacha, Darien (which they also used as a base for raids on Panama or to cross to the Pacific) or the Miskito areas.
When the European colonial powers began to suppress piracy in the late 17th and early 18th centuries, colonial merchants often used the same havens to deliver goods from northern Europe to Spanish markets. The Spanish Crown's restrictive trade policies, granting of monopolies to favored domestic suppliers, and inability to produce consumer goods cheaply, made smuggling a major activity for English, Dutch and French merchants. The lucrative trade also enriched the indigenous groups of the area, but attracted frequent Spanish expeditions against them.
In the 18th century, ships from English colonies, but particularly Jamaica and also North America, regularly visited the Miskito Kingdom and Belize. Many of the commercial vessels were from Jamaica and New York City, but ships also came from New England. In 1718 General Shute the governor of Massachusetts dispatched a warship to protect their interests during the Anglo-Spanish War.Archibald Gibbs, British Honduras: An Historical and Descriptive Account of the Colony from its Settlement, 1670 (London: Samson Low, Marston, Searle and Rivington, 1883) p. 31.
The Miskito Kingdom and English settlements