Peer-reviewed
THE HISTORICAL DEMOGRAPHY OF COLONIAL CENTRAL AMERICA
Literature available in English and in Spanish, much of it published over the past ten years, is reviewed in an attempt to delineate key features of Central American demography from European penetration in the early sixteenth century to Independence from Spain in 1821. Themes and issues of focus include native population size at Spanish contact; post-conquest native population decline; the arrival of Spaniards and Africans resulting in the emergence of a casta, or mixed population; and population composition on the eve of Independence. Based on recent research, a native population estimated to number 5.1 million at Spanish contact is depicted as having plummeted considerably in the course of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. By the late eighteenth century, natives and newcomers together numbered approximately one million. Contrasts are noted in the demographic experience of the north and west (Chiapas, Guatemala, El Salvador) and the south and east (Costa Rica, Nicaragua, Honduras). Processes dating to the colonial past are responsible for population patterns clearly visible today
Article, 1991