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Welcome to The Dig, a podcast from Jacobin Magazine.

My name is Daniel Denver, and I'm broadcasting from Providence, Rhode Island.

This is the first of a two-part series on the history and present of Central America,

with scholars Hillary Goodfriend and Jorge Quayar.

This is also, then, a history of American Near Empire, as it's played out since the mid-19th century.

Central America won independence from the Spanish Empire in 1821, spent two years as part of the Mexican Empire,

and then entered nearly two decades as a technically unified, but in fact, deeply

divided, Federal Republic of Central America. The colonial economy had been an extremely peripheral

one. Most people lived by self-subsistence, while a modest export economy around primary goods

like indigo and cauccaneal was deeply tied to the Spanish

...