Central America: The Literary Scene, 1943

Abstract

C ENTRAL AMERICA has long been relatively neglected as a source of literary research in spite of the fact that it was the third regional government set up by Spain in the New World. Yet much of the best reporting done by any of the early chroniclers came from the Capitania General de Guatemala. Bernal Diaz del Castillo wrote his history in Guatemala, where his original manuscript still remains; but he is spoken of, more often than not, as having come from Mexico. Bartolome de las Casas did his first work in Guatemala, long before he retired to Mexico. Pedro de Alvarado lent luster to the Capitania de Guatemala which he was appointed to rule, but after his death the importance of Guatemala (now Central America) went unrecorded. The writings of the leaders of the independence movement of 1821 are still largely unexplored, even by Spanish Americans. In 1943, when we here in the United States consider plans for Union Now, or others of like nature, we forget or are ignorant of the fact that the political leaders of Central America proposed in 1821 an alliance of the Americas, North and South, with a New World police force to quell all disturbances and to protect the young nations of the west from the despoilers of Europe. Their proposal sounds as modern in concept as any of the highly publicized ones of today. Men like Francisco de Molina, Jose F. Barrundia, Alejandro Marure and Garcia Granados were as advanced intellectually as any leader either to the north or south. Guatemala was the political center of the Capitania General; it was also the cultural center and the seat of the first university in Central America. Even today Guatemala exercises great influence over her sisterrepublics, and her poets and short-story writers are read eagerly by them. A survey, then, of the literary scene in Central America should prove to be interesting for the general reader who is not wholly familiar with either the history or literature of the onetime Capitania General. The tradition of literary leadership in Guatemala is still fresh in the minds of her writers. A sense of responsibility for the preservation of the past is very prominent among the present-day literati. Proof of this statement is the abundant and good writing in the realm of the historical