Constabulary Forces and American Hegemony in Central America from a Global Perspective (1898-1930)
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.15517/h.v16i1.5625Keywords:
imperialism, colonialism, armed forces, Central AmericaAbstract
This paper reflects on the establishment of national guards in Central American countries at the beginning of the 20th century, which were affected by the consolidation of the United States as a global power after its victory in the war against Spain. In this context, the US government embarked on a series of practices aimed at imposing means of control over Central American territories. Although most of the Central American states were not directly occupied by the United States, part of the US policies included the reform of the armed forces of the Central American States, through the construction of constabularias, also known as national guards. The national histories of Central American countries tend to study these processes independently, neglecting the fact that they were nourished by the experience and circulation of ideas that characterized the functioning of imperial entities.
Downloads
References
Acuña, V. H. (2010). Filibusterismo y destino manifiesto en las Américas. Museo Histórico Cultural Juan Santamaría.
Akami, T. (2013). The Nation-State/Empire as Unit of Analysis in the History of International Relations: A Case Study in Northeast Asia, 1868-1933. En I. Löhr y R. Wenzlhuemer (Eds.), The National State and Beyond. Governing Globalization Processes in the Nineteenthand early Twentieth Centuries (pp. 177-208). Springer Verlag.
Arguedas, A. (2006). The Kingdom of Guatemala: Under the Military Reform, 1755–1808. Texas Christian University.
Arriola, A. T. y Piel, J. (Eds.). (1995). Identidades nacionales y Estado moderno en Centroamérica. Editorial Universidad de Costa Rica.
Balboa, I. (2015). Bandits, Patriots or Delinquents? Social Protest in Rural Cuba (1878–1902). International Journal of Cuban Studies, 7(1), 79-98. https://doi.org/10.13169/intejcubastud.7.1.0079
Burbank, J. y Cooper, F. (2010). Empires in World History: Power and the Politics of Difference. Princeton University Press.
Caballero, C. (2025). La Doctrina Monroe y su aplicación en la intervención militar de los Estados Unidos en República Dominicana 1916-1924. Cátedra, (22), 150-172. https://doi.org/10.48204/j.catedra.n22.a7962
Chrisman, R. (2013). The role of mass media in US imperialism. The Black Scholar, 43(3), 56-60.
Coatsworth, J. (1994). Central America, and the United States: The Clients and the Colossus. Twayne Publishers.
Conrad, S. (2016). What is Global History? Princeton University Press.
Conroy-Krutz, E. (2015). Christian Imperialism: Converting the World in the Early American Republic. Cornell University Press.
Cullinane, M. (2009). Bringing in the brigands the politics of pacification in the colonial Philippines, 1902-1907. Philippine Studies, 57(1), 49-76.
Daudin, G., Morys, M. y O’Rourke, K. (2010). Globalization, 1870-1914. En S. Broadberry y K. O’Rourke (Eds.), The Cambridge Economic History of Modern Europe. Volume 2: 1870 to the present (pp. 5-58). Cambridge University Press.
Davis, C. B. (1982). Financing imperialism: British and American bankers as vectors of imperial expansion in China, 1908–1920. Business History Review, 56(2), 236-264.
Decreto A. N. n°28, por el cual se crea la Guardia Nacional. 14 de mayo de 1925. Diario Oficial n.º 113.
Delgado, J. (2006). Dinámicas Imperiales (1650-1796). Ediciones Bellatera.
Duménil, G. y Lévy, D. (2004). The Economics of US Imperialism at the Turn of the 21st Century. Review of International Political Economy, 11(4), 657-676.
Dym, J. (2006). From Sovereign Villages to National States: City, State, and Federation in Central America, 1759-1839. UNM Press.
Emsley, C. (2014). Policing the empire/Policing the metropole: Some thoughts on models and types. Crime, Histoire y Sociétés/Crime, History y Societies, 18(2), 5-25.
Ferguson, N. (2003). An empire in denial: The limits of US imperialism. Harvard International Review, 25(3), 64.
Fernández, J. A. (2003). Pintando el mundo de azul: el auge añilero y el mercado centroamericano, 1750-1810. Consejo Nacional para la Cultura y el Arte.
Fieldhouse, D. K. (1990). Economía e imperio: la expansión de Europa (1830-1914). Siglo XXI.
Go, J. (2007). Waves of empire: US hegemony and imperialistic activity from the shores of Tripoli to Iraq, 1787-2003. International Sociology, 22(1), 5-40.
Go, J. (2008a). Global fields and imperial forms: Field theory and the British and American empires. Sociological Theory, 26(3), 201-229.
Go, J. (2008b). American Empire and the Politics of Meaning: Elite Political Cultures in The Philippines and Puerto Rico during U.S Colonialim. Duke University Press.
Go, J. (2011). Patterns of Empire: The British and American Empires, 1688 to the Present. Cambridge University Press.
Go, J. (2014). Capital, containment, and competition: the dynamics of British imperialism, 1730-1939. Social Science History, 38(1-2), 43-69.
Gobat, M. (2010). Enfrentando el sueño americano. Nicaragua bajo la dominación imperial de Estados Unidos. Managua. Instituto de Historia de Nicaragua y Centroamérica.
Goodyear-Ka’opua, N. (2014). Hawai’i: An occupied country. Harvard International Review, 35(3), 58-62.
Granados, C. (1985). Hacia una definición de Centroamérica: El peso de los factores geopolíticos. Anuario de Estudios Centroamericanos, 11(1), 59-78. https://archivo.revistas.ucr.ac.cr/index.php/anuario/article/view/3012
Gupta, B. y Ma, D. (2010). Europe in an Asian mirror: the Great Divergence. En S. Broadberry y K. O’Rourke (Eds.), The Cambridge Economic History of Modern Europe. Volume 1: 1700-1870 (pp. 264-285). Cambridge University Press.
Headrick, D. (2010). Power over Peoples: Technology, Environments and Western Imperialism, 1400 to the Present. Princeton University Press.
Hobsbawm, E. (2013). La era del Imperio, 1875-1914. Crítica.
Hudson, M. (2003). Super Imperialism. The Origins and Fundamentals of US World Dominance. Pluto Press.
Kramer, H. y Bauer, H. (1972). Imperialism, Intervention Capacity, and Foreign Policy Making: On the Political Economy of the US Intervention in Indochina. Journal of Peace Research, 9(4), 285-302.
Kramer, P. (2006). The Blood of Government: Race, Empire, the United States and The Philippines. The North Caroline University Press.
Lebergott, S. (1980). The returns to US imperialism, 1890–1929. The Journal of Economic History, 40(2), 229-252.
Leonard, T. M. (1991). Central America and the United States: the Search for Stability (Vol. 4). University of Georgia Press.
Lindo Fuentes, H. (2019). El alborotador de Centroamérica. El Salvador frente al imperio. Colegio de Michoacán y Universidad Centroamericana José Simeón Cañas.
Lindsay, F. A. (1989). US Intervention in Revolutionary Conflicts. Harvard International Review, 11(2). 38-41.
Love, E. T. L. (2004). Race Over Empire: Racism and US Imperialism, 1865-1900. University of North Carolina Press.
MacDonald, P. K. (2009). Those who forget historiography are doomed to republish it: empire, imperialism and contemporary debates about American power. Review of International Studies, 35(1), 45-67.
Marotta, G. (1983). The academic mind and the rise of US imperialism: Historians and economists as publicists for ideas of colonial expansion. American Journal of Economics and Sociology, 42(2), 217-234.
Martínez Martínez, A. (2015). El Caribe, como concepto de mare nostrum en la teoría de Alfred Thayer Mahan. Tiempo y Espacio, 25(64), 441-460.
Millett, A. R. (1972). The Rise and Fall of the Cuban Rural Guard, 1898-1912. The Americas, 29(2), 191-213.
Millet, R. (1977). Guardians of the Dynasty. A History of the U.S. Created Guardia Nacional de Nicaragua and The Somoza Family. Orbis Books.
Mojares, R. (2004). The War Against the Americans: Resistance and Collaboration in Cebu, 1899-1906. Ateneo de Manila University Press.
Munford, C. J. (1991). The “Pearl” of the Antilles is born: Haiti and black slavery-the early years, 1629-1715. Jahrbuch für Geschichte Lateinamerikas, 28(1), 1-20.
Murillo, H. (1986). La controversia de límites entre Costa Rica y Nicaragua. El laudo Cleveland y los derechos canaleros 1821-1903. Anuario de Estudios Centroamericanos, 12(2) 45-58.
Murphy, E. L. (2009). Women’s anti-imperialism,“The White Man’s Burden” and the Philippine-American War: Theorizing masculinist ambivalence in protest. Gender y Society, 23(2), 244-270.
O’Rourke, K. H., Prados de la Escosura, L. y Daudin, G. (2008). Trade and Empire, 1700-1800. Working Papers in Economic History, (08-09), 1-37.
Pease, D. (2005). US Imperialism: Global Dominance without Colonie. En H. Schwarz y S. Ray (Eds.), A Companion to Postcolonial Studies (pp. 203-220). Blackwell Publishing.
Pérez, L. A. (1986). The Pursuit of Pacification: Banditry and the United States’ Occupation of Cuba, 1889-1902. Journal of Latin American Studies, 18(2), 313-332.
Pérez Pineda, C. (2018). La Guardia Nacional de El Salvador y la República de Cafetalera, 1912-1932. Editorial de la Universidad Gerardo Barrios.
Peters Solórzano, G. (1982). El rol de los grupos de interés económico en la formulación de la política de los Estados Unidos en Centroamérica, 1920-1933. Revista Estudios, (4), 91-113. https://doi.org/10.15517/re.v0i4.30803
Polychroniou, C. (1995). Rise and fall of US imperialism. Economic and Political Weekly, PE54-PE64.
Pomeranz, K. (2000). The Great Divergence: China, Europe, and the Making of the Modern World Economy. Princeton University Press.
Potthast-Jutkeit, B. (1998). Centroamérica y el contrabando por la Costa de Mosquitos en el siglo XVIII. Mesoamérica, 19(36), 499-516.
Renda, M. A. (2001). Taking Haiti: Military Occupation and the Culture of US Imperialism, 1915-1940. University of North Carolina Press.
Riojas, C. y Rinke, S. (2022). Historia global: perspectivas y tensiones. Wbg Academic.
Schlesinger, S., Nuccio, R. y Schirmer, J. (1999). Preserving Bitter Fruit: Re-examining US Intervention in Guatemala. Harvard International Review, 21(4), 24-29.
Schroeder, M. y Brooks, D. C. (2018). Caudillismo Masked and Modernized: The Remaking of the Nicaraguan State via the Guardia Nacional, 1925-1936. Middle Atlantic Review of Latin American Studies, 2(2), 1-32.
Serrano, F. (1985). Auge y represión de la piratería en el Caribe: 1650-1700. Mesoamérica, 6(9), 91-103.
Sexton, J. (2024). The Monroe Doctrine: Empire and Nation in Nineteenth-Century America. Macmillan+ ORM.
Silbey, D. (2007). A war of Frontier and Empire: The Philippine-American War, 1899-1902. Hill and Wang.
Sinclair, G. (2008). The ‘Irish’ policeman and the Empire: Influencing the policing of the British Empire-Commonwealth. Irish Historical Studies, 36(142), 173-187.
Steinmetz, G. (2005). Return to empire: The new US imperialism in comparative historical perspective. Sociological Theory, 23(4), 339-367.
Talusan, M. (2004). Music, Race, and Imperialism: The Philippine Constabulary Band at the 1904 St. Louis World’s Fair. Philippine Studies, 52(4), 499-526.
Togores Sánchez, L. E. (1990). Estudios históricos: Homenaje a los profesores José Mª Jover Zamora y Vicente Palacio Atard. Universidad Complutense de Madrid.
Toledo-López, R. (1930). La conferencia sobre asuntos centroamericanos reunida en Washington el 4 de diciembre de 1922. Imprenta El Sol.
Tratado General de Paz y Amistad, 20 de diciembre de 1907.
Tratado General de Paz y Amistad (Pactos de Washington), 7 de febrero de 1923.
Tyrrell, I. y Sexton, J. (Eds.). (2015). Empire’s Twin: US Anti-imperialism from the Founding Era to the Age of Terrorism. Cornell University Press.
Uría, I. (2018). La dimensión internacional de la guerra hispano-cubano-americana. Anales de la Real Academia de Cultura Valenciana, (93), 657-692.
Vázquez, J. Z. y Miño, M. (2003). Historia General de América Latina, 6. Editorial Trotta.
Wünderich, V. (1995). Sandino. Una biografía política. Managua. Editorial Nueva Nicaragua.
Yoon, M. Y. (1997). Explaining US intervention in third world internal wars, 1945-1989. Journal of Conflict Resolution, 41(4), 580-602.
Zambrano, M. (2007). Piratas, piratería y comercio ilícito en el Caribe: la visión del otro. Historia Caribe, 4(12), 23-56.
Downloads
Published
Issue
Section
License
Copyright (c) 2026 Esteban Corella Ovares
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
Authors who publish with this journal agree to the following terms:
- Authors retain copyright and grant the journal right of first publication with the work simultaneously licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution License that allows others to share the work with an acknowledgement of the work's authorship and initial publication in this journal.
- Authors are able to enter into separate, additional contractual arrangements for the non-exclusive distribution of the journal's published version of the work (e.g., post it to an institutional repository or publish it in a book), with an acknowledgement of its initial publication in this journal.
- Authors are permitted and encouraged to post their work online (e.g., in institutional repositories or on their website) prior to and during the submission process, as it can lead to productive exchanges, as well as earlier and greater citation of published work.
