Map on Monday: SYRIA

The Physical Ecology, Communal Loyalties, and Geopolitics of Syria

by David Pence and A. Joseph Lynch

Physical Ecology: Natural Resources and Physical Geography

Syria is a nation about the size of Wisconsin but with four times the population (23 million vs. 5.5 million).  About a fourth of its land is fit for agricultural use. Syria is situated on the eastern end of the Mediterranean, wedged in between many contending powers of the Middle East. Syria is bisected into north and south by mountain ranges which run from its border with Lebanon to the Euphrates river in the east. In its far south, another mountain range anchors Syria's border with Jordan. The Golan Heights may be found along its border with Israel - but this area has come under Israeli control since the Six-Day War and annexed in all but name in 1981 (the western end of Golan Heights actually includes almost the entire eastern bank of the Sea of Galilee).

Syria's climate can be described in three zones. The western (coastal) and northern regions consist of cultivated land where fruits, olives, and tobacco are grown. Bordering this area to the south and east are steppe-lands where one may find nomads and sheep herders. As one travels further south and east, the steppe gives way to desert. The one exception to this is the Euphrates River which runs from the northwest through the southeastern corner of Syria into Iraq's Anbar province. Along the Euphrates are cultivated lands where sheep are raised and wheat is grown.

Among Syria's natural resources are petroleum, phosphates, chrome and manganese ores, asphalt, iron ore, rock salt, marble, gypsum, and hydropower. Sales of oil comprised 20% of Syria's GDP prior to the civil war with the vast majority of it sold to the European Union. With the spread of ISIS, there have been times that the Islamic State has produced and sold more Syrian oil than the Syrian government. Syria's top two oil refineries are today operating at less than 10% capacity. Syria's phosphate mines (located outside of Palmyra in the heart of Syria) were captured by the Islamic State in May 2015; and in June the Islamic State destroyed the gas pipelines to Damascus which were to heat its homes in the months ahead. The Islamic State is working hard to deny Syria access to its own natural resources.

Communal Loyalties: Ethnicity, Language, and Religion

The Arabic language is used across Syria, with several major dialects. The nation is a smorgasbord of ethnic groups (see map below). Approximately 60% of Syria is comprised of Sunni Arab Muslims. The rest of Syria's population is made up of various minorities like the Sunni Kurds (9%) in the north,  Shiite Alawites (12%) on the Mediterranean coast, Levantines - Arabic speaking Christians (9%) further inland from the coast, Druze (3%) in the south, and small Shia-Islamic groups (like the Ismaillis and Imamis) at a combined 3% of the population.

Colonial rule often employed ethnic and religious minorities opposed to the Sunni majority. The map reveals the disparate nature of this alliance. The Kurds are off in the extreme north and northeast while the Druze are located in the extreme south. Alawaites and Christians are located much closer to the Mediterranean coast, isolated from both Druze and Kurds.

Syrians also remember historical groupings of "Greater Syria." A term originating with Ottomans, it not only referred to present-day Syria, but it also included Lebanon, Jordan, Israel, the Sinai Peninsula, and the city of Antioch (the pre-Islamic capital of Syria now under Turkish rule). Syrian nationalist, Antun Saadeh, sought the creation of a pan-Syrian state to include the areas above along with Iraq. He grounded his vision in the region's physical geography by fixing the limits of Greater Syria with the following natural boundaries: the Taurus and Zagros Mountains in the north, deserts and the Persian Gulf in the east and south, the Gulf of Aquaba and Suez Canal in the southwest, and the Mediterranean island of Cyprus in the far west. While the modern Syrian state has never expanded to this extent, the Hashemites of Jordan had been promised rule over a Greater Syria for  helping the British defeat the Ottomans during WWI. The Hashemites once controlled Iraq, the western edge of Saudi Arabia, and parts of what is today Israel.

Syrian Ethnic Groups (click to enlarge)

Geopolitics: Political Geography and Foreign Policy

Syria's internal communal loyalties define its geopolitics. If we were to divide Syria into four main groups - Arab Sunnis (60%), Shiites and other Muslim minorities (19% ), Christians (10%), and Kurds (9%) - we have a good idea which nations will be lining up to support these four ethnic and religious peoples. Here, religion is the key to understanding the current struggle.

President Assad is part of the Alawite Shiite tradition which has dominated the Syrian officer ranks for a half century.  His father was Hafez-al-Assad and the leader of the nationalist-socialist movement in the secular Baath party. He assumed rule in the “Corrective Movement “ of 1970.  The father ruled until 2000 and was succeeded by his son.  The predominance of Alawite Shia in the military was fostered during French rule which favored minority groups over the Sunni majority in positions of military authority. Check out this excellent short history of the Baath party, Arab nationalism, ethnic differences and the Sunni-Alawite rivalry in 20th century Syrian history.

President Assad has protected the minority Christians, Druze and Kurds. He also has a considerable number of Sunnis in his government. Shiite Iran and Orthodox Russia will support his state. The Lebanese Shiites (Hezbollah) and Maronite Christians will not want to see the Syrian government  fall. The Sunni majority in the East may reconfigure themselves with the Sunnis in the Western regions of Iraq. Among the rebels, the Salafist Sunnis are establishing control over the opposition forces. This is ISIS and Al Qaeda (al Nusra in Syria). They will be supported by Saudi Arabia (salafist Sunni) and the Gulf States. The Syrian civil war seems similar to the Spanish Civil War where the local conflict provided a battleground attracting foreign recruits eager to depose the “fascist Franco.” Those international recruits were predominately Communist while the Syrian foreign fighters are principally Salafist Sunnis. Both of these killing movements masked their claims as battles for popular democracy.

The alliance between Iran and Syria is multifaceted. A reliable American who's reporting and analyzing Syria is Oklahoma professor Joshua Landis.

The Turks along Syria's northern border are Sunni Muslims - but their Turkic ethnicity makes them stand apart from the broader Arab Muslim Middle East. Turkey sees Syria in a few different ways: 1) Syria is a place to show Turkish might and win a renewed place of leadership in the Muslim world (recall Turkey was at the heart of the last Islamic caliphate - the Ottoman Empire); 2) intervention in Syria is meant to keep the Kurds from controlling Syria's northern border since Turkey has long worked to control the Kurdish minority within Turkey proper; 3) Turkey, like the Saudis, would like to see President Assad toppled and replaced with a Sunni. The Kurds of Syria -- like those of Iraq, Iran, and Turkey -- seek autonomy, and then a nation.

A partition of Syria based on geographical religious and ethnic loyalties was proposed in 2011 by Fabrice Balanche, a French researcher, who mapped Syria's religious and ethnic communities long before the Arab Spring.

Update 11-20-2016:The election of Donald Trump and his advocacy of a Russian Syrian alliance will dramatically improve American strategy in the Mideast. We have advocated this change for several years.

Update (10/10/16): Syrian War Video: The short and excellent video below from Vox offers a concise overview of the Syrian War, the various factions, and a timeline narrative. It is well worth five minutes of your time to watch.



For more information on Syria, visit its page on the CIA World Factbook.

For more information on the region, see the following previous Map on Monday posts:

• Map on Monday: JORDAN
• Map on Monday: TURKEY
• Map on Monday: IRAN
• Map on Monday: EGYPT
• Map on Monday: SAUDI ARABIA
• Map on Monday: THE GULF STATES

This post originally appeared on Anthropology of Accord on September 14, 2015

Remembering 9/11: The best tribute will be to name our real enemy

                                           

by David Pence


The new alliance between Russia and the US in Syria is a fundamental change in policy that we have advocated for several years. Donald Trump has been dismissed as an incompetent ignoramus by the Washington think tanks for a similar proposal. Hillary Clinton and the Republican media neocons have found Mr. Trump’s rejection of their bipartisan failed strategy to be evidence of his unfitness for office. Now what will they say? President Obama and Secretary of State Kerry are finally realigning America with serious allies against our real enemies. This is a fundamental reformulation of policy which neither the George Bush White House nor the Hillary Clinton State Department could imagine in their Saudi-constructed vision of the US, Islam, and the war on terror. President Obama has decisively broken with what he calls "the Washington playbook" of think tanks and the national security establishment. As his presidency comes to an end, he has liberated himself from the "Arab occupied territory" which is a White House staff term for the many institutes funded by foreign governments pushing their own war aims as expert opinion. This alliance may be extremely short lived and this first attempt may quickly crash but it points the way conceptually and strategically to the only realignment of forces which will bring victory. Prayer may be our only hope that the partisan media and somnolent Congress will awaken to this startling departure from Sunni group-think and see the opportunity it presents for a reformulation of American war aims.

This recent report from Christians in Aleppo shows why the US must turn from supporting the Saudi-backed Salafist rebels, and help Russia and Syria establish safety for Christians, Shiites, and peace-seeking Sunnis in Syria and Lebanon. Many pundits mocked the Libertarian presidential candidate, Gary Johnson, for not knowing how to respond to the question, "What about Aleppo?" The NY Times in reporting the episode had to make two corrections of their own errors in describing the city that was Syria's largest before the civil war began in 2011. Instead of mocking the new guys at the table we might better reflect on why this geography has became important to Americans. That will lead us to the truly confused foreign policymakers from Hillary Clinton to John McCain who have involved us on the side of jihadist Sunnis in trying to overthrow the Syrian government.

The best way to honor our dead from 15 years ago is to align a new group of forces to define and defeat the real enemy who murdered our countrymen.

Religion and Geopolitics Review: Saturday, September 10

by Dr. David Pence and A. Joseph Lynch

I. ISRAEL, ISLAM, AND THE MIDDLE EAST

INSIDE ISRAEL: The two Jewish communities underneath all the other stories about Israel.

ISRAEL MAY BE OUR ALLY, BUT HER STRATEGY IS NOT OURS: It does not help us that our ally in the Mideast, Israel, lists its five "real enemies” and we find that our allies Iraq and Afghanistan are on the list. Embattled Syria is also on their list. Not ISIS, not the Saudis, not Pakistan. Their three "real enemies" in the Mideast are led by Shiites or have significant Shia representation. This disparity of aims between the US and Israel must be resolved. This list is continued evidence that for now Israel is in de facto alliance with the Saudis against all manifestations of Shiite rule. The Saudi hatred toward Shiites stems from their Wahhabi distortion; the Israelis are more geopolitical in assessing the military threat from Hezbollah (a Shiite force) in Lebanon and the State of Iran. This troubling disparity between the US and Israel is mindful of a similar disparity in the Democratic Party. Hillary Clinton tilts to the Saudis and badmouths the Russians, while President Obama has opened to Iran and made a deal with Moscow. As President Obama concluded after a lengthy foreign policy interview about friends and foes in the Mideast: "It’s complicated."

SAUDI CROWN PRINCE MUHAMMED BIN NAYEF: He was an American favorite. Where has he gone? It may be the deputy crown prince who is truly the next in line.

CIA DIRECTOR BRENNAN - NO SKEPTICISM TOWARD SAUDIS: He has certainly been consistent.

SAUDI MOSQUES IN THE US: IS THE JIG UP? A bill to stop this travesty.

DO WE WORSHIP THE SAME GOD? A young priest and old cardinal go against the Vatican Council. Getting this right is essential. I cannot see how any of these arguments should not apply to the Jews/Christians as well. Do Catholics and Jews worship the same God? This reminds us that many evangelicals make the "different Jesus" statement about Catholics. Here is an audio of a good debate on Catholic radio between Robert Spencer and Monsignor Stuart Swetland.

PAT BUCHANAN ON SYRIA, TURKEY, THE KURDS, AND US: Limited goals.

A LEBANESE CHRISTIAN KILLED IN AMERICA AS FILTHY ARAB: Time to discriminate. This recalls nativist opposition to the Sikhs who have always been an ally in fighting Islamic violence.

THE FORCES THAT WARRED AGAINST IRAQ AND NOW ALLY AGAINST ASSAD ARE THE SAME: From War on Rocks article, "The Sunni myth...”:

It is often claimed that Assad “is a greater magnet for global jihad than U.S. forces were in Iraq at the height of the insurgency.” Assad inherited the same enemy the United States faced in Iraq. The primary recruiter for extremists is the war, the power vacuum created by war, the chaos and despair resulting from it, and the opportunity jihadists see to kill Shias, Alawites, secular apostate Sunnis, Christians, and Western armies gathering for what they view as the final battle before judgment day. Assad is barely mentioned in ISIL propaganda. He is too small for them. They want something much larger, as do the other Salafi jihadi groups operating in the region. It is naive to think that if Assad is simply replaced with somebody else the West finds suitable that the jihadis will be satisfied. Moreover, Assad (just like Maliki) is not in Yemen, Libya, the Sinai, or Afghanistan, and, yet, the Islamic State is growing in all those places.

II. GENDER, RACE, AND PROTECTION

LGBT - THE MIDDLE GROUND IS DISAPPEARING: The author thinks that's good. We agree that it is true - a sacred love or an abomination?

BORDERS ARE THE WORST IDEA EVER: So says the Danish head of the EU. One of the fundamental characteristics of living organisms is "interiority and homeostasis." Because of membranes in cells or integument in larger organisms, there is separation between the outside and inside which allows identity and life. Can any man of common sense be expected to treat these rootless intellectuals seriously?

BLACK ON WHITE - A FLANNERY O'CONNOR STORY IN REAL LIFE: The black male predator and the elderly white nuns.

III. PRESIDENTIAL POLITICS

HILLARY CLINTON - CAN SHE TURN AGAINST THE SAUDIS IF THAT IS WHAT HER COUNTRY NEEDS? For Mrs. Clinton, the Saudi and Gulf monarchies are major donors to the Clinton Foundation and her aide, Huma Abedin, has significant ties to the "Kingdom of Hate." From Wikipedia:

Abedin was born in Kalamazoo, Michigan, to Syed Zainul and Saleha Mahmood Abedin. At the age of two, she moved with her family to Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, where she was raised and lived until returning to the United States for college. Both of her parents were educators. Her father, born in New Delhi, India, on April 2, 1928, was an Islamic and Middle Eastern scholar of Indian descent, who founded the Institute of Muslim Minority Affairs, an organization devoted to the study of Muslim communities in non-Muslim societies around the world. He published the 'Journal of Muslim Minority Affairs' (JMMA), a publication focusing on Muslim minorities living in diaspora. He graduated from Aligarh Muslim University in 1947 with a master's degree in English literature and joined the department's faculty as a lecturer. He later received his Ph.D. from the University of Pennsylvania. Her mother, born in Pakistan, received her Ph.D. from the University of Pennsylvania and is currently an associate professor of sociology at Dar Al-Hekma College in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia.

The dying WASPS have their candidate… and it’s not Donald Trump

by David Pence


If you read Robert Jones' new book The End of White Christian America or listen to assorted progressive commentators, you might think the Donald Trump campaign is one last gasp by Christians to recover their lost status in the new improved United States of Diversity. But is that rich white man the real standard bearer for America's WASP elite?

The white Anglo-Saxon Protestants who once shaped their young in the Christian denominational schools of Harvard, Princeton, and Yale no longer employ those schools to transmit Christian dogma. Their philosophy is very different today, but the schools still shape the educators and journalists who   shape American culture. The modern consensus of the WASP elite is also transmitted by the white clergy of the mainline Anglican, Presbyterian, and Methodist Churches. While membership in these churches has had a precipitous decline, the interplay of elite schools’ ideology and the mores of mainline Protestant clergy still plays a significant role in shaping American culture. The Soul of the American University: From Protestant Establishment to Established Nonbelief by George Marsden is a good place to understand how the WASPs first lost belief in the Divinity of Christ and then gave up religion in general. The WASPS held on to the schools, the foundations and the paying church jobs as they outgrew Jesus Christ, that embarrassing sectarian. This prepared the way for today's globalist individualists who have outgrown nationalism, and now condemn the exclusionary violence of patriotic loyalty in the same churches that once blessed "the sword and shield of the Spirit."

The modern moral consensus favors negotiation over the use of force, rational discussion over appeals to authority, credentials over charisma, globalism over nationalism, individual autonomy over Divine Sovereignty, and individual identity over biological determinism. This consensus is taught at universities and enforced through human resource policies. While the media trumps the clergy in shaping culture, their intellectual consensus about reality, morality, and human relations is still transmitted in Christian ceremonials.

The consensus is transmitted as an "inclusive church" for all. Congregations celebrate their own righteousness more than the majesty of a Father God. They pay special homage to a new code: human autonomy in all matters sexual and strategic nonviolence in all matters political. Living out the mandates of their new code has blunted the older emotional commitments to defend or even discuss the Virgin Birth, the Resurrection and Ascension of Christ, the Second Coming, the historical reality of original sin, the perfidy of Satan, the mystery of the Trinity, or the truth of Scripture. It is no longer the creed or cult that defines the congregation but the new code. The code is not peripheral to the great tradition but at its heart… for it is sincerely their new definition of love. And, as Scripture tells us, love covers a multitude of sins.

There is a problem, though, for the American white mainline churches. It is a problem born of their own success. Their forefathers were missionaries and now the numerous worldwide churches which they seeded have a role in worldwide church governance. The Africans who received the faith from the great grandparents of today’s white Methodists and Anglicans cannot believe what they are hearing. The Christians of Africa and Asia still believe in cult and creed. They see sexual roles as a manifestation of a sacral hierarchy, and they still treat the sacred as the ultimate reality. The white Anglo-Saxon Protestants are a dying but still wealthy clan. The global Christians are racially diverse, dynamically  orthodox, and joyously populous. The WASPs still hold sway in the post-nationalist European institutions (and their paradoxically well-financed national churches). They rule supreme in American universities and the mainline American clergy. (Why they make covert alliances inside the Catholic clergy, but open war with the Orthodox nations, is another story).
                       

The most recent conferences of the Anglican and Methodist worldwide churches portend defeat for the tired old white elite. Religiously exhausted, the de-Christianized and emasculated whites have a lot more money and buildings than the dark-skinned South. But they are being out-prayed and out populated everywhere. The notion that Christianity is evolving into a gender-less commune of soft-spoken Scandinavians is not playing well in Nigeria or Alabama. The racial divide in America among evangelical white Christians and evangelical black Christians is thin as gossamer compared to the wall arising between the global Christians of Africa and the gender-ideologues of America. The rich white globalists rule for now, but the global Christians of the South with their Catholic, Evangelical, and Charismatic allies in the US are ascendant.

In America the separation of the believing Christians into opposing parties has placed us under secularist or nominal Christian party leaders who horde our votes and ignore our souls. Breaking up the present party coalitions in a new era will help a robust racially integrated public Christianity emerge as America’s greatest font of social capital. Donald Trump, who busted up the Republican side of the dysfunction, now faces the Democratic power couple who continue their syndicate’s rule of the old workingman’s party of black Baptists, urban Catholics, and progressive evangelicals. Trump gave a major address on Christianity and America at Liberty University in January 2016. His core message was barely reported:

"But we are going to protect Christianity. And if you look what's going on throughout the world, you look at Syria where if you're Christian, they're chopping off heads. You look at the different places, and Christianity, it's under siege… 

"And we've got to protect because bad things are happening, very bad things are happening, and we don't -- I don't know what it is. We don't band together, maybe. Other religions, frankly, they're banding together. And if you look at this country it's got to be 70 percent, 75 percent, some people say even more, the power we have, somehow we have to unify. We have to band together... the country has to do that around Christianity. So get together, folks, and let's do it because we can do it."

That is not the language of the WASP elite. It is not a dog whistle to racists—it is a call to Christians to unite as Americans. Forget the parties; let us be Christian patriots.

The WASPs make a different appeal. Their cultural imperative is a worldwide sexual revolution. Pope Francis has called it "ideological colonization." The WASPs are like their allies, the European Catholic bishops, who are organizing to mainstream homosexuality in Europe in the manner it already inundates the Roman clergy. A German cardinal recently warned white reporters not to listen to African cardinals on the subject because Africans consider "homosexuality a taboo." That is how the highly-educated Americans look at their domestic black allies as well -- they are a good bloc of votes, but the rank and file is still primitive on the gender question. Gender ideology involves killing the patriarchal God, neutering the Divine Sonship of Christ, disbanding the masculine bond of national brotherhood and redefining the heterosexual character of marriage. The darker-skinned worldwide Christians of the global south and the black Christians of American inner-cities are not drinking the Kool-Aid. This represents a serious racial divide, but this rupture is too shocking for the white sexual revolutionaries to even consider. It seems a very hard story for mainline media to tell as well. The first biracial American president came down resolutely on the side of the WASPs against both inner-city black sensibilities and the African Christians on the world stage. On religion, race, and gender he remained the son of his white anthropologist mother.  
      
The death swarm of the WASPs draws near. Soon they will lose President Obama as their unique spokesman who had a claim on black Christians. The new spokeswoman for the old-money WASPs looks a lot more like them even if her wealth is more garishly nouveau riche. If she can win, the WASPs may have one more decade of cultural prominence in them. But the Christocentric Americans now divided by color into the two parties will not be ruled by secularists forever. Anti-Muslim soldiers led by Ataturk in Turkey and anti-Shiites with the Shah in Iran eventually gave way to the deepest religious commitments of their nations. So, too, with America’s secular elite dressed up as old-line Protestants ruling over authentically Christian populists.

Candidate Trump is not the voice of dynamic Christian orthodoxy, but he is the voice of one component of Christian culture. He sees the nation as the primary community of social protection. For biblical Christians that theme reverberates through the pages of Scripture into the marrow of our bones. If Mr. Trump draws men together as American citizens, he makes it more likely we will rediscover our even deeper ties as fellow Christians. The parties will realign and the color barrier will be breached. Mr. Trump is not a frequent church-goer but he has a tribal loyalty to Christians, in the same way he has a tribal loyalty to Americans. (Scots are like that.) He is viscerally offended by the decapitation of black Christians in the Mideast. His response is not one of sadness or disbelief, but anger. Our collective honor as Christians must be avenged or our women and children will be enslaved. Effeminate clergy and Christian university intellectuals don’t think like that. Scottish tribal chiefs do. The 4th-century emperor Constantine was no Christian saint, but he turned the sword of Rome to defend Christians against the old pagan elite who had been killing them. He waited till his deathbed to be baptized in case of future sins, but that old sinner performed one of the greatest acts of peacemaking and protection in the history of Christianity.

The WASPs have their candidate. She and they share an aversion to selectively defending Christians at home or abroad. Such "sectarian favoritism" contradicts their inclusiveness ideology. They are much more comfortable with their class and social allies of old white atheist Europe. In fact, they would much rather make war through bureaucratic dealings and personal contacts in NATO than the public forum of the U.S. Senate (see airstrikes on Serbia with B. Clinton, and airstrikes on Libya with H. Clinton). The gender-bending power couples of America’s foreign policy elite have much more in common with the feminist defense ministers of Scandinavia than with the foot soldiers of Serbian Orthodoxy who fought at the front of the Muslim/Christian divide in the 1990s.

                           

So let us ask: who really is the candidate of a dying white tribe? Is it the man who is calling black, white, and brown Americans together as fellow nationalists? Or is it the career feminist toasting her white sister Angela Merkel as they become dowager empresses for the crumbling West? A form of white Protestantism is dying before our eyes. It is part of the de-Christianized West which is dying as well. Don’t weep! It is neither Christian nor American. Christianity is alive and well -- speaking many languages, sacralizing many nations, wearing many colors in America, and even more so in the global South. The dying WASPs are overwhelmingly white. They claim to speak for all races and individuals because of their diversity ideology. The WASPS have always said they speak for everyone. But they have lost their claim to transcendence because they quenched the light of Christ. They are losing their political heft because they have forsaken the nations as the fundamental political form. They are losing the appeal of the common touch because they are at war with human nature.

When you read about the death gasps of a decaying white Christianity -- don’t look to West Virginia or Louisiana. Look to the churches and universities of the East Coast elites. See their abortion-hardened female bishops and their soft coming-out clergy. See their war with African Christians. The future of the WASPs is colony collapse. It could happen as well to their queen bee.    

Map on Monday: CENTRAL AMERICA

An Introduction to the Geography and History of Central America

By A. Joseph Lynch

Central America is comprised of seven Christian (mostly Catholic) nations: Belize (335,000), Costa Rica (4.7 million), El Salvador ( 6.1 million), Guatemala (14.4 million), Honduras (8.5 million), Nicaragua (5.8 million), and Panama (3.6 million). Today's Map on Monday, however, will consider Belize and the five nations that had been part of the Federal Republic of Central America. Panama, due to its strategic importance as well as its historic ties to the nation of Columbia and the short-lived republic of Gran Columbia, will be treated separately.

The geography of Central America is that of a tapering isthmus, running from the northwest at its widest to its narrowest point in the southeast. While the region shares land borders with Mexico and South America, most of Central America faces the ocean: the Pacific to the west and south, the Caribbean to the east and north, and the Gulf of Mexico further north. Central America also sits on what is called the Caribbean plate, which it shares with the island nations of Jamaica, Haiti, the Dominican Republic and the U.S. territory of Puerto Rico (Cuba sits on the North American Plate). Central America is also very mountainous with the Sierra Madre de Chiapas, the Cordillera Isabelia and the Cordillera de Talamanca as the three longest ranges in the region.

From 1523 to 1697, conquistadors brought the region under Spanish rule. In 1609, the area was given some autonomy in military and administrative affairs. Ruled by a governor-captain general, the region remained part of the Spanish Empire but was directed locally by a competent man with the crown's approval. Napoleon's intervention in Spanish affairs in Europe brought about independence movements in the region. On March 15, 1821, the region enacted the Act of Independence of Central America and spent the next two years as a member of the Mexican Empire. In 1823, it seceded from Mexico to form the Federal Republic of Central America, a representative democracy with its capital at Guatemala City. A lack of national identity eventually drove the region into civil war from 1838-1840 leading to the creation of five separate nations: Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, and Nicaragua.

The land making up the nation of Belize did not become part of the Spanish Empire due to its lack of precious metal resources and its proximity to strongly held Mayan defensive positions. The British eventually began to settle the area for use in military engagements with the Spanish. Belize was called British Honduras from 1862-1973 before gaining its independence in 1981. It is strategically located between Central America, the Caribbean, and the Mexican/American north. Belize, thus, also acts as a cultural bridge between the Anglophone Caribbean/America and the broader Spanish-speaking world around it.

This post originally appeared on Anthropology of Accord on July 6, 2015.