Varieties of Spanish in the United States:

11. Guatemalan and Honduran Spanish in the United States

179 11 Guatemalan and Honduran Spanish in the United States Guatemalans Guatemalans represent the second largest Central American group in the United States, after Salvadorans. In some areas significant groups of Guatemalans are concentrated in one locality, and there are pockets of Guatemalan Spanish in the United States. Most of these communities are formed of indigenous Guatemalans speaking a variety of Mayan languages , and in some instances these languages take precedence over Spanish, even in the U.S. setting (e.g., Hagan 1994). In Central America the Spanish presence was strongly felt in Guatemala, the eventual seat of the Captaincy General of Guatemala. In theory this colony was subordinate to the larger Viceroyalty of New Spain, whose capital was Mexico City, but in practice the captaincy generals were independent entities, responding directly to Spain and having little political contact with distant viceroyalties. In the case of the Captaincy General of Guatemala, the location of the capital at one geographical extreme of the territory resulted in a diminishing cultural, political, and linguistic influence as a function of distance from the capital city. During most of the colonial period, the only city of importance was Guatemala City, which enjoyed the benefits of a university and other contacts with the administrative and cultural centers of Spain. Although Spain maintained an administrative presence in Guatemala with close ties to Mexico, the Caribbean, and Spain, the indigenous population was large and diverse and precluded large-scale Hispanization. The implantation of the Spanish language in rural Guatemala was less effective than anywhere else in Central America, being limited, during the colonial period, to a handful of urban nuclei. Even today, it is estimated that at least half the population of Guatemala does not speak Spanish, or speaks it only as a recessive second language. These monolingual populations are scattered away from the urbanized central and southwestern regions. A visitor to Guatemala City may receive the impression that Guatemala is fundamentally a Spanish-speaking nation, but an observer of life in a small village or in the remote northern jungles would find little Spanish in use anywhere. The Captaincy General of Guatemala was important to the Spanish imperial effort, although its mineral wealth was outranked by the treasure pouring in from Mexico and Peru. On the Caribbean side, commerce with Spain and the West Indies was carried out through Puerto Caballos (modern Puerto Cortés) in Honduras. More contact was maintained via overland routes from Mexico, along Guatemala’s western lowlands. No major Pacific ports were developed partially as a result of the lack of natural harbors (the nearest port being Acajutla in El Salvador), and therefore Guatemala was ignored both by pirates and by the Spanish government. This created the paradoxical situation wherein the language variety representing a nominal administrative seat could develop in isolation, showing many of the same archaisms and signs of linguistic abandonment and drift as territories such as Costa Rica, which was marginalized from the outset. Spain established the encomienda system of indigenous labor/tribute in Guatemala, but it did not work as smoothly as it had in some other colonies. A number of export crops were attempted, including indigo and sarsaparilla, but colonial Guatemala never enjoyed economic prosperity. Following independence, coffee became the main cash crop, later to be augmented by bananas, grown under the auspices of American fruit companies. During peaceful interludes, tourism is a major source of income in Guatemala, with Antigua, the markets of Guatemala City, and the spectacular Mayan ruins of Tikal being among the principal attractions. Religious fervor brings thousands to venerate the Black Christ statue at the town of Esquipulas, near the Honduran border. During the twentieth century Guatemala suffered numerous political convulsions and military coups. In 1944 the military dictator Jorge Ubico was overthrown, and there followed ten years of liberal democracy, under the presidencies of Juan José Arévalo and Jacobo Arbenz. The latter instituted an agrarian reform in a nation that had long been dominated by a small and powerful landowning elite. His actions were viewed with alarm by political and business leaders in the United States, and in 1954 a military coup largely engineered by the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency toppled Arbenz and returned Guatemala to despotic military 180 CHAPTER ELEVEN rule (with a brief civilian interlude from 1966–70), which continued for more than three decades (Schlesinger and Kinzer 1982). Insurgency against the...