Upon the downfall of Iturbide, the malcontents in Central America
bestirred themselves to throw off the Mexican yoke. On July
1,1823, a Congress declared the region an independent republic
under the name of the "United Provinces of Central America." In
November of the next year, following the precedent established in
Mexico, and obedient also to local demand, the new republic
issued a constitution, in accordance with which the five little
divisions of Guatemala, Honduras, Salvador, Nicaragua, and Costa
Rica were to become states of a federal union, each having the
privilege of choosing its own local authorities. Immediately
Federalists and Centralists, Radicals and Conservatives, all
wished, it would seem, to impose their particular viewpoint upon
their fellows. The situation was not unlike that in the Argentine
Confederation. The efforts of Guatemala--the province in which
power had been concentrated under the colonial regime--to assert
supremacy over its fellow states, and their refusal to respect
either the federal bond or one another's rights made civil war
inevitable. The struggle which broke out among Guatemala,
Salvador, and Honduras, lasted until 1829, when Francisco
Morazan, at the head of the "Allied Army, Upholder of the Law,"
entered the capital of the republic and assumed dictatorial
power.

Of all the Hispanic nations, however, Brazil was easily the most
stable. Here the leaders, while clinging to independence, strove
to avoid dangerous innovations in government. Rather than create
a political system for which the country was not prepared, they
established a constitutional monarchy. But Brazil itself was too
vast and its interior too difficult of access to allow it to