Talk:Act of Independence of Central America

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This article was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment, between 18 January 2021 and 27 April 2021. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): 00matthew2000. Peer reviewers: WishIWasOnWiki, CharlesH.Woo.

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Provinces of the Captaincy-General
Hello! I reverted your change because the source cited there has what purports to be the original text of the declarations made at this meeting, and they appear to me to repeatedly refer to the other provinces of the Captaincy-General in the plural ("Que desde luego se circulen Oficios á las Provincias por Correos extraordinarios...", etc.). Further, maps of the Captaincy-General that I've seen consistently depict many "provinces" within it; in the one I've included here, for example, there are at least Chiapas, Guatemala, San Salvador, Comayagua, Nicaragua, and Costa Rica, though the map indicates that it reflects the political organization of the region c.1600. Do you have reason to believe that those provinces were merged into two larger provinces at some point between 1600 and independence in the 1820s (perhaps during the Bourbon Reforms)? I haven't seen any, and the documents from the independence period seem to me to refer to those same provinces, but if you have documents to show that the provinces were consolidated before independence, then I'd certainly support making the text more accurate.

Incidentally, we appear to have the same language boxes on our user pages! 可笑しい, ね?-Bryanrutherford0 (talk) 03:35, 14 September 2018 (UTC)
 * I was going by what it says at Captaincy General of Guatemala: "In 1812 the Cádiz Cortes divided the region into two provinces: Guatemala (consisting of Guatemala, Belize, Chiapas, Honduras and El Salvador) and Nicaragua y Costa Rica." So perhaps that article is wrong? My Japanese used to be much much better than it is now. I was nearly fluent, but that was 20 years ago. I should add fr-1 to my language list. — howcheng  {chat} 06:25, 14 September 2018 (UTC)


 * Interesting! So, that article contends that, indeed, the administrative structure was repeatedly revised in the decades before independence. The map included in the External Links section of that article, dating from 1764, depicts what it calls the "Provinces de Nicaragua et Costa Rica" (in French), so it seems that there were still many provinces in the Captaincy-General as of the 1760s. The citation for those paragraphs is unfortunately offline; still, if the substance of the Captaincy-General of Guatemala article is correct, it sounds like the provinces had just been consolidated from seven to two literally the year prior to independence, so maybe the writers of the Act just continued to refer to the various parts of the region as "provinces" even though they had recently ceased to technically be such? That makes it tricky, if even the people present at the time were uncertain as to whether to use the centuries-old traditional terms or the ones that had recently come into force under the Cádiz Cortes.-Bryanrutherford0 (talk)
 * So I guess we need an expert in Central American history here to resolve this, or at least an authoritative source that explains the evolution of the provinces. — howcheng  {chat} 16:13, 14 September 2018 (UTC)
 * Yeah, that would help! Actually, it looks like the source cited in the other article is on Google Books here, but I'm not sure how informative it really is; it's a long book, and I haven't tried to read it all, and it's not all online. It looks like the reorganization of the region was bound up with the chaos of the Napoleonic Wars and the formation of the Cádiz Cortes that eventually led to independence. I guess it seems to me that the question is whether the article should try to reflect the official Spanish government terms and divisions current at the time of the Act, even though the Act's text does not seem to do so; maybe this article could be adjusted to refer to the different subdivisions of Central America as "former provinces" or somesuch? Could something like that seem satisfactory to you?-Bryanrutherford0 (talk) 16:48, 14 September 2018 (UTC)
 * Assuming that's what happened, we could put in a efn to explain that officially there were only two provinces, but historically there were more. The historical provinces should also be added to the Captaincy General article. — howcheng  {chat} 18:05, 14 September 2018 (UTC)
 * I think that's a great solution! I'll write it up tonight, if I can make the time, or you should feel free to, if you know how you'd like it to read. Thanks for talking this through with me! -Bryanrutherford0 (talk) 21:02, 14 September 2018 (UTC)
 * Go for it, I've got far too much other stuff to do. Thanks. — howcheng  {chat} 21:08, 14 September 2018 (UTC)

Expanding on the pre-article sections of this article
Hello everyone! My name is Matthew and I am a junior History and Political Science double major at the College of Wooster who is currently taking a class entitled 'Modern Latin America'. I have come across this article in the process of researching the period of Mexican occupation in Central America from 1822-1823. This brought me here, as this was an important document at the time. I found the first three body paragraphs in the article to be somewhat lacking, and so I hope to expand on them. Further, there are parts of the sections "Independence Movements" and "Promulgation of the Act" that lack citations, but I believe I could do this article a service by locating some scholarly sources on these topics and adding them in to strengthen the claims made. So, to clarify, my edits would include expanding/adding sources to the first, second, and third paragraphs from the "Independence movements" section of the article to the "Aftermath and union with Mexico" section. I look forward to making a useful contribution to this article!--00matthew2000 (talk) 16:48, 16 March 2021 (UTC)
 * That would be great! Your contributions will be much appreciated! -Bryan Rutherford (talk) 20:08, 16 March 2021 (UTC)
 * Great work, and nice images! -Bryan Rutherford (talk) 21:47, 26 March 2021 (UTC)