Abstract
The Central American mainland, excluding Venezuela, has a population of approximately 155 million people, and the Caribbean approximately 40 million people. Globally speaking, this is still a relatively small marketplace. The largest country in this region is Mexico, the smallest is Montserrat island, a UK protectorate of approximately 5000 citizens, located in the Caribbean. All of these Central American nations share a vast indigenous legacy, a dramatic colonial history of abuse, often a pirate legacy, much civil struggle, and ongoing problems with corruption. In addition, they share problems with narcotics, carry a large public debt, wrestle with dominance by Western nations (mostly the US and the European Union), and usually have a high reliance on international tourism (in which the majority of money remains in the North). Details are presented in Chaps. 1, 2, 4, and throughout this book. With the exception of Cuba and Nicaragua, most nations in Central America follow a capitalistic business scheme that relies on NGOs but that tends to widely disregard effective social considerations; most nations now try to follow the ascribed Costa Rican and Mexican models. While Mexico is part of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) free-trade scheme with the USA and Canada, Costa Rica champions more the Central American Free Trade Zone, which was established in 1993 and includes the nations of El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, and Nicaragua. These two nations are often perceived as successful role models in Central America; but the reality is that Mexico suffers a civil war-like violence that has raged virtually uncontrolled for at least a decade, and that Costa Rica accumulates the fastest-growing national debt in Central America with no end in sight.
Keywords
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
References
Alexander JC (2013) The dark side of modernity. Polity Books, Cambridge
Bandura (2007) Impeding ecological sustainability through selective moral disengagement. Int J Innov Sustain Dev 2:8–35
Blum W (2000) Killing hope: U.S. Military and CIA interventions since World War II. Black Rose Books, Montreal. http://williamblum.org/books/killing-hope/. Accessed 6 March 2015
Bush M, Flenley J, Gosling J (eds) (2011) Tropical rainforest responses to climatic change, 2nd edn. Praxis Publishing, Chichester
Booth DE (2004) Hooked on growth: economic addictions and the environment. Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Lanham
Brockett CD (1998) Land, power and poverty: agrarian transformation and political conflict in Central America, 2nd edn. (Thematic Studies in Latin America). Westview Press, Boulder
Brown L (2012) Full planet empty plates. The new geopolitics of food scarcity. Norton Company, New York
Churchill W (2003) On the justice of roosting chickens: reflections on the consequences of U.S. imperial arrogance and criminality. AK Press Oakland, California
CIA World Factbook (2013) The CIA world factbook 2014. Skyshore Publishing, New York
Collier P (2007) The bottom billion: why the poorest countries are failing and what can be done about it. Grove Art
Czech B (2013) Supply shock: economic growth at the crossroads and the steady state solution. New Society Publishers, Gabriola
Daly H, Farley J (2003) Ecological economics: principles and applications. Island Press, Washington
Davis J (1991)The earth first! reader: ten years of radical environmentalism. Gibbs Smith, Layton
Davis M (2007) Planet of slums. Verso, New York
Devall B, Sessions G (2001) Deep ecology: living as if nature mattered. Gibbs Smith, Salt Lake City
Drengson A, Inoue Y, Naess A, Snyder G (eds) (1995) The deep ecology movement: an introductory anthology (No. 50). North Atlantic Books, Berkeley
Elliott KA (ed) (1997). Corruption and the global economy. Institute for International Economics, Washington
Emmot S (2010) Ten billion. Vintage publishers, New York
Fisher R, Maginnis S, Jackson W, Barrow E, Jeanrenaud S (2010) Linking conservation and poverty reduction: landscapes, people and power. In: Roe D, Elliott J (eds) Poverty and biodiversity conservation. Earthscan, London
Forman RTT (1995) Land mosaics: the ecology of landscapes and regions. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge
Galeano E (1997) Open veins of Latin America: five centuries of the pillage of a continent. Monthly Review Press, New York
Garvey AJ (2013) The philosophy and opinions of Marcus Garvey: Africa for the Africans. Routledge, London
Ghandi MK (2012) Autobiography: the story of my experiments with truth. CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform, India
Gornik JC, Jaenntti M (eds) (2013) Income inequality: economic disparities and the middle class in affluent countries. Stanford University Press, Stanford
Hernandez A (2014) Narcoland: The Mexican Drug Lords and Their Godfathers. Random House, London
Hey T, Tansley S, Tolle K (2009) The fourth paradigm: data-intensive scientific discovery. Microsoft Corporation, Redmond
Huettmann F (2011). From Europe to North America into the world and atmosphere: a short review of global footprints and their impacts and predictions. Environ. doi:10.1007/ s10669-011-9338–5
Johnson K (2002) Buried dreams: the rise and fall of a Clam Cannery on the Katmai Coast. National Park Service, Katmai
Katz JM (2014) The big truck that went by: how the world came to save Haiti and left behind a disaster. Palgrave Macmillan, New York
Lefever H (1992) Turtle Bogue: Afro-Caribbean life and culture in a Costa Rican Village. Susquehanna University Press, Texas
Liu J, Taylor WW (2002) Integrating landscape ecology into natural resource management. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge
Mandela N (1995) Long walk to freedom: the autobiography of Nelson Mandela. Back Boys Books, Boston
Miller GT, Spoolman S (2010) Living in the environment, 15th edn (Annotated Instructor’s Edition). Thomson Books, Belmont
Parenti C (2012) Tropic of chaos: climate change and the new geography of violence. Nation Book, New York
Perkins J (2004) Confessions of an economic Hitman, 3rd edn. Berrett-Koehler Publishers, New York
Petrella I (2006) The future of liberation theology: an argument and manifesto. SCM Press, London
Radermacher FJ (2004) Balance or destruction: eco-social economy as the key to global sustainable development. Ecosocial Forum Europe, Vienna
Roe D, Elliott J (eds) (2010) Poverty and biodiversity conservation, Earthscan, London
Rosales J (2008) Economic growth, climate change, biodiversity loss: distributive justice for the global north and south. Cons Biol 22:1409–1417
Shtilmark FR (2003) History of the Russian Zapovedniks 1895–1995. Russian Nature Press, Edinburgh
Stiglitz JE (2006) Making globalization work. W.W. Norton & Company, New York
UNEP (2006) Caribbean environment outlook. Nairobi
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2015 Springer Science+Business Media, LLC
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Huettmann, F. (2015). Human Aspects and Population Structures in Central America and Its So-Called Free Trade Zones: Imperialism, Immigration, Remittance Payments, Leakage, Brain Drain, Global Citizenship, and Unlimited Inequalities During War and Globalization. In: Huettmann, F. (eds) Central American Biodiversity. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4939-2208-6_28
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4939-2208-6_28
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, New York, NY
Print ISBN: 978-1-4939-2207-9
Online ISBN: 978-1-4939-2208-6
eBook Packages: Biomedical and Life SciencesBiomedical and Life Sciences (R0)